Chapter 10

Acoustic Narrative

Abstract The introduction of the concept of acoustic narrative into the area of Narra-
tology is closely linked with the corrective efforts in dealing with the crisis of sensory
culture in modern life. In an era of “picture-reading” with heavy reliance on visual
perception, other sensory channels are largely neglected. This study of acoustic narra-
tive revisits the significance of senses in literary narrative with a special emphasis on
the implication of acoustic space and feelings (as the underlying structure of liter-
ature). The analysis of acoustic narrative employs the sonic vocabulary proposed
by the author: lincha (observation by hearing) instead of guancha (observation by
seeing) and yinjing (soundscape) in place of tujing (landscape). Onomatopoeia refers
to the naming of a thing (or action) by a vocal imitation of the sound, the use of which
suggests the importance of sound event in narrative. Synesthesia in the narrative of
visual and auditory experiences refers to perceptions that cross over the senses of ear
and eye (the ear for the eye and hearing shapes). The experience of hearing shapes,
though developing from onomatopoeia (the analogy between sounds), is more effec-
tive in the evocation of imagination due to the interplay of senses. One of the major
tasks of acoustic narrative studies is to revisit the classics through the perspective of
acoustic experience. The emphasis on the multiplicity and uniformity of the senses
will return us to the primary function of language as a technological form of senses.

The depiction of a character’s physical attributes relies on the stimulation of the

reader’s visual imagination. Nevertheless, auditory image plays a significant role
in literary narrative. The introduction of the concept of “acoustic narrative” (or the
representation of sound in narrative) into the field of Narratology is closely linked
with the corrective efforts in dealing with the crisis of sensory culture in modern life.
In an era of “picture-reading” with heavy reliance on visual perception, the sense of
vision tends to be predominant, and other sensory channels are largely neglected. The
modern discovery of orality began with a small group of writers in 1950s. In his article
“Culture, Psychiatry, and the Written Word” (1959), British scholar J. C. Carothers
claims that the difference between the consciousness of Western man and African
tribal man is based on the difference between the eye and the ear: “…rural Africans
live largely in a world of sound—a world loaded with direct personal significance for
the hearer—whereas the western European lives much more in a visual world which

© Peking University Press 2021 199

X. Fu, Chinese Narratologies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7507-5_10
200 10 Acoustic Narrative

is on the whole indifferent to him….”1 Under the influence of Carothers, Marshall

McLuhan in his understanding of media contrasted acoustic space with space of
literate communication that is characterized with alphabetic writing and then print.
He sharply points out that “the three-dimensional world of pictorial space is an
abstract illusion built on the intense separation of the visual from the other senses”.2
The term of acoustic space, though coined by McLuhan, is established as a research
field by R. Murray Schafer initiated the now renowned “World Soundscape Project” at
Simon Fraser University during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The original mission
of this project was to record tapes of the sonic environment in Canada and Europe.
The project, nonetheless, forms the basis of theoretical paradigms for the study of
acoustic ecology.4 Since the twenty-first century, there has been an increasing call
for the balance between the sense of sight and hearing. The question of an “auditory
turn” in the humanities coincides with the heightened interest in the ear as a challenge
to the dominance of the visual in modern society and culture. In 2009, the University
of Texas at Austin hosted a symposium entitled “Thinking Hearing: The Auditory
Turn in the Humanities”, an indication of the scholarly need for a vibrant field of
auditory narrative studies.

Healing “Hearing Loss”: Why Acoustic Narrative?

The emergence of an acoustic turn in literary studies is exemplified by an increasing

number of scholarly researches. The concept of acoustic narrative is gradually
accepted, and there is an agreement on its denotations. In the essay “Modernist
Soundscapes and the Intelligent Ear: An Approach to Narrative through Auditory
Perception” (2005), Canadian scholar Melba Cuddy-Keane provides an insightful
and enlightening analysis of unban soundscapes in Virginia Woolf’s short fiction and
novels. While integrating the science of acoustics, the paper explores the concrete
way that narrative performs in recording a repertory of sounds. Drawing upon termi-
nology employed in the study of auditory perception (such as “auditory streaming,
stream segregation and integration, and auditory restoration”), she claims that “New
insights might well follow upon our efforts to emancipate our vocabulary from an
excessive dependence on the visual”.3 The research on the narrative of sound is not
new to the Chinese academic circle, but there is no systematic theoretical research on
acoustic narrative. To argue for acoustic narrative is to provide a theoretical corrective
to the predominance of the eye over the ear, and more importantly, to enter academic
dialogue with scholars all around the world.
The study of acoustic narrative is an attempt to open up possibilities for narrative
studies. In an era characterized by a predominance of the eye over the ear, we are
so overwhelmed by visual information that our ability to hear sound is diminished.

