From the end of the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, the northern commentaries were centered on Beijing and Tianjin, and after the 1980s, there were "four commentators" who resounded throughout the country, but these four were all from the northeast - Yuan Kuocheng of Yingkou, Liu Lanfang and Shan Tianfang of Anshan, and Tian Lianyuan of Benxi. Why is northeast commentary on the rise? This has to start with the history of the Northeast Commentary.
Shenyang was the capital of the Qing Dynasty, gathering a large number of literati, and liu Shiying's "Chronicle of the Accompanying Capital" published in the twelfth year of Qing Tongzhi (1873) and The "Miscellaneous Narratives of accompanying the capital" written by Miao Donglin in the fourth year of Qing Guangxu (1878) have records of commentaries. When the Liaoning Provincial Museum cleaned up the old rubbings in the collection, it found two rubbings of the "Jianghu Xing" stele erected by the Laojuntang of Xiaodongguan in Shenyang in the fourth year of Guangxu, which recorded the names of thirteen Jianghu people, including the storytellers Niu Ruiquan and Dai Deshun.
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Dai Deshun is a native of Beijing, a disciple of Niu Ruiquan, and belongs to the sixth generation of Wang Hongxing. In the early years of Guangxu, he set up a separate portal from Tianjin to Shenyang, arranged his generations according to the four characters of "Yueqing Tonghao", and accepted chen Yuexian, Ma Yueqing, Li Qingkui, Jin Qinglan, Song Tongbin, Gu Tongsheng, Chen Haozhi, Liu Haopeng and so on.
In the second year of the Qing Dynasty (1910), the Beijing critic Guo Jiechuan went to Bukui, which is today's Qiqihar, to perform "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom". Book critics from Beijing, Tianjin and Shenyang also performed at the North Market in Harbin and the Tea House in Qiqihar.
Fu Ping'an, a Beijing storyteller who traveled from Tianjin to the northeast, often performed books such as "Sui and Tang Dynasties", "Water Margin", "Ming Yinglie", "Bao Gong Case", "Five Daughters and Seven Virgins", and "Yongqing Shengping", all of which are the "book roads" of Beijing commentaries, he often performed back and forth between Beijing, Tianjin and Liaoning, and later lived in Yingkou for a long time, and was highly respected in the book critics.
Shan Tianfang
Gu Tongsheng, whose original name was Gu Songnian, was born in Beijing, and his grandmother was the Ai Xin Jue Luo Sect. After the Xinhai Revolution, the Manchu "money and grain" stopped, unable to live, he went to the northeast, became acquainted with many Qing Dynasty widows, accumulated a lot of knowledge of the Qing court canon, and later learned to comment on books, in 1932 he visited the famous commentator Li Qingkui in Shenyang to go to the sea to practice art. He was also adopted by Chen Shihe as a righteous son, taught "Liaozhai", performed in Tianjin, Shenyang, and Changchun for many years, and later settled in Changchun. His "Secret History of the Qing Palace", which he created based on his internal experience, was quite popular.
In the 1930s, Beijing critics Huo Zhengrong, Zhang Qingshan, Suo Cunshou of Tianjin, Lu Xingsheng of Shenyang, and others from Changchun congyi, these were all famous artists who performed "Water Margin", Zhang Qingshan once edited "Water Margin Collection" serialized in the "Shengjing Times", and later published a single volume of twenty-four volumes. Subsequently, Cao Shulin went to Changchun to say "Three Heroes Sword" and "Bao Gong Case".
In the 1940s, Shenyang's "four great storytellers" appeared - Lu Xingsheng, Song Tongbin, Ding Zhenghong, and Shi Xingkui. With the development of coal mines such as Jiamusi, Hegang, Jixi, and Acheng, a large number of coal miners gathered, tea houses were built in these places, and a large number of storytellers stopped there to perform.
Yuan Kuocheng
Beijing storytelling has blossomed everywhere in the northeast, and there are many drum book artists, who mostly sing the Big Drum of the West River, abandon singing and change their speeches, and also become storytellers. For example, Zhao Yufeng, Cheng Futian, and Huang Fucai, the "three banners" of Shenyang's book circles, were originally All Xihe drum artists in Tianjin, who raped long drum books in the library all year round, and after arriving in the northeast, they all changed their words to commentaries. The "Four Great Masters of Storytelling" was born on such artistic soil.
