Collecting Flowers, Defining a Genre: Zhang Yaxiong and the Anthology of Hua'er Folksongs

Abstract:In the early twentieth century, Zhang Yaxiong, a reporter from northwest China, began research on songs from his native region, and in 1940, published the first nationally-circulated anthology of hua'er songs. His work was central to promoting the idea of hua'er as a genre of folksong, as a multiethnic and regional tradition, and as a valuable part of a broader Chinese artistic tradition. It contributed to the establishment of the field of hua'er studies and to today's public celebration of hua'er songs. Zhang's promotion of hua'er, and hua'er studies' later promotion of Zhang, have mutually and multiply intersected through ongoing discourse and practice over the last seven decades. This case illustrates the central role played by collector-editors and their anthologies in the construction of traditions and in the dissemination of values. Viewing collector-editors and anthologies as participants in long-term creative communicative processes, this article emphasizes the communal and intertextual nature of both. It argues they are constructed through social interactions within particular contexts as they draw from resources of the past while negotiating the needs of the present. They, in turn, produce materials and ways of knowing and doing to be used by those after them.