1 Carothers
(1959).
2 McLuhan (1962).
3 Cuddy-Keane (2005), p. 385.
Healing “Hearing Loss”: Why Acoustic Narrative? 201

We should be reminded that literary narrative is essentially an act of storytelling

(Mo Yan defines a writer as “a storyteller”). However, ever since sound was encoded
into letters, the act of storytelling lost its acoustic features. The recipient of the
story becomes a reader of visual signs who understands the relationship between
these signs. As a result, the beauty of oral narrative is neglected and even cruelly
negated. This is really strange, but when the listening subject is caught in the web of
an excessive dependency on the visual, the pattern of sensory perception gradually
adapts to the environment. Moreover, excessive reliance on the eye for cognition is
found in literary theories, as demonstrated by such terms as shijiao (perspective),
guancha (observation), jujiao (focalization), and jiaodian (focus) as examples. The
emphasis on visual signs leads to the suppression of other sensory channels. I have
proposed on many occasions that the concept of shijiao, for example, makes no sense
to the blind, as they lose the ability of jujiao due to the loss of sight. The central
position of the eyes in the face explains to a large extent the excessive dependency
of literary critics on the sense of vision.
The neglect of sound is largely due to the fact that we have forgotten the origin
of the literature originates in the art of listening, so the purpose of acoustic studies
is to re-assert the importance of the sensory. We find in classic works a widespread
preference for the sensory over the abstract. John Keats, for example, preferred
“for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts”,4 in a similar vein, T. S. Eliot
used Tennyson and Browning as example suggesting that the minds of poets are
“constantly amalgamating disparate experience”, and “they do not feel their thought
as immediately as the odor of a rose”.5 Viktor Shklovsky proposed the concept of
“defamiliarization” to estrange the readers from the world of everyday perception
and to renew their initial capacity for fresh sensation.6 In the story of “Ventriloquism”
from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling, it is revealed near the end
of story that the imagination of the audience is triggered by the Master’s imitation
of all kinds of sounds. This indicates that the act of listening is artistic and creative
since it requires an active involvement on the part of hearers, because the narrative
of hearing, in comparison with that of seeing, is not as “effective” in representing
characters or events. Such a disadvantage is a stimulus to imagination. Keats describes
how “an old Melody” triggers his imagination:
Have you never by being surprised with an old Melody—in a delicious place—by a delicious
voice, felt over again your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on
your soul? Do you not remember forming to yourself the singer’s face more beautiful than
it was possible, and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so? Even then
you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high that the Prototype must be hereafter
that delicious face you will see. What a time!7

By stating that imagined beauty is more beautiful than actual beauty, Keats claims
that such imagining will bring the concept of beauty to perfection. McLuhan used

4 Keats (1817).
5 Eliot(1951).
6 Shklovsky (1965).
7 Keats (1817).
202 10 Acoustic Narrative

“hot” and “cold” to describe the degree of information a media can provide. While
“hot media” demands little interaction on the part of the audience, “cold media”
demands more participation from the user. As cold media requires more cognitive
efforts involved in the processing sensory data, the sense of hearing, to borrow
McLuan’s term, is “cooler” than the sense of vision.8
In fact, the sense of hearing of an unborn baby is more fully developed at an
earlier stage than the sense of sight. As we know, babies in the womb are able to
respond to their mother’s voice. (It should be noted that babies produce a range of
responses to corporeal stimuli other than auditory.) In contrast, even when unborn
fetus’ eyes are fully developed, they cannot perceive light or shapes. This means that
man’s response to voice is more intuitive. The hexagram Chên 震卦 in The Book
of Change describes how a man “remains composed and reverent in spirit” when
thunder rolls: “Shock brings success. Shock comes—oh, oh! Laughing words—ha,
ha! The shock terrifies for a hundred miles, and he does not let fall the sacrificial
spoon and chalice”.9 The same auditory effect is created in Chap. 21 of Romance
of the Three Kingdoms. Cao Cao invites Liu Bei, his potential opponent, to “discuss
heroes in a plum garden”. Hearing his claim that “the only heroes in the world are
you and I”, Liu Bei is so shocked that he “gasped and the spoon and chopsticks rattled
to the floor”. Fortunately, storm bursts with a tremendous peal of thunder right at
this moment. Ascribing his instinctive response to the fear of thunderbolt, Liu Bei
succeeds in getting away. T. S. Eliot considered this instinctive response to sounds
as “auditory imagination”:
What I call the ‘auditory imagination’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far
below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the
most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking
the beginning and the end.10

For Eliot, aural imagination returns us “to the most primitive and forgotten”, the
implication of which is that because the extremities of sensory nerves—which are
inactive most of the time—reacts to the stimulus of voice, the sense of hearing is
associated with natural feelings and instinctive responses. In Chap. 40 of Dream of
the Red Mansion, Lin Daiyu recites her favorite line from Li Shangying’s poetry:
“I listen to the patter of rain on the withered lotus” (the last line of the poem “A
Nostalgic Letter to Choi Yong Choi Yan when Lodging at Luo’s Pavilion”). Lin
Daiyu is the spokesperson of Cao Xueqin, writer of Dream of the Red Mansion, as
evident in the reliance on the narrative of sounds as a salient narrative feature of the

8 McLuhan (1964).
9 Baynes (1977).
10 Eliot (1955).
Healing “Hearing Loss”: Why Acoustic Narrative? 203

novel. Nevertheless, not all writers are aesthetically aware of the distinction between
the narrative of vision and hearing. Many are blind to the fact that the channel of
hearing provides access to the innermost of consciousness. Acoustic narrative points
to the perceptual stage of cognition, which for the time being, is in urgent need of
further research.

