Yazhou Folk Songs

Yazhou folk songs are one of the oldest song traditions of Hainan, current around Sanya, Huangliu in Ledong and the old Yazhou lands. Their roots run deep: the Luobi Cave palaeolithic site in Sanya shows human habitation ten thousand years ago, and in 972 the Song court established Yazhou. The songs bear the imprint of Tang-era Buddhist "chant" and Tang poetic metre, their lamenting tune drawn from temple recitation; more than a hundred narrative long-poems have been found, passed down orally and in hand-copied texts. Yazhou folk songs entered the first national ICH list in 2006 under traditional music.

Yazhou folk songs are sung in the Hainan dialect of the Southern Min family, their melodies long and their metre regular, covering farm labour, weddings and funerals, historical legend and lyrical narrative, often improvised in call-and-response in the fields, the fishing harbour or at wedding feasts, with hand-copied songbooks handed down the generations.

Yazhou folk songs are a living vessel of the history and dialect-art of southern Hainan, recording more than a thousand years of social life and feeling in old Yazhou, and hold real value for the study of Hainan folk literature, music and the evolution of local dialect.

Baoping Village, the chief birthplace of Yazhou folk songs, houses a Yazhou Folk Song Transmission Centre, and the songs are often performed at Sanya's heritage showcases and cultural festivals.