Dunhuang Quzi Opera

Quzi opera is a folk theatre current across the five northwestern provinces, rooted in the popular tunes of the Ming and Qing and taking on local forms in the late Qing and early republic. Dunhuang Quzi opera is a leading example, closely bound to the "Dunhuang quzi lyrics" sealed for a thousand years in the Mogao Library Cave—the difference being that those lyrics lay locked in a cave while the opera lived on among the people. It entered the second national ICH list in 2008 (item Ⅳ-69).

Dunhuang Quzi opera is built on named-tune melodies, its verses plain and catchy and steeped in everyday life, accompanied chiefly by sanxian, erhu and banhu lutes, drawing its plays from folk tales and townspeople's lives, with warm, unadorned dialect speech, performed at village temple fairs and farmhouse courtyards.

Dunhuang Quzi opera is a vital living specimen for the study of northwestern folk theatre and popular literature, joining the thousand-year lineage of the Dunhuang quzi lyrics to folk life today, though it now faces an ageing succession and urgently needs safeguarding.