Lingcha and Yinjing: Two Approaches to Acoustic Narrative

The biggest obstacle to understanding auditory narrative is the lack of terminologies

for its analysis. As the teaching of Confucius goes, “The mechanic, who wishes to
do his work well, must first sharpen his tools”. It is of great necessity to develop a
set of concepts and terminologies for auditory narrative studies.

Lingcha

In Chinese, there exists a group of technical terms related to the act of hearing, such as
tingzheng (hearing the evidence), lingxun (hearing), tingzhen (auscultation), shengna
(sonar), shouyin (radio), and jianting (monitoring). All these terms are borrowed from
foreign languages. But there is not a coherent and consistent concept—in parallel
to the concept of guancha (observation by the eye)—to describe the perception of
our sonic environment. It should be noted that the mode of guancha is expected
to include all other sensory experiences, yet due to the overabundance of visual
culture, the senses of taste, smell, touch, and aural are excluded one by one from the
concept of guancha. The part of jian 见 (meaning seeing) in the character of guan
观 suggests that this act should be an act of seeing. Research of this field cannot
however be pursued without a fuller discussion of terminology. To answer this need,
I propose the term of lingcha 聆 (hearing) 察 (observation) in parallel with guancha
观 (seeing) 察 (observation) to suggest the importance of hearing in observation.
Lingcha and guancha, though semantically related, are essential different in their
appeals to sensory channels. The concept of guancha suggests a careful inspection
with attention to details and perspectives with the aim to arriving at a judgment, in
much the same way the zooming of a camera lens captures images of objects from
a greater or smaller distance. Lingcha on the other hand is both a voluntary and
intentional act as hearing is more inclusive. Without the perceptive function of the
ear, human beings might not have been able to survive the early stage of evolution.
For animals who are on alert by ear, lingcha is more reliable than guancha: The
rabbit ear distinguishes between sounds and can hear the sounds when a tiger stalks
under the camouflage of its striped fur. The human act of lingcha is a conscious act
of audition as one listens to access and evaluate the information. When guancha
becomes ineffective, lingcha will serve as a primary medium for accessing informa-
tion from the outside world. When Xu Shen defines ming 名 (name) in Shuowen Jiezi,
204 10 Acoustic Narrative

he points out the correspondence between ming and hearing: “to command oneself,
from ‘mouth’ and from ‘evening’; in the evening, it is dark, and in the darkness you
do not see each other and therefore you use your mouth to name yourself”. In the
darkness of evening, the only accessible means of identification is through speaking
out one’s own name. If the medium of guancha is light waves, the act of lingcha
works through the travel of sound wave, as submarines use the sonar system for
exploring and mapping the bottom of the ocean, and the medical instrument of the
stethoscope helps the doctor detect sounds produced in the patient’s body. In fact,
the concept of auscultation, which originates in the medical field, can also refer to
the act of listening for observation.
It should be noted here that I am not the first one to propose the use of lingcha in
replace of guancha, as Cuddy-Keane already made such a suggestion in her study of
acoustic narrative.
New sound technologies, the sounds of the modern city, and an interest in auditory percep-
tion together form the backdrop of a new narrative inscription of the listening subject. But
to understand narrative’s new aurality, we need an appropriate language for its analysis.
Previously, I proposed the terms auscultation, auscultize, and auscultator to parallel the
existing terminology of focalization, focalize, and focalizer. My motive was not to assert that
hearing is a fundamentally different process from seeing—although there may be significant
and distinctive attributes—but to signal the way a specialized terminology can help us to
discriminate the sense-specific elements in the text. (Italics mine)11

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the medical term of auscultation

refers to “the act of listening to sounds arising with organs as an aid to diagnosis and
treatment”. The corresponding Chinese translation is tingzhen 听诊, which, however,
would be misleading if used in literary analysis. Therefore, I propose to use lingcha
聆察 (listening for observation) to replace of tingzhen 听诊 (listening for diagnosis)
to avoid confusion. In the same logic, the terms “focalization” and “focalize” would
be more appropriate if translated as guancha 观察 other than jujiao 聚焦 (an optical
concept denoting the adaptation of focal length)—the latter, though commonly used,
implies its denial of the autonomy of the humans’ subject.
The establishment of the concept of lingcha provides a brand new tool for narra-
tive analysis. If, as Classical Narratology argues, perspective (or the act of seeing)
influences the narration, then with the introduction of lingcha into Narratology, we
will see the act of hearing will also influence narration, and in a different way. In
Cuddy-Keane’s discussion of Virginia Woolf’s short fiction “Kew Gardens”, “sound
is emitted from multiple sound sources widely separated in space but auscultized
through one stationary perceiver”.12 This mode of lingcha is more inclusive and
infusive than guancha. For the reader, acoustic narrative presents a dynamic sonic
environment with the ever-present complexity of voices. In contrast to our visual
environment, this surrounding seems more sensory and stereoscopic, continuous yet
authentic. As the Chinese saying goes, “take what you hear to be false, only believe
it when you see it”. The implication is that the visual message, once received by

