Tian'te: Field Songs

Field songs are folk songs with a long history, which are popular and sung among farmer who work in the rice-growing field in busy farming seasons m the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtse Riv-r. Their typical singing form is that a mastersinger sings it with the accompaniment of gongs, drums, suona and other instruments, and it is characterized by large structure, dozens of interlinked melodies, such as "Jiashan field song" ofZhejiang Province, "rice-seedling-transplanting work song" ofJiangsu Province, "tian shan'ge" ofShanghai. In addition, there are diverse names and types such as "transplanting gong and drum song", 'weed-pulling gong and drum song", "cart and water gong and drum", "fanqiang", "washan (digging mountains) drum song", "wadi (digging field) drum song", "jiao-ge gong and drum song", "hua haozi work song".

Xiaodiao: Small Tunes

Xiao Diao is popular among towns or countries and characterized by fixed melody and lyrics, orderly structure, and subtle and melodious tunes. The participation of some professional artisans and men of letters in writing lyrics and composing makes it more beautiful, some of which have become qupai tune name and formed many variants such as "jasmine tune" , "mengjiangnu tune"; some of the xiao diao of the Ming and Qing dynasties have developed into the styles of interlinked qupai or cyclic forms such as "five dadiao" ofShandong Province, "kunqu" of Xing County ofShanxi Province, "daqiang" of Zuoquan of Shanxi.