Mountain Songs

This type of folksong is also spread widely all over China, and contains a rich variety of ingredients. One point of view holds that the category of mountain songs includes all kinds of songs with free rhythms and lingering melodies sung by people who worked in mountainous and hilly regions cutting firewood or grass, tending flocks or simply traveling to console or entertain themselves. Another school of thought would include in this genre herders' songs from the grasslands, including songs of praise of heroes and banqueting songs; the songs of deep-sea and river and lake fishermen as well as of boatmen; and some of the brides' laments of south China. This claim is based on the fact that these songs all have the characteristic of emerging naturally in the course of individual labor with the function of entertaining or consoling. Generally speaking, this broad concept of mountain songs is conducive to our understanding of what the artistic traits of the mountain song types are.

Chinese mountain songs are found chiefly concentrated in the regions of the Inner Mongolian Plateau, the Loess Plateau of the northwest, the Qinghai Plateau, the Xinjiang Plateau, the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the Qinling-Daba Mountains, the Dabie Mountains, the Wuyi Mountains and the Tibet Plateau. The areas where this tradition is most typically preserved, and the most representative types of mountain songs are as follows: The various types of changdiao of the Inner Mongolia Plateau; the xintianyou, shanqu and pashandiao of Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces and the western part of Inner Mongolia; the hua'er of the Hui and Han peoples of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and Gansu and Qinghai provinces; the herding songs of various ethnic groups in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region; the jie'erge, maoshange and bei'erge of the southern part of Shaanxi and the northern part of Sichuan provinces; the manganniu of the Dabie Mountains; the wushange of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang region; the Hakka mountain songs of the area where Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangxi and Guangdong provinces meet; the morning songs (also called "sacred" songs) of the area where Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces meet; the Dading mountain songs; the Midu mountain songs; and the various songs of this type produced by the ethnic minorities, notably those of the Tibetans, and the various minority groups in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

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