Jiashan Field Songs

The Jiashan field songs are water-country folk melodies passed down for generations across the Hangzhou-Jiaxing-Huzhou plain, born of the region's rice-farming culture; they entered the second national ICH list in 2008 (serial 586, code II-87), with Xitang among their key places of transmission.

The songs are clear and graceful, steeped in Jiangnan water-town feeling, mostly sung in local dialect with long, winding melodies on themes of farm labour and courtship; the long narrative piece "Fifth Sister" is their signature, and a musical of the same name won a major award at the 7th China Arts Festival.

Among the most distinctive branches of Jiangnan's Wu-region song, the Jiashan field songs carry the water-country's farming culture and dialect art, and hold real value for tracing the literary and musical evolution of Wu folk song.

The field songs can still be heard in old Xitang and across the Jiashan countryside, often performed at events such as the Jiashan Field Song Festival.