(b Wuxi, Jiangsu province, 20 Aug 1893 or 3 Nov 1898; d 4 Dec 1950). Chinese folk musician. The illegitimate or adopted son of Daoist priest and musician Hua Qinghe in the city of Wuxi, Hua Yanjun also became a Daoist musician, performing in ritual instrumental ensembles and mastering several instruments, including pipa four-string lute and erhu two-string fiddle.
With Hua Qinghe’s death in the mid-1920s, Hua Yanjun inherited a small amount of property. However, visits to local brothels resulted in his contraction of gonorrhoea, leading eventually to blindness. At about this time, Hua appears to have become an opium smoker. Unable now to take part in Daoist ensembles, Hua, under the name Abing, became a street musician, specializing in extemporized songs based on local news. He also performed pipa, erhu and the three-string lute sanxian. Abing has typically been described as the archetypal Chinese folk musician; following political and social trends in China, he has been portrayed at various times in articles, books, film and an eight-part TV series as working-class revolutionary, romantically inspired composer and Daoist musical craftsman.
Chinese scholars recorded six of Abing’s solos in 1950, three each for erhu and pipa. It seems that, rather than being fixed compositions, these were improvisatory performances wherein Abing demonstrated his exceptional powers of melodic and rhythmic creativity. The six solos were issued on record and in transcription with descriptive titles probably selected at the recording session. Adopted as part of the standard teaching material for students of erhu and pipa, they became very widely disseminated. One of the three erhu solos, Erquan yingyue (‘The Moon Reflected on the Second Springs’, named after a fountain in Wuxi), has subsequently been arranged for many different instrumental combinations, including piano solo, string quartet and string orchestra.
and other resources
Xiazi Abing quji [Collected pieces of Blind Abing], ed. YYS (Shanghai, 1954/R)
Abing quji [Collected pieces of Abing], ed. YYS (Beijing, 1983/R)
Abing yishu chengjiu guoji yantaohui, eds.: Abing lun: minjian yinyuejia Abing yanjiu wenji [On Abing: collected research papers on the folk musician Abing] (Beijing, 1995)
Commemoration of the Renowned Folk Musician Hua Yan-jun (Ah Bing), rec. 1950, ROI Productions RC 961002–2C (1996)
J.P.J. Stock: Musical Creativity in Twentieth-Century China: Abing, his Music, and its Changing Meanings (Rochester, 1996)
J.P.J. Stock: Chinese Violin Solos (London, 1998), 27–31
JONATHAN P.J. STOCK