Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture: Chinese Drum Ballads, 1800–1937 by Margaret B. Wan (review)

For years, drum ballads (guci 鼓詞) as a form of Chinese prosimetric literature (shuochang wenxue 說唱文學) suffered academic neglect. Falling under the general rubric of “popular literature” (suwenxue 俗文學), its texts have rarely if ever provoked thorough English-language surveys like those of other vernacular genres, such as chantefables (shuochang cihua 說唱詞話), transformation texts (bianwen 變文), or precious scrolls (baojuan寶卷).1 Folklorists and ethnomusicologists have primarily focused on drumsinging (dagu大鼓), treating the texts as mere libretti.2 Margaret Wan’s timely monograph fills in the gap. Her eclectic approach situates drum ballads as a hub through which to reconceptualize the “regional,” while at the same time tackling three modes of textual production (manuscript, woodblock print, and lithography) and their interactions with oral and literate cultures that span late imperial and Republican China. The definition of region, in Wan’s view, should not be predetermined by any geographical, economic, administrative, or linguistic frameworks; instead, she employs a flexible, connect-the-dots methodology that adjusts the frame of reference according to primary sources. Along the way, “region” carries varying connotations from extrinsic conditions to intrinsic value, from the location of the print to the locale of a story, and from the range of knowledge transfer to the popularization of moral imagination. As a result, Wan opens up new possibilities of rendering the regional, offering a heterogeneous constellation of implications rather than a pigeonholed perspective. Chapter 1 ponders how regional drum ballads are by offering parameters such as site of publication, scope of circulation, vehicle of communication, and intended audience. It also introduces the central subject matter of the ensuing chapters: the legends of Judge Shi and Judge Liu, heroes who were modeled on the real Qing-Dynasty officials Shi Shilun 施世綸 (1659–1722) and Liu Yong 劉墉 (1720–1805). By comparing three inventories of ballad collections and using publication data, Wan makes a strong case that, excepting the case of Shanghai, drum ballads in general and those on the two judges in particular were produced and circulated in North China. Differences or correspondences between versions of the same story in terms of wording and layout are considerable.While disparity between