Drumbeats Over Poyang Lake

Spanning the years 1924 to 1952 and woven around Duchang drum storytelling—a treasured intangible cultural heritage of Jiangxi—Drumbeats Over Poyang Lake tells the story of a wandering folk artist in an age of upheaval. Zhang Chuangu, skilled in the drum storyteller's art of sung narration, carries nothing but a drum and a clapper as he makes his rounds through the market fairs of Duchang's towns and villages, its ancestral halls, and the opera stage of Laoye Temple. Strictly faithful to the unwritten rules of his trade, he asks only to earn his living by his own craft and has no wish to be drawn into the conflicts of the day. But Zhou Songnian, a core member of the guerrilla movement, seeks him out, hoping his drum ballads might be turned toward awakening the common people. When the Japanese blockade the lake, the hardships of a chaotic era descend one after another. A senior fellow disciple casts his lot with the powerful, and master and disciples each walk down different roads. Caught between the crushing weight of survival and the voice of his own conscience, Zhang Chuangu borrows verses old and new, quietly voicing his steadfast integrity and devotion to home and country through his performances. Out on the waters of Laoye Temple, storms never cease, and the fates of the lake's fishing households, its rural gentry, and its revolutionaries become ever more entangled. Seen through the drifting half-life of one folk artist, the novel paints decades of sweeping change across the land of Poyang Lake, chronicling how the region's native art of sung storytelling persevered, struggled, and passed from generation to generation through the turbulent years.