Professional Storytelling (3)
Yangzhou storytelling Yangzhou pinghua belongs to the large family of quyi arts, called pingshu or pinghua, characterized by being purely spoken, i.e. with no musical or rhythmical accompaniment, and by length. In contrast to shorter forms of spoken quyi, such as Beijing xiangsheng and Sichuan xiangshu, where the jocular entertainment is kept within the limits of one session of performance, pingshu and pinghua storytellers as a rule tell long serialized tales, taking up a couple of months of daily sessions. The local varieties are called pinghua in the Southeast (e.g. Yangzhou pinghua, Suzhou pinghua, Hangzhou pinghua, Fuzhou pinghua) and pingshu in the northern and central areas (e.g. Ningxia pingshu, Sichuan pingshu, Hubei pingshu).