Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the Cradle of civilization#Ancient China, world's earliest cultures, said to originate five thousand years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia called the Sinosphere as a whole ...

, Guci () are the prosimetric lyrics of '' dagu'', one musical entertainment form in the '' shuochang'' or "speak and sing" genre. The performers narrate a story based on the lyrics, usually accompanied by singing, while beating a

drum The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a ...

. Other accompanying musical instruments are

sanxian The (, literally "three strings") is a three-stringed List of traditional Chinese musical instruments, traditional Chinese lute. It has a long fretless fingerboard, and the body is traditionally made from snake skin stretched over a rounded rec ...

, sihu,

pipa The pipa, pípá, or p'i-p'a () is a traditional Chinese musical instrument belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets rangi ...

and

yangqin The trapezoidal yangqin () is a Chinese hammered dulcimer, likely derived from the Iranian santur or the European dulcimer. It used to be written with the characters 洋琴 (lit. "foreign zither"), but over time the first character changed to ...

. The art form was very popular during the

Ming Dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

and

Qing Dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

, and therefore extant ''guci'' are very important in studying Chinese fiction from those period.Hanan, Patrick. (2004). ''Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Essays.''

Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's la ...

. p.134.

References

External links

Chinaculture.org: Dagu Lyrics
Chinese storytelling Chinese folk music {{China-music-stub