Chaohu Folk Songs

Chaohu folk songs form a tradition with strong regional colour that took shape around the Chaohu lake basin in Anhui, with representative pieces such as Sisters-in-Law Matching Flowers, Calling the Rice-Seedling Song, Sister Liu and Startling the Hawk. After the former Chaohu city was dissolved in 2011, the county-level Chaohu city came under Hefei's administration, so the tradition now belongs to Hefei. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006 under traditional music.

Chaohu folk songs are plain and natural, easy to chant or sing, drawing on farming, fishing, courtship and the seasons, often in call-and-response or linked song, rich in the feeling and wisdom of daily life, a true expression of the people's inner world around the lake.

Chaohu folk songs have been continuously created and performed, winning prizes at provincial and national events, and they occupy an important place among Anhui's folk music, a precious living sample for the study of Yangtze-Huaihe folk music and oral literature.