The Development Of Cantonese Storytelling From The Qing Dynasty To The21^st Century

In Ming and Qing dynasties， the ruling class promoted a policy of preaching theSacred Edit twice a month in civil society. In the late Qing Dynasty， influenced byCivil good books， the Sacred Edit preaching became a special storytelling likeexpounding the texts of Buddhism in Tang Dynasty. Cantonese storytelling includespreaching and Jianggu. During Guangxu period， there were two preaching groupswhich were led by Binru Shao. The members of these groups created collections ofstories of preaching such as Suhuaqingtan.，and stories were based on the karma. Thepreaching was easy to understand even for the underlying mass， and the preacherstalk about the plots and characters a lot. Jianggu existed in Kangxi period and as animportant amusement，it was mainly for the underlying mass. Jianggu was popular inCanton in1840s. In the late Qing dynasty， some new works of Jianggu whichconveyed revolutionary idears were created and spread in Canton. From1910s to1940s， Ganchen Chen，Wo Li and other famous storyteller contributed a rapiddevelopment to Jianggu. With the help of radio，Jianggu became an widely spreadingand important amusement in Canton. After1980s， keeping up with the culturalenvironment and market trend， storytellers created new works of Jianggu accordingnew martial arts novels， science fiction， whodunit， etc. It was the floruit ofJianggu in the20th century， and lots of great master such as Yuekai Zhang，Zhaoming Lin emerged at that time. As an important part of Canton traditional civilculture， Jianggu is declining rapidly in the last decade， and it needs more socialconcerns.