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Going to a Pingtan storytelling house评弹书场to have some tea and listen tostorytelling is full of nostalgia in this entertainment era advocating eyeball economy.Represented by Suzhou Pingtan苏州评弹, the traditional Chinese folk arts seem tohave come to the entrance of the historical museum. Having rooted from and grownup in the folk soil, the traditional folk art can only reflect its true vitality and existencevalue in the judgment of the folk people. Without the storytelling houses, the charm ofPingtan cannot get real protection and heritage.Beginning from the field work of the development and current status of ShanghaiPingtan storytelling house, this dissertation attempts to analyze the interlaced relationsfrom the perspectives of performance, interest, and society within the storytellinghouse, and try to recognize the basic characteristics and the trend of futuredevelopment for Pingtan storytelling house. Thus, it is our wish to provide someinspirations for the heritage and development of the traditional folk art in nowadays.This dissertation consists of six chapters.The first chapter summarizes the general status and development of ShanghaiPingtan storytelling houses, and introduces the major interest of this paper. Currently,there are totally65Pingtan storytelling houses which are still running in Shanghai.Their economic ticket price attracts considerable number of audiences every day.From the perspective of drama study, the free air of specific interactions, toleranceand flexibility between performers and audience, and a bundle of other artisticfeatures in the Pingtan storytelling houses have shed lights on exploring thedevelopment of Pingtan at a micro level. From the perspective of humanityperformance study, Pingtan storytelling house is a space integrating both artperformances and social performances. It is a place for propagating public opinion, aplace for performing folk arts, and a place for people amusing their daily life. Thisprovides unique references for the protection and heritage of the traditional folk in thecontemporary time at the macro level.The second to the fifth chapter of this paper respectively analyzes the basiccharacteristics of social performance and elements of drama in four fields, includingstorytelling house, script, actor and audience.The second chapter presents the historical origin, cultural characteristics andoperation status of Shanghai Pingtan storytelling house. Storytelling house in Shanghai has passed through four stages: role-changing, developing, transforming andexpanding. The performance and running principles have always been changing alongwith the social development. The profound over hundred-year culture background ofSuzhou Pingtan makes the cultural characteristics of Pingtan storytelling housedifferent from those of the other general modern theater. It has evolved a acquaintancesociety full of intimacy, interact and ritual. Pingtan house keeps adapting to thecontinuous development of the new urban culture.The third chapter systematically analyzes the scripts of Pingtan performance.The enriching and expanding of the traditional script and the increase of the newscript represent the change in aesthetics of the audience. The specific interaction ofthe storytelling house also determines the special requirements of the script onperformance. The changeability and flexibility of the scripts reflect the contentchanges of Pingtan performance on different media and in different times. These haveproved that the narrative charm of Pingtan is destined to be generated in real time.The fourth chapter is majorly a record of the actors’ philosophy of survival instorytelling house. It faithfully reflects Pingtan actors’ daily life in storytelling housewithout any artificial polish. Also, it reflects the survival status and the spiritual life ofthe actors, the unique interest relationships and social behaviors among the audience,actors and the house holders by investigating the portfolio of their performanceincome, costs as well as the interaction between front and back stages.The fifth chapter describes the life of the audience, who take Pingtan storytellinghouse as their center of life. We analyze the social classifications of the audience, andthe compound sensory that the audience experience in the storytelling house. All thesefactors have great impacts on the operation of the storytelling house. Beyond thegeneral features of theaters of art aesthetics, entertainment and others, Pingtanstorytelling house develops toward cultural nostalgia, emotional communication,information dissemination, skills learning and others.The sixth chapter summarizes the contemporary survival status of ShanghaiPingtan storytelling house, exploring the protection and inheritance of the traditionalfolk art represented by Pingtan in the contemporary time. Using human performancetheory, we try to define the existence value and developing direction of Pingtanstorytelling house from the perspective of the storytelling house operation in order toexplore the possible ways for protection and heritage.