11 Cuddy-Keane (2005), p. 385.

12 Cuddy-Keane (2005).
Lingcha and Yinjing: Two Approaches to Acoustic Narrative 205

the eye, is accessible and self-justified, however, what you hear needs to be further
verified through other sensory channels.
The process of guancha depends on the reception of visual images, while the
act of lingcha requires one to actively speculate and imagine while processing
sound signals. Sometimes misunderstanding or misjudging acoustic information may
puzzle the hearer. In Chap. 6 of Dream of the Red Mansion, there is a vivid description
of the sound effect of a striking clock on old goody Liu in the Rongguo Mansion,
who apparently has no knowledge of such a Western item:
…she could hear nothing but a ‘lo tang, lo tang’ noise, resembling very much the sound of
a bolting frame winnowing flour…she unexpectedly heard a sound of ‘tang’ like the sound
of a golden bell or copper cymbal, which gave her quite a start.13

Here, a comic effect is created through the description of how an old country
woman imagines the sound of a striking clock. By presenting old goody Liu repre-
sentation of this unfamiliar sound, the narration from the perspective of lingcha
contributes to her characterization.
Lingcha plays an indispensable role in the reader’s act of imagination. As a mode
of observation, it participates in the beginning and development of narrative. Let us
consider how mythology, the origin of narrative, connects lingcha with the creation
of gods. With their limited knowledge of the world, early men tried to understand
the world through their sensory experience, so their imagination could be excited by
both what they saw and what they heard, but since gods were not directly observ-
able, lingcha was obviously useful for their representation of gods. When discussing
the origin of religion, Max Muller argued that gods were created through different
sensory experiences: the sun, the dawn, and all things on earth could be observed by
the eye, but the gods behind thunder, wind, and storm cannot be “seen” at all:
We hear the noise of thunder, but we cannot see the thunder, nor can we feel, smell, or
taste it. An impersonal howl or thunder, which satisfies us, could not be conceived by the
ancients Aryans. When they heard the thunder, they spoke of the thunderer, just as when they
heard a howling noise in the forest, they thought at once of a howler, of a lion or something
else, whatever it might be. In the Veda that thunderer is called Rudra, and we may well
understand how, after such a name had once been created, Rudra or the howler should be
spoken of as wielding the thunderbolt, as carrying bows and arrows, as striking down the
wicked and sparing the good, as bringing light after darkness, refreshment after heat, health
after sickness. In fact, after the first leaflets have opened, the further growth of the tree,
however rapid, need not surprise us.14

The inability to see opens up boundless possibilities for the imagination. The sun
is a luminous object up in the sky which could be seen by all people, so in the eyes of
the ancient Aryans, the sun god is a deity glittering with gold who patrols the sky in
a golden chariot. By comparison, their auditory representation of the god of thunder
is less specific: Addressed as “howler” or “Rudra”, this invisible god is given a large
variety of clothes, traits, and personalities and eventually becomes a hodgepodge of

13 Cao (2011).
14 Muller (1878).
206 10 Acoustic Narrative

a character. In Muller’s use of the metaphor, “the tree” is compared to the tree of
mythology, and the mode of lingcha provides rich nourishment for it.

Yinjing

As hearing is a process different from seeing, we need to develop an appropriate

language of yin 音 (sound) and yinjing 音景 (soundscape). By the same logic as the
distinction between guancha and lincha, the concept of yinjing (soundscape) derives
from tujing (landscape) so that the field of story can also be spatialized on the basis
of sound descriptions.
Many books of literary criticism or survey of literary history have made us familiar
with such descriptions as “opening up a magnificent panorama of history” and
“offering a vivid gallery of characters”. Such expressions are premised on a repre-
sentation of landscape other than soundscape. The phrases with jing 景 [meaning
scenery] in Chinese (such as jinguan 景观 [landscape], jingxiang 景象 [scene], jingse
景色 [scenery], jingzhi 景致 [view]) are all connected to the sense vision. The Univer-
sity of Texas symposium on “auditory turn” I mentioned earlier aimed to attract our
attention to the landscape of sound, or “soundscape”. To refer to the fictional space,
I propose the use of changyu 场域 (field) to replace beijing 背景 (background) and
changjing 场景 (scene) to avoid visual association. The introduction of the concept
of soundscape in the literature is not meant to oppose it to tujing 图景 (landscape),
nor to argue for the priority of the ear, but to emancipate our vocabulary from an
excessive dependency on the visual and on the eye. R. Murray Schafer, who coined
the term of soundscape, recalled his experience of traveling in the dome car of a
train passing through the Rocky Mountains: The exterior scenery through the glass
window forms a contradiction with the interior music on the public address system.
That explains his feeling that “this is a travelogue movie about the Rocky Moun-
tains—we are not here at all”.15 When a work of literature works lacks attention to
the representation of auditory perception, the glass becomes impenetrable and so is
the division between the eye and the ear.
Can sound make up a distinctive changyu different from any other places in the
world? Such a question is unavoidable when we discuss the issue of soundscape
as the auditory equivalent of a landscape. Roland Barthes provides an affirmative
answer stating that “mankind’s occupation of space is also related to sounds”:
Based on hearing, listening (from an anthropological viewpoint) is the very sense of space and
of time, by the perception of degrees of remoteness and of regular returns of phonic stimulus.
For the mammal, its territory is marked out by odors and sounds; for the human being—and
this is a phenomenon often underestimated—the appropriation of space is also a matter of
sound: domestic space, that of the house, the apartment—the approximate equivalent of
animal territory—is a space of familiar, recognized noises whose ensemble forms a kind of
household symphony.16

