Space, Self, and Society: The Genesis and Genealogy of Street Performers on the

Author: Yue Yongyi
Publisher:
Publishing Time: Not available
Features: Today's Tianqiao Art is a lively gathering of Tianqiao artists, a group of artists adored by the public, and individuals with considerable status and prestige. Without having witnessed the hardships of the once "baking cakes on flat ground" Tianqiao artists firsthand, I sincerely rejoice for today's "Tianqiao artists." As members of the living world, while today's "Tianqiao artists" still undergo special skill training, after more than a century of transformation, pain, self-exile, and reconstruction, they no longer have to, like amphibians, simultaneously embrace the values and ethics of both mainstream and marginal societies. They no longer have to wobble anxiously and struggle to navigate between two societies with vastly different sets of rules, even though new groups are now being pushed to the fringes and bottom of society. The book will vividly depict the footsteps, growth journey, and related narratives of today's "Tianqiao artists' predecessors." For a long period in history, in fact until before the liberation, these former street performers were a group that was scorned, ignored, yet also played with, but remained obscure. Therefore, in a sense, this book is a rewriting of oral history, based primarily on the oral materials I myself recorded, secular memoirs, autobiographies, and others' accounts, as well as compiled oral materials. This makes the "local knowledge" (local knowledge) described in the book—a kind of knowledge that is told, spoken, and written about—while the author's writing becomes a reinterpretation of "the interpretation of others' interpretations," including the artists themselves, of this knowledge that has been repeatedly told, spoken, and written. Of course, it also includes self-examination.