Yuan Kuocheng was born in Tianjin, grew up in Beijing, and came from a family of storytellers, his uncles Yuan Jieting and Yuan Jieying and his father Yuan Jiewu were known as "Yuan's Three Jies", and they were good at speaking "Five Daughters and Seven Virgins". He learned art from an early age, worshiped Jin Jieli as a teacher, and received chen Shihe's guidance, performing in Tangshan, Tianjin, Harbin, Yingkou, Beijing and other places, and at the age of 18, he was famous for "Twelve Golden Darts" and "Shi Gong Case".
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Yuan Kuocheng settled in Yingkou City. There is a small ping kangli in Yingkou, there are seven or eight teahouses on the street, and the earliest Yuan Kuocheng performed "Burning the Red Lotus Temple" at the Red Star Tea House. In 1958, he joined the Yingkou City Qu Art Troupe, performing new books such as "Tongue War Small Furnace Maker" and "Xu Yunfeng Goes to the Banquet", and was known as "the leader of saying new books". In 1985, the commentary "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was broadcast, and he was transferred to the Literature and Art Department of the Central People's Radio, and then left the northeast.
Shan Tianfang spent forty years in Anshan. At the beginning, he was favored by the manager of an anshan tea house when he performed at the Big Stone Bridge in Yingkou and came to Anshan. At that time, there were 400,000 industrial workers in Angang, and the whole city was full of vitality, full of bookstores and small theaters, and every house was full. Shan Tianfang appeared on stage, performing "Ming Yinglie", "The Biography of Tong Lin", and "Three Heroes and Five Righteousness", saying that he could earn sixteen yuan for three hours a day, while the average monthly income of workers at that time was about fifty yuan.
In 1958, Shan Tianfang became an official actor of the Anshan Qu Art Troupe, performing new books such as "Plain Gunshots", "Red Rock", "Grassland Beacon", "Red Safe" and so on, and also moved foreign detective novels to the bookstore. At the end of the 1970s, he served as the leader of the Book Anding Team of the Anshan Qu Art Troupe, recorded the commentary "Wagang Hero" on Anshan Radio, and exchanged it on various radio stations, and since then he has gone out of the northeast and made a name for himself in the country.
Liu Lanfang is a native of Liaoyang, learned art at the age of six, first sang the Northeast drum and then learned to review books, at the age of fifteen was admitted to the Anshan Qu Art Troupe, broadcasting new books such as "Island Female Militia" and "Shining Red Star" on Anshan Radio. In 1979, she and her husband Wang Yinquan spent seven months in a ten-square-meter home, cooperating to sort out the commentary "Yue FeiChuan".
"Yue Fei Biography" portrays the image of Yue Fei's loyalty to the country into three points, and when it was premiered on Anshan Radio, every day at 11:30 noon and 6:30 p.m. when the commentary was broadcast, a group of people would stand under the loudspeakers of each factory area of Anshan Iron and Steel Plant. "Yue Fei's Biography" caused a sensation after being broadcast on radio stations around the world and became a cultural phenomenon in the 1980s, and Liu Lanfang also became the most well-known person in the literary and art circles at that time. Then she also performed "Yang Jia jiang", "Hu Jia jiang", "Yue Yun", "Yue Lei sweeping the north" and other commentaries, her voice is engraved in the hearts of generations of Chinese, when to hear, when can pull people back to the past.
Tian Lianyuan was born in Changchun, Jilin Province, settled in Xianshuigu, Tianjin as a child, learned the Xihe drum, joined the Benxi Qu Art Troupe at the age of eighteen, performed the long book "Great Sui Tang" in the Caitun Mining District Bookstore, and recorded "The Song of Ouyang Hai" in Liaoning In the 1960s. His representative works are "Yang Jiajian" and "Sui and Tang Dynasties", and in 1990, he taught at the Tianjin North China QuQu School. The Northeast book critics represented by these four have in turn influenced the whole country, and this kind of feedback has become an interesting phenomenon. (Text: He Yuxin)
Liu Lanfang
Tian Lianyuan