15 Schafer (1992).
16 Barthes (2005).
Lingcha and Yinjing: Two Approaches to Acoustic Narrative 207

Acoustic space is not limited by the cognition of space based on the sense of
vision. Anyone who has the experience of walking at night knows perfectly well that
he has to depend on the ear to orient himself in the dark. It is interesting to note that we
sometimes use the auditory vocabulary to describe visual space. In Tao Te Ching, for
example, when describing the space of a mini community, Lao Zi evokes an auditory
experience: “the voices of the fowls and dogs should reach us all the way from there”.
The British defines a cockney as “one born within the hearing of the bells of Saint
Mary-le-Bow;”17 McLuhan argues that since the advent of electronic technologies
of communication, our world has shrunk into one shared “acoustic space”, a “global
village” where people become neighbors who can “hear” each other.
The three cases of gongting (shared hearing) exemplify that soundscape is condi-
tioned by the source of a community sound and realized by the shared activities of
lingcha from various spots. The bells of a parish church are the signals of a commu-
nity soundscape: “the parish is an acoustic space, circumscribed by the range of
the church bell”, as this is the area within which the parish church bells may be
heard by the whole community. In affluent areas where churches are numerous, the
acoustic web of bells gets denser. In his book Village Bells, Alain Corbin explores
the “auditory landscape” of the nineteenth-century French countryside:
The 161 parishes which constitute Neufchâtel-en-Bray (Seine-Maritime) consisted of 231
belfries “hung with bells”—161 parish churches, 54 chapels, 7 monasteries, 9 abbeys. By
comparison with the nineteenth century, the network of sounds in this space was denser and
so was the parish network at this time. Besides, abbeys and number chapels filled the sound
void of some transitional space. It is estimated that it is not until 1793 that at the same time
the sounds of 50 bells distributed in 19 parishes can be heard within a 6-kilometer radius of
Grandcour.18

Just as the space of the French countryside was organized by bells, the soundscape
of ancient Chinese cities was defined by morning bells and evening drums based
on which the city was designed and structured. The Bell and Drum Tower was an
invention of great importance for the soundscape of Beijing. Demonstrating an acute
sense of function, Wu Hong regards them as “an acoustic monument”, as the sounds
imperially resounded around every corner of the capital:
As the architectural monument, the political symbolism of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower
proceeds from its juxtaposition with the imperial city and the Forbidden City. As the acoustic
monument, on the other hand, it occupies Beijing outside the royal palace and the Forbidden
City through the formless sound signals.19

This acoustic mapping of space pointed to the irresistible will to order and disci-
pline of the imperial ruler. The bells and drums were an acoustic calendar, announcing

17 “Traditionally, the notion of London as an aural community was well ensconced in the definition

of a cockney as one born within the hearing of the bells of Saint Mary-le-Bow. In a similar sound
mapping, Woolf uses the striking of Big Ben to redraw London with a significantly expanded
geographical range. For the single sound source of Big Ben brings into temporal harmony a
multiplicity of listeners positioned in a variety of locations”. Melba Cuddy-Keane: Modernist
Soundscapes and the Intelligent Ear: An Approach to Narrative through Auditory Perception, 387.
18 Corbin (1998).
19 Hong (2009).
208 10 Acoustic Narrative

