reviews | 353

While the principal purpose of the Za Operas was as ritual offerings for the gods,
Johnson points to several elements of the operas that would have appealed to their
human audiences. Besides offering “exciting spectacles,” the operas “showed that even at
the highest levels, life was struggle—war, in fact” (155). They also taught that cleverness
and cunning outweigh virtuous behavior, a point that Johnson describes as “peasant
wisdom writ large” (ibid.). At the same time, the operas “provided an elementary sense
of the functioning of the Chinese state in those lofty realms that farmers would never
experience personally,” giving them “a rudimentary conceptual vocabulary for national
politics” (ibid.). Given the way that villagers themselves were involved in the editing,
performance, and percussive accompaniment of these ritual operas, Johnson concludes
that the Za Operas “helped the villagers make Chinese history their own history” and “in
a sense taught them what China was” (ibid.).
This book, together with Johnson’s previous work, represents a groundbreaking
contribution to our understanding of ritual performance in China. The Stage in the Temple
would make an excellent addition to undergraduate courses on Chinese and East Asian
popular religion, performance, and popular culture.

References

Gamble, Sidney D. 1970. Chinese Village Plays from the Ting Hsien Region (Yang Ke Hsüan). Amsterdam:
Philo Press.
Johnson, David G. 2009. Spectacle and Sacrifice: The Ritual Foundations of Village Life in North China.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
Toelken, Barre. 1996. The Dynamics of Folklore. Logan: Utah State University Press.

Levi S. Gibbs
Dartmouth College

Anne E. McLaren
Memory Making in Folk Epics of China: The Intimate and Local in
Chinese Regional Literature
Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2022. 304 pages, 1 map. Hardcover, $119.99; paperback,
$44.99; ebook, $29.99. ISBN: 9781621966456 (hardcover), 9781638571308 (paperback),
9781638571308 (ebook).

Since the New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century, the question of
whether the Han Chinese have an epic tradition has been a subject of scholarly inquiry
and debate. The question of whether there were epic traditions circulating within the
borders of China is a somewhat different question, one that began being answered
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the discovery of epics (shishi)
among Mongol, Tibetan, and Kirghiz ethnic groups in the north and western areas
and among certain minority groups in the southwest. By the end of the 1950s, many
epic traditions had been cataloged from these and other groups in a process that has
resulted in extensive documentation by think tanks such as the Institute of Ethnic
Literature in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. By most definitions, these epics
of the ethnic minority groups, divided by Chinese scholars into the northern/western
heroic epics (yingxiong shishi) and the origin or creation epics (chuangshi shishi) of the

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354 | Asian Ethnology 82/2 • 2023

south/southwest, conform to long-standing conceptions of “epics,” a term derived

from the Greeks with associations of the heroic character-types of the Homeric epics.
The ancient cosmogonic epics of the Middle East (such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, which
were not called “epics” in their respective languages), provide instructive parallels to the
origin/creation epics of south China. This leaves the question of “Han” epic traditions
on the table. Scholars of the New Culture Movement, such as Wang Guowei, early on
raised questions of the existence of a Chinese epic tradition, and later Zheng Zhenduo
suggested that the local prosimetric forms of baojuan, tanci, and pinghua in both orally
delivered and written-to-be-read formats could qualify as epics due to prosody and
length, though there has been resistance to including them under what has become an
ever-expanding global recognition of long narrative poems or prosimetric works under
the culturally powerful title of “epic.” In the Chinese case, nativist terms for these long
poems and prosimetric works include jiangchang wenxue and shuochang wenxue, and many
or most are considered part of the giant family of quyi (art of melodies) forms, which in
some instances has included the long narrative poem styles of some minorities that are
widely termed as epics (including Tibetan, Hezhen, and Bai) (Zhongguo Dabaikequanshu
1983, 13–14). Since the refocusing on folk literature after the Cultural Revolution
(1966–76), certain candidates for the title of an epic originating among the Han people
have occasionally arisen, especially since the 1980s. One of these is the prosimetric
cosmogonic long narrative called Hei yin zhuan (Legend of Darkness), which in many ways
parallels content in creation/origin epics from the southwest minority groups (Liu 2002,
5–6). Another candidate is the 1,350-line version of an oral poem called Guo Dingxiang
concerning a love triangle tied to the origin of the stove god, which has been called the
“number one epic of the Central Plains” (Bai 2007, 1–2).
In Memory Making in Folk Epics of China, the author’s most recent study of Lower
Yangzi Delta folk culture, Anne McLaren employs the term “folk epics” to describe
the “long narrative songs” (changpian xushi ge, as noted in the introduction, xvi)—a
current term among Chinese academics that is influenced by terminology in Oral Epics
of India (Blackburn et al. 1989). This utilization of “epic” to describe a Lower Yangzi
oral art tradition is very much in the trend to move away from the narrow confines
of the Greek heroic model (and Chinese associations of “shishi” with Mongol, Tibetan,
Kirghiz, and other groups’ heroic epics) by contemporary scholars worldwide. McLaren
stresses length, prosody, narrative, and the formative effect on community identity. In
this context, the term “folk” suggests an association with orally delivered texts within
(assumed) rural communities that are less literary than written-to-be read epics (whether
oral-connected or otherwise), although the calculus changes once the orally performed
epics enter into the process of transcription, translation, editing, and publication, and
orally transmitted texts become artifacts in writing (Honko 2000, 15–18).
McLaren offers readers deep insights into the folklore of the Lower Yangzi that will
inform other studies of the folk literature of this region. Of particular interest is the
“feminized rice spirit” that invokes a “ritual technology” of ritual and agrarian practice
and concepts of sexuality that McLaren details at some length (xviii). Another key term
in this work is the “epichonic,” meaning the ecology of expressive forms that circulate
within the linguistic and sociocultural boundaries within a local environment that it
supposes molds key aspects of the local culture—as does wet rice agriculture. The theme
of environmental context in relation to local folklore and folk literature is explored
throughout the text, aptly beginning with the theme of water in chapter 1. A key theme of
 reviews | 355

