A few days ago, I was poking around in the iTunes Store for something new to add to the collection of podcasts on my iPod. I had caught up with the long-running, outstanding The History of Rome series, as well as the not-as-long-running-but-also-outstanding The History of China series, and I only had a scant two episodes left in the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects. Out of curiosity, I checked to see what kind of Cantonese podcasts were on iTunes and stumbled across a 27-episode historical novel about Xiang Yu, a prominent military figure who vied for control of China in the late 200s B.C. in the wake of the collapse of the Qin Dynasty. The program aired on a radio station in my hometown of Guangzhou a few years back, and someone had thought to add it to iTunes a couple years ago.
I was hooked five minutes into the first episode, not so much because of how great the story is but because of how it was told. While the program is a bit more structured and polished than a conversational-style podcast, no one would mistake this for a mere dramatic reading of a book or script either. The main voice was more village storyteller than narrator, as he spoke in a very colloquial manner and told the story with more than a little dry sarcasm and dramatic flair. When recounting dialogs between characters, he would do different voices for each part, and every now and then he would interrupt the story and explain something further to put it in a present-day context. He wasn't merely reading a book to you, but instead was talking to you as if you were just shooting the bull with him by a campfire and listening to him regale you with a tale about the rise and fall of a great historical figure. It makes for a very intimate connection and really pulls you into the story.
One of the reasons this program appealed to me so much is the fact that it instantly brought back fond memories of one aspect of life in Guangzhou back in the 1980s. At a time when the Chinese economy was just starting to emerge from the turbulence and stagnation of the previous decades, television sets were still not yet a common-place household item, and radio remained the primary mode of entertainment for a huge portion of the population. One of the most popular parts of the daily radio schedule was this type of storytelling. Basically, it's the transplantation of an ancient oral tradition -- which dates back to before the Qing Dynasty -- from the teahouses, where it had been widely practiced, to the radio realm. Narrators took novels, usually about historical personages or events, and retold them in a colloquial and colorful manner, and it was a huge hit with listeners as people tuned in every day. Think of it as sort of the equivalent of an American family gathering around the radio after dinner in the 1930s and 40s, except this was happening a few decades after that cultural phenomenon had faded away in the U.S. and at a time when America was already singing "Video killed the radio star."
The most beloved and well-known practitioner of this craft on Cantonese radio from the 1980s was Zhang Yuekai. Every day at noon and 6 p.m., my grandmother and I would sit by our old transistor radio during lunch or dinner and wait for Zhang to come on for his performance. He'd begin every broadcast with "Picking up where we left off last time ...", except the Chinese expression (原文再续，书接上一回，话说) is much more poetic. We would hang on every word, and when that day's broadcast was over, we eagerly awaited the next day's performance, even though in the case of many of these novels, we already knew how the plot goes. The point was not to find out how the story turned out, but to hear it told by a master of the craft of storytelling. I think this excerpt from an entry on the Chinese version of Wikipedia about Zhang's performance is pretty spot-on:
For the old people in Guangzhou, Guangdong Radio Station evokes nostalgia, just like seeing a rice noodle shop, ice cream shop, or bakery on an old street might.For four years from 1983 to 1987, Zhang Yuekai, who along with Liu Lanfang were known as "Liu of the North and Zhang of the South", recounted novels in Cantonese, such as "Water Margin", "Three Kingdoms", "Warriors of the Yang Family", "Mao Zedong in His Later Years", and this became a program that people in Guangzhou followed religiously. How many "old Guangzhouers" in the Xiguan area of the city remember rushing home to catch his recount of ancient tales? Their devotion can only be described as "forgoing sleep and forgetting meals." Mr. Zhang's performance showcased the whole range of his voice. He could sound strong and arrogant, or slow and steady, or angry and saddened, or smooth and harmonious, or snappy and decisive, or full of joy. The vivacity of his voice is something that could be felt but not explained. His opening line, "Picking up where we left off ... ," still echoes in the memory of the old Guangzhouers.
The podcast I discovered on iTunes continues this great tradition, even adopting Zhang's opening line for each episode. Of course, since it's being told in a colloquial style, there are elements in there that reflect how the times have changed from the 1980s, such as an occasional English word or phrase being thrown in, just as it's now often done in normal conversation in China. After just a couple episodes, I found myself "forgoing sleep and forgetting meals". Well, maybe not quite that far, but I have been listening to this program every chance I get, whether in the car, on the bus, or when I'm just going out for a short stroll during lunch. Nothing else on my iPod has hooked me like this has, and it has rekindled my appetite for such storytelling. The only drawback is that at the rate I'm going, I'll soon be done with these 27 episodes. To that end, I went searching for recordings of Zhang's performances, and to my delight, I found a whole stash of them in MP3 format. We're talking about novels that can be as long as 150-some chapters, so I've found a supply that'll last me a good while. Here's hoping we'll see more of such programs. I think they are a great fit for the episodic, conversational-style format that we are becoming more and more accustomed to with the proliferation of podcasts, and perhaps new technology will help breathe new life into an old art form.
NOTE: This entry is cross-posted on my other blog.
