Yaohe basically means peddler’s call. In old times when Beijing was covered by Hutongs, food and crafts vendors used to use various types of peddlers’ call to sell their goods and services. People could judge the different kinds of goods and services just by the tune. The vendors also tried very hard to make their yaohe stand out from each other, and it became a form of traditional art. Now people can only hear yaohe at performances in expensive restaurants or at traditional festivals. Mr. Zang is one of the most renowned performers of traditional Beijing yaohe.
Born in 1932 in Beijing, Mr. Zang worked as a newspaper boy when he was 9 and ran a small business before the liberation war. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Zang worked in the railway department and later became a full time Xiangsheng (cross talk) performer at the art group of the department. During his work, he collected more than 170 types of traditional Beijing Yaohe, and is being called the King of Yaohe.
Mr. Zang has worked as a dubber for many TV dramas, and is viewed as a national treasure because like many other traditional art forms, yaohe is diminishing from the life of Beijingers.
Mr. Zang is so famous that a kind of traditional Beijing food is using his image as trademark.
Click here for some sound clips of Mr. Zang’s yaohe.