the book, discussed in the coda, is “memory making.” McLaren states that “remembering”
refers to both the “singer’s concentrated toil in ‘remembering’ (composing) the song or
folk epic and to the memories of the past that the song transmits,” and the idea that
singers “draw on a range of memory frameworks that implicitly involved notions of time
passing and space crossing” (215). The notion of frameworks—and their content—aids in
drawing attention to the manipulation of many sorts of details and identifying processes
that unfold within versions of the narratives in the transmission process.
In chapter 1, McLaren examines a “culture of locality” (xiii) in the Lower Yangzi Delta,
stressing the importance of working intimately in local languages, communicative styles,
and idioms in the context of local culture as it exists in the larger framework of China.
The author’s effective fieldwork strategies have yielded a study of great insight into the
social meaning of the body of folk songs that help understand the regional cultures of
the lower Yangzi in the not-so-distant past and into the present. Chapter 2 focuses on
reconstructing a historical context for the folk epics of the Lake Tai region, investigating
the impact of factors including song competitions, amateur song troupes, and the market
for books that contributed to the formation of the long-sung narratives. Focus is first on
the early phases of the Wu kingdom in antiquity, then the late imperial period, with Feng
Menglong’s song anthology of the early nineteenth century, folk opera, printed song
booklets, and song competitions held in rural marketplaces or special timber pavilions
down into modern times. Song troupes composed of skilled amateur singers were
sometimes hired seasonally to relieve the monotony of rice planting and were in greater
demand in the flatlands than in the mountains, which saw less agricultural production.
McLaren notes other geographical factors such as travel by boat that contributed to the
transmission and formation of the long-style folk songs in local flatland contexts.
Chapter 3 examines how the convergence of versions of the folk epic Shen Seventh
Brother and local geography dialogue with the “canonical myth” of Wu Taibo, who is
said to have brought civilization from the cosmopolitan northern Chinese regions
to the “barbarian” Yangzi delta region millennia ago and is remembered in two local
historical monuments (8). In a process of cultural mitigation, the story of Shen Seventh
Brother practically displaces the civilization-builder Wu in folk epics that relate how he
and an immortal maiden introduce sedentary rice cultivation (something Wu Taibo of
the millet-raising north would not have done) and folk singing to the locals, who in the
words of the epic, “wore skins for clothes, dwelt in shacks, and plucked berries from the
wild” (79–80).
Chapter 4 delves into the song of “Fifth Daughter,” the best documented and best
known of the regional folk epics. The appendix supplies a rather literal translation of
key passages of the version sung by Lu Amei (c. 1981). A version based on her singing
was published soon after and helped bring the tradition to the attention of scholars.
As McLaren notes, “Fifth Daughter” concerns illicit love, a theme common in the
so-called “mountain songs” (shange) and folk epics of the region (and with parallels in
antiphonal song traditions in other regional cultures in China, such as the Guangxi love
songs (qingge) tradition and northwestern flower songs (hua’er). The sample passages
in the appendix illustrate how the folk epic tradition is a merger of mountain songs
that feature many common motifs and formulaic lines entwined within narration and
conventions for revealing thoughts of characters and brief passages of spoken dialogue.
McLaren supplies a fascinating discussion of the themes of the “secret passion type”
(116) of the epic narratives, which feature tragic outcomes of illicit affairs. They are
356 | Asian Ethnology 82/2 • 2023

