Kuaiban

Kuaiban or kuai ban (快板; literally "fast boards" or "bamboo talk" in Chinese), pronounced kuaibanr in Beijing and also known as kuai shu ("fast books"), is a variety of shuochang, or oral storytelling performance popular in northern China. The name refers to bamboo clappers, the set of small bamboo boards or bones, which the performer(s) rattle to produce an accompanying beat. The overall effect of the staccato delivery is reminiscent of rap. On weekend evenings in Jingshan Park in Beijing, one can find groups of middle-aged and elderly people performing kuai ban on the south side of the hill.

While bones appear to have been used as musical instruments in China for thousands of years, the modern art of kuaiban appears to have been developed in the 1940s by Li Runjie from Tianjin.

Clapper talk generally only perform sometingthings with strong reasons out the short program, and the rhyme method is free, which is called "flower point". It is mainly basic on the sentence with 7 words, but actually if rhythm and tune are not contradict, people can often embed words or minus words. The sentence patterns are free and flexible.

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