the daily activities of the whole community. However, the function of the Bell Tower
and Drum Tower as acoustic monument gradually declined when the International
Meridian Conference held in 1884 passed the proposal of taking the Greenwich
Meridian as the “Prime” meridian and Greenwich Mean Time as the world’s time
standard. Ironically, in some Chinese cities, there still remain Western-style bell
towers built upon the deserted site of the Bell Tower and Drum tower—The standard
bell in the city of Ganzhou is still a local tourist sight, a post-colonial legacy site that
is obviously accepted by the local people.
Besides gongting (shared hearing), acoustic space can also be formed by duting
(solitary hearing). For the ancient Chinese literati, the activity of solitary listening
often means immersion in the poetic world. We can find many examples in Tang
Poetry, such as Li Zhong’s “Listening Alone by the Light of the Bright Moon”, Xu
Xuan’s “Listening Alone While the Rain Falls on the Empty Steps”, and Zhao Gu’s
“Listening Alone to the Thousand Sounds of Cuckoos”. The sonic narrative creates a
sense of huayi (picturesque scenes). In the poem “Mooring by Maple Bridge at Night”
by Zhang Ji, bells coming “from the Temple of Cold Hill, beyond the city walls”,
drift out to the roamer’s boat. The activities of listening and seeing create a poetic
representation of the narrative world in which crows scream at moonset and the river
sparkles with the lights of the fishing boats. Placed in the same lonely and sleepless
situation at night, however, Liu Yanshi records quite a different experience in the
poem “Mooring by the Runzhou Estuary”: “listening alone to the bells, feeling the
numerous temples”—the ebb and flow of the bells evokes the poet’s imagination of
temples. In the lines “From whose house comes the voice of flute of jade unseen?/It
fills the town of Luoyang, spread by wind of spring” from the poem “Hearing a
Bamboo Flute on a Special Night in Luoyang”, Li Bai uses the power of spring to
transmit the sound of flute to every corner of the city. Wang Bo in “Tengwang Ge
Xu” describes the wide space in which sound travels: the songs spreading from the
fishing boat in the dusk to the coast of Poyang Lake, and the calls of wild geese feeling
the coldness drawing near by the shore of Hengyang. The strangest soundscape is
created in Li Bai’s “Setting off Early from Baidi City”: The sound of the apes on
both banks of the Three Gorges is clear and mournful, and the little boat the poet
rides descends straight down into this “acoustic space”, breaking down the sound
barriers created by the cries of apes.
There is a significant difference in the ways Yinjing and tujing are received and
constructed. While the human eye can capture the landscape in one blink, the audi-
tory perception of the nuances and subtleties of sound cannot be completed within
one second. The complexity of hearing is that the brain must differentiate and decode
separate sounds and then process a single sound through multiple cognitive activities
such as imagination, speculation, and judgment, since sound can be emitted from
numerous sources at different times. The main themes of soundscape can be catego-
rized by distinguishing between keysounds, signals, and soundmarks. Dingdiaoyin
(key sound) is the sound that identifies the key of a particular yinjing. Xinhaoyin
(sound signals) are foreground sounds in soundscape such as whistle, horns, and bells.
Biaozhiyin (soundmark) refers to a community sound with unique qualities which
Lingcha and Yinjing: Two Approaches to Acoustic Narrative 209

features the soundscape.20 Big Ben, for example, is a landmark of modern London,
and its striking sounds define the acoustic life of London. In Chap. 8 of The Scholars,
the dialogue between Wang Hui (the newly appointed prefect of Nanchang) and Chu
Chin-yu (the son of the former prefect) exemplifies the meaning of soundmarks:
Seeing how mercenary the new prefect was, Chu Chin-yu said: “There was little to commend
during my father’s term of office; but while he was prefect there were few lawsuits and fewer
sentences passed; thus his secretaries could do pretty well as they pleased. I remember the
former judicial commissioner telling my father that in his yamen only three sounds could be
heard.”

“What three sounds?”

“The reciting of poetry, the moving of chess-pieces, and the singing of operas.”

“Very interesting, upon my word!”

Wang Hui let out a bellow of laugher.

“No doubt, sir, when you start to carry out reforms, three different sounds will be heard.”

“What three sounds?”

“The clang of a balance, the rattle of an abacus, and the thud of bamboo rods.”

The three sounds refer to the soundmarks of yamen (local government) which,
however, are contrastive rather than consistent: One stands for a yamen in which
“there were few lawsuits and fewer sentences passed”, while the other represents
plundering and extortion.
Xin Qiji’s “The Moon over the West River: Home-going at Night from the
Yellow Sand Bridge” is an example of a nicely structured division between the
representations of soundscape and landscape. The couplet of soundscape is as
follows:
Startled by magpies leaving the branch in moonlight.
I hear cicadas shrill in the breeze at midnight.
The ricefields’ sweet smell says a bumper year;
Listen, how frogs’ croaks please the ear!

In an age when the natural environment of rice fields was unpolluted by chemical
fertilizers, the croaks of frogs, sounding like drum beats, were vital to the natural
functioning of the acoustic landscape. The croaking far and wide is the key sound
of the rural environment—which is the background of the rural soundscape. The
foreground sounds consist of the rustling of the branches caused by the magpies
aroused by the moonlight and the singing noise of cicadas stirred by the cool breeze
of midnight. (On a noisy street, it is hard to ignore the signal sent by an acquaintance
when he comes forward with a loud whistling.) To make a distinction between sounds
from nature (as mentioned earlier) and the human voice, the poet used the verb “says”
to imply the soundmark of the poem’s soundscape. Inspired by the magpie’s noises

20 For a thorough analysis of the terms, see Schafer (1994).

210 10 Acoustic Narrative

and cicada’s shrills, the night walker feels the urge to talk to himself or his companion
about the propensity of the year: “Listen, how the croaks of frogs please the ear!”
So far, we have discussed lincha and yinjing. There is a series of terms
deriving from these two key terms, such as lingchazhe (observer by hearing),
tingjiao (the perspective of lingcha), the object of lingcha, tingjuekongjian (acoustic
space), gongting (shared hearing), duting (solitary hearing), biaozhiyin (key sound).
Although there still remains room for a deeper analysis, for the moment, their conno-
tations are clear and coherent enough to provide a starting point for future study of
acoustic narrative.

Sound Events

Sequence of events constitutes narratives. This section will try to address the
following questions: How does sound “create” events? How is a sound event narrated?
What are the possible forms of sound narrative? To answer these questions, we have
to first clarify the links between aural signals and the information of event.

Sound and Event

In many cases, an event or action is accompanied by sound. When a lingchazhe

(observer of hearing) hears a sound, he will immediately realize that something is
happening around him. Every sound, regardless of its magnitude, is indicative of an
event. That old goody Liu in Dream of the Red Mansion is shocked “at the sound
of a golden bell or copper cymbal” is largely because she cannot either identify or
understand the source of the sound. A similar confusion in Chap. 75 of the novel,
however, creates a much more sensational effect upon the observer of hearing. Jia
Zhen and others are horrified by the unidentifiable sound:
Soon it was nearly midnight, Cousin Zhen was by now more than a little drunk. They had all
just put on some extra clothes and had some hot tea; the honey-cups had been cleared and
clean ones put in their place and a fresh lot of newly heated honey was just being poured,
when suddenly a long-drawn-out sigh was heard from the foot of one of the garden walls.
It was heard by all of them, quite clearly and unmistakably, and they could feel the hair on
their scalps rise as they listened to it. “Who’s there” Cousin Zhen shouted in a voice that
he tried to make fierce and challenging. But though he repeated the question several times,
there was no reply. “It’s probably one of the servants,” said You-shi. “Nonsense!” snapped
Cousin Zhen, “There are no servants living behind any of these walls. In any case, that’s the
Hall of the Ancestors over there. What could anyone be doing behind that wall?” A rustle of
wind passed, at that very moment, along the foot of it and a distant sound like the opening
and closing of a door could be heard from inside the ancestral temple. An oppressive feeling
of dread came over them, the night air seemed suddenly to have grown colder; the moon
appeared less bright than it had been a few minutes before; and they could feel their skins
crawling with terror. Shock had made Cousin Zhen almost sober; but though he managed
Sound Events 211

to keep better control of himself than the others, he was very much shaken and had lost all
appetite for enjoyment.21

There is no clear information about the source of the sound on the other side of
the wall. The title of this chapter (“Midnight Revelers Are Startled by a Sound of
Evil Omen”) suggests that this terrifying sound forecasts the fall of the Rongguo
House. This is the turning point for the family from affluence to decline. In the Hall
of the Ancestors, the spirits’ sigh of pity and agony are intended for the unworthy
descendants of the family whose “hall is built by white jade, whose horse was made
up by gold”. The deliberate choice of Jiazhen as lingchazhe is significant: The sound
(“a great building’s tottering crash”) acquires its symbolic meaning when first heard
by Jiazhen, as he is the official inheritor of the family and a patriarch of the house.
The links between sounds and events demand a reconsideration of yinjing as a
constellation of acoustic events. All acoustic signals play a certain function, though
varying in degree, in narrative. Roland Barthes, in the essay “An Introduction to
the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, makes a distinction between core events and
satellite events; the former forms the backbone of stories, while the latter provides
additional information as some “intelligence” or signs.22 This distinction is appli-
cable in the categorization of acoustic events. The moment that “midnight revelers
are startled by a sound of evil omen” signals a core event, as it marks Rongguo
House’s turning point from its heyday to its declining years. In the same logic, the
singing of cicadas and the croaks of frogs in “Home-going at Night from the Yellow
Sand Bridge” are satellite, as their function is to mark the key sound of the whole
soundscape.
The distinction between core and non-core events, however, is sometimes hard to
define. In certain cases, the soundscape can play the role of background while at the
same time insinuating the progression of the central plot. Guy de Maupassant’s short
story “Mademoiselle Fifi” ends with the disappearance of a patriotic prostitute after
she kills a Prussian officer. The priest of the district, on the request of the German
soldiers, humbly tolls the bell at the funeral:
For the first time the bell sounded its funereal knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand
were caressing it. At night it sounded again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much
as anyone could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound gently through
the darkness, seized by strange joy, awakened, one could not tell why. All the peasants in
the neighborhood declared that it was bewitched.23

Through the use of foreshadowing (i.e., the uncanny sound of “the funeral knell in
a lively manner” and the unconventional sounding at night), the text implies that the
parish priest hides the protagonist in the belfry, enjoying the tacit support of fellow
countrymen who know, without doubt, what it means when the bell “starts at night
and sound gently”. The combination of soundscape with event is most widely used

21 Cao (1980).
22 Barthes(1975).
23 Guy de Maupassant, Mademoiselle Fifi in The Entire original Maupassant Short Stories. EBD,

p. 109.
212 10 Acoustic Narrative

as a filmic device: i.e., the sudden change of soundscape often makes the audience
know something is going to happen before it really sees it.

Representing Acoustic Events

The issue of acoustic representation challenges all storytellers, as sound signals

are materially intangible and quick to disappear. The lingchazhe may make many
mistaken conjectures and judgments just because of the fuzziness and uncertainty
inherent to sound signals. For old goody Liu in Dreams of the Read Mansion, the
striking clock, a completely new item for her, sounds like “the sound of a bolting
frame winnowing flour”. Such a mistake arising from her experience of living in the
countryside is understandable as such a sound is beyond her experience. The use of
onomatopoeia seems to be the most convenient way of representing sound, just like
Cao Xueqin describes the sounds of striking clock as “lo tang, lo tang”. In different
cultures onomatopoeia—the vocal imitation of the sound—varies in drastic ways.
In The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons: The Physical World, the word of
chieh-chieh, imitates the chirping sounds of orioles, and the word of yao-yao imitates
the buzzing sounds of insects. Onomatopoeia may sometimes contain substantial
meaning. For example, in ancient Chinese erudite poems, the call of partridges and
cuckoos suggests the pain of departure, i.e., “better to go home” and “had better not
to proceed, my dear”. There are similar cases in English poetry. In Shelley’s “To a
Skylark”, the stanzaic form of four short lines and one long line suggests the rhythm
of the skylark’s call. Keats’ “Chinese Hwamei’s Words”, according to the notes of
its Chinese translation, conveys the singing rhythm of Chinese hwamei by means of
the repetition of words.24
Onomatopoeia may be imitating original sounds, but it may also be communi-
cating, in an mimetic way, the impression of an event which itself does not necessarily
produce sound. This is a case of yierdaimu, or, hearing an event instead of seeing
it. To gain a better understanding of this rather complex practice, we need to go
back to the origin of the term onomatopoeia. According to many Western scholars, it
originated from onomatopoiia, a Greek word meaning “naming”. Greek Stoics used
onomatopoeia to explain the genesis of language, postulating that language origi-
nated from early man’s imitation of the sounds of objects as a way to name them. In
his research, Lévy-Bruhl found that native tribes are particularly good at conveying
their perception of the world (especially the description of actions) through the use
of onomatopoeia:
The need for description may seek its fulfillment by means of Lautbilder, as the German
explorers call them, i.e. delineations or reproductions of that which they wish to express,
obtained by means of the voice. Westermann tells us that the language of the Ewe tribes
is richly endowed with the means of interpreting an impression received by direct sounds.
Such prolixity proceeds from the almost irresistible tendency to imitate all one hears or sees,

24 Keats (1958).
Representing Acoustic Events 213

and in general, all one perceives, and to describe it by means of a sound or sounds, chiefly,
of movements. But there are also imitations or vocal reproductions of these Lautbilder
for sounds, odors, tastes, tactile impressions. There are some used in connection with the
expression of color, fulness, degree, grief, well-being, and so on.25

Here, the meaning of Lautbilder is not identical with soundscape. Instead, it refers
to the depiction or reproduction of “what they wish to express by means of the voice”.
Lévy-Bruhl speculates that nouns, verbs, and adjective originate in Lautbilder. In
order to explain how Lautbilder interpret an impression received by direct sounds,
Lévy-Bruhl mentioned thirty-three various kinds of adverbs describing the single
action or state of zo (to walk) in the Ewe language: Zo bia bia is associated with the
gait of a long-legged man, Zo ka kà is used to describe someone walking proudly,
and Zo pla pla suggests walking with small steps.26 He specifically notes that words
such as bia bia are not onomatopoeic words. They are “vocal imitations of sense-
impressions”27 other than the typical sounds associated with a certain kind of walking
or gait. There are similar Lautbider for all the other movements, such as running,
climbing, swimming, riding, and driving. In the Ewe language, “the conception of
walking in general never presents itself alone; it is always a certain way of walking
that they must delineate vocally”.28 It is unquestionable that such a rich repertoire of
descriptive language of voice—which is still used widely by the common people who
speak the dialect—ismore highly charged with drama and emotion than the formal
official language. Unfortunately, not all the people learn to appreciate the value of
the language of caogeng (grassroots people).
Lautbilder do not vanish completely. The English language (written by an alpha-
betic system) is rich in onomatopoeic words, many of which can be verbs (such as
murmur, whisper, and giggle). Such onomatopoeic words describe not only sounds
but also actions that are often associated with certain sounds. In the Chinese language
(written by ideograms), onomatopoeia is not the most salient feature. Nevertheless,
its significance is self-evident as onomatopoeia is widely used as a figure of speech
by both well-educated and illiterate people. We can find similar use of Lautbilder
in Chinese as well, i.e., “the face turning pale with a sound of ‘shua’” and “tears
rolling down with a sound of ‘hua’”. The use of sound words (such as shua and hua)
in a situation where an action does not produce any sound at all is worthy of further
research, as its mechanism remains unclear to us.

From “Hearing Similar Sounds” to “Hearing Shapes”

The above discussion has touched upon the issue of synaesthesia, which was once
a heated subject of discussion in ancient China. Li Yu questioned the use of nao

25 Lévy-Bruhl (1923), p. 166.

26 Lévy-Bruhl (1923), pp. 167–168.
27 Lévy-Bruhl (1923), p. 167.
28 Lévy-Bruhl (1923), p. 168.
214 10 Acoustic Narrative

(clamor) in the line “Upon red apricot branchtips, spring’s ardor clamors” for its inap-
propriateness, as nao is a descriptive word for noise other than for the visual. Citing
similar examples from the Song poetry, Qian Zhongshu in his article of “