framed in the tradition as actions of real people living a few generations before, and
structured “entirely around kinship relations” (ibid.), which form a contextual web in
which a young woman of the family (always referenced by a kinship number, such as
third, fourth, or fifth daughter) and an outside lover (often with some sort of associations
with urban places across the delta) become ensnared. The folk epics serve on one level
as cautionary tales, but the effect is compounded in the embodied “lamentation” (112)
mode of the singers, especially when evoking the lingering ghostly presence of the
victims of what is often familial violence in the local area. In the discussion of “Fifth
Daughter,” McLaren describes the rhetorical features of performance in the “Twelfth
Month Flower Song” ballad form, which is utilized by contemporary singers. It is a more
concise mode of delivery than the long narrative versions (of which Lu Amei was the sole
remaining singer) and is organized on the annual cycle of blooming flowers (119). Aside
from changes in voice tenor in the lamentation mode, a singer may employ shifts in
bodily movements and melody, along with paralinguistic conventions such as the “diluo
sheng” (121), which mimics the sounds of sudden bursts of rain, so common in regional
weather patterns and related to local rice paddy weeding tunes. Lu Amei’s long-version
performances, which feature some aspects of the twelve-month style, provide much
more elaboration of scenes and detail of local folk customs. One example illustrates
the “complex visual code of romance” by describing embroidered patterns of peonies,
lotus buds, persimmons, and dragonflies on four handkerchiefs presented to the fifth
daughter by her itinerant peddler lover, the young Atian (127). Certain passages, sung
depending on the nature of the audience, are sexually suggestive and at times explicit.
In some versions, subplots involving the fate of a fourth sister are also related. Thus, the
folk epic tradition in the long form featured a flexible frame of performance manipulated
at will by the singer’s needs.
Chapter 5, “Replacing the Bride,” concerns what the folk consider “real” (164) stories
on the theme of the replacement of a wife or betrothed, and includes plots with ghost
marriages that deal with the “vexed issue” of how to ensure the dead (which could be a
wife spurned in favor of a younger sister, or a male that dies of lovesickness after his plans
of replacement are thwarted by family objections) are appropriately commemorated.
Such themes are clearly productive for embellishing into longer narrative content.
McLaren offers several versions from oral and written sources of such “unconventional
liaisons” and suggests that the songs containing descriptions of courtship and
lovemaking are in essence mourning songs for those who ruined their lives through
moral transgressions, linking this sentiment to the folk idea of good harvests resulting
from the proper nurturing of rice (139).
Chapter 6 concerns the “The Song of ‘Hua Mountain Lifter’”; with a transcribed
version at twenty thousand lines, it is the longest of the Yangzi delta epics. The epic
deals with masculine heroism and violence, narrating the exploits of a band of renegade
farmers who resist imperial and local militia forces in their mountain fortress. McLaren
expounds on the theme of violence that runs through many of the other epics and
notes how the “Lifter” epic differs from the well-known Chinese classic Water Margin
(Shuihu zhuan), set in northern China, which has appeared in written and oral forms for
a millennium, differing especially in the more positive portrayal of women. The song
is unique because it is the product of one family; due to its subversive content, it was
transmitted (until recently) only by men and in relative secrecy. As with the other
chapters, McLaren summarizes the themes and content of versions of the epic (which
 reviews | 357

are related to collective memories of rebellions, rent resistance movements, etc.) and
presents background on singers, which sometimes includes snippets of interviews and
passages of songs.
In the coda, McLaren reflects on the process of creation in epics performed since the
late 1990s, when the inroads of modernization were rapidly supplanting the material
culture of farming and other aspects of the traditional agricultural cycle that had
survived largely intact into the early decades of the PRC and was available as context
to singers and audiences alike—a tradition that for now seems to have gone silent. With
the emergence of newer lifeways and cultural actors, the question of how memories are
made and transmitted in the process of performance (or other means of transmission) is
discussed, interwoven with the theme of how cultural memories were transmitted over
generations in the previously oral realm of song and story. McLaren notes the role of stock
imagery that resonates to maintain memories, including that of the environment and
agricultural cycle, items of material culture (such as the embroidered love tokens), scenes
of disputes between protagonists, the “agonistic dialogues” that in resolution propel the
narrative forward, and the stock language of intimacy and emotion (sometimes erotic)
that in turn invites heightened focus on the performative actions of characters, with
undertones of a moral order based on the goals of successful rice harvests that is more
“agrarian” than Confucian (219–20). Many of McLaren’s observations could be profitably
applied to other long narrative poetic/prosimetric traditions in China, including other
recently identified Han local epics previously mentioned and the more urbane Lower
Delta professional storytelling traditions.
McLaren’s comprehensive and insightful treatment of a distinct oral narrative form in
the Lower Yangzi Delta will serve as model and inspiration for further studies of Chinese
oral narratives that now may exist in a variety of mediums, including online formats. The
term “epic” engenders powerful cultural “soft power” for governmental and business
entities that seek to place their heritage items on global display. The term may also open
up access to scholars and others working outside the nativist academic circles that would
utilize Chinese categories created since the early twentieth century. Whether these Delta
narratives are best considered “epic” or as I have recently suggested “epic-adjacent” (a
term allowing recognition of native categories), this study will become essential reading
for folklorists and scholars of cultural heritage (Bender forthcoming).

References

Bai Gengsheng. 2007. “Zhongyuan shishi, wenyuan juexiang” [Middle Plains epic: The literary
garden’s most sonorous]. In Guo Dingxiang: Zhongguo Hanzu minjian shenghuo shishi [Guo
Dingxiang: Chinese Han ethnic group folklife epic], edited by Xinyang shi minjian wenhua
yichan qiangjiu gongchen gongzuo jiyuan hui/Gushi xian minjian wenhua yichan qiangjiu
gongcheng gongzuo jiyuan hui [Xiyang City office of folk culture intangible culture
preservation work committee/Gushi county folk culture intangible culture preservation work
committee], 1–9. Zhengzhou, China: Henan Renmin Chubanshe.
Bender, Mark. Forthcoming. “Epic Contestations: What Makes an Epic in Multi-Ethnic China?” In
The Epic World, edited by Pamela Lothspeich. New York: Routledge.
Blackburn, Stuart H., Peter J. Claus, and Joyce B. Burkhalter, and Susan S. Wadley, eds. 1989. Oral
Epics of India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
 358 | Asian Ethnology 82/2 • 2023

Honko, Lauri. 2000. Textualization of Oral Epics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Liu Shouhua. 2002. “Xu” [Preface]. In Hei yin zhuan [Legend of darkness], edited by Hu Chongjun,
1–10. Wuhan, China: Changjiang Wenyi Chubanshe.
Zhongguo Dabaikequanshu Chubanshe Bianjibu [Chinese Encyclopedia editorial board], ed. 1983.
Xiqu quyi [Drama and storytelling arts]. Zhonguo dabaikequanshu [Chinese Encyclopedia]
series. Beijing: Zhonguo Dabaikequanshu Chubanshe.

Mark Bender
The Ohio State University

Sidney C. H. Cheung
Hong Kong Foodways
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022. Ix + 104 pages. Paperback, $15.00. ISBN:
9789888754359.

Sidney C. H. Cheung’s concise and evocative book about the political stories of the
production and consumption of ethnic and foreign cuisines in Hong Kong provides
a delightful provocation for anthropologists and those who are interested in the
cultural meanings and social significance of food in Hong Kong. Cheung covers various
domains: migration, agricultural practices, globalization, gourmet eating, and heritage
conservation. These changes in food production and consumption practices have become
the object of the most important discourse in Hong Kong in the postwar and post-
handover periods. Cheung has focused precisely on the changes in foodways since the
postwar era and analyzed how people shift their patterns of consumption and identity
politics with dramatic social and political transformation (6).
The book consists of five content chapters based on different periods in the postwar
era and loosely different themes. Chapter 1, “Local Food Production,” is purely historical.
It sets the stage nicely by explaining how the ecological character and geographical
location of Hong Kong gave rise to the local production and consumption of indigenous
oysters since 977 bce. Yet, large-scale fishpond farming and cultivation of gei wai shrimp
began only after the 1950s due to British governance and the changing Hong Kong–
China relationship (23–26). Chapter 2, “The Arrival of Migrants’ Food in the Post-War
Era,” deftly explains how different groups of migrants have changed the foodscapes of
Hong Kong, reflecting the evolvement of the economy from being an entrepot trading
center for China during the immediate postwar period into an export-oriented light
manufacturing industrial city during the 1950s and 1960s. On the one hand, many
rich Shanghainese came to Hong Kong with capital, bringing in Shanghainese food
ingredients and cuisines for self-consumption, business development, and identity
expression. On the other hand, Hakka food was particularly popular among the workers
of the light industries, due to the large amount of strongly favored meat, which provides
the highest sources of energy.
Chapter 3, “The Rise of Nouvelle Cantonese and International Cuisines,” carefully
traces the different trends of the incoming Western-style restaurants. In addition,
the study of the emergence of deluxe, hybrid Cantonese nouvelle cuisine, and that of
Japanese cuisine and international cuisines, beautifully links the analysis of the forces
of globalization and consumerism, such as tourism and the global food supply system, to
social value, social class, and identity construction among the middle class in the postwar

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