Lu Yongfeng, "Forward and Backward: The Development and Change of the Baojuan Performance in Shanghai, 1840s to the Present"

This event is part of the "Critical Issues Confronting China" seminar hosted by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

This talk will be given in Chinese

Baojuan (precious scrolls) comprise a corpus of Chinese religious narratives intended for performance. They were widespread during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties and are still alive today in some parts of China. Since 1840s, baojuan performers from Suzhou and Ningbo have flocked to the city of Shanghai, and they kept adapting this traditional performing genre to a new urban culture. The flourishing of local opera and storytelling arts in Shanghai’s urban cultural setting had an impact on the development of the baojuan performance. Lu Yongfeng will examine how the baojuan recitation that originated in a religious setting become an entertainment-oriented performance in the story house. He will conclude with a consideration of the development and change as a double-edged-sword for the baojuan genre.

Lu Yongfeng is professor of Chinese literature at Yangzhou University. His work focuses on Tang dynasty literature and popular religious narratives. He has published Dunhuang bianwen yanjiu (A Study of Dunhuang Transformation Texts, 2000), Chanyue ji jiaozhu (Annotated Collection of the Moon of Meditation, 2006) and Wu fangyanqu baojuan yanjiu (A Study of Baojuan Literature in the Wu-dialects-speaking region, co-authored with Che Xilun, 2012).