In China, "Wu" refers to the downstream regions of the south bank of the Yangtze River. Tang Jianqin, who lives in Dashetou village of Anzhen Neighborhood in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, is provincial inheritor of Wu songs.
She's loved the arts from a young age and was a backbone member in the Zhaqiao Art Troupe in the 1970s. In 1983, Tang Jianqin acknowledged Qian Afu, a famous Wu songs artist in Xishan, as her artistic master and has shown extraordinary passion and inspiration for this form of folk art.
Today, Tang is a council member of the China Wu Song Association, a member of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association and a council member of the Jiangsu Provincial Folk Literature and Art Association.
Wu songs originate in the Taihu Lake basin and are sung from generation to generation, boasting strong local characteristics. They are a folk oral literary form created by the working people, hence with a heavy breath of life and sense of presence.
Tang had two new students in 2007. She also went to the Wu songs class at the Zhaqiao Experimental Primary School to teach the students there to sing Wu songs and cultivate new inheritors of Wu songs. This also symbolizes that Wu songs, an intangible cultural heritage, are to be shared to ensure inheritance.
Tang Jianqin said that being a teacher is like being a Wu song actress. She is determined to diligently foster the inheritance work of Wu songs to promote, and carry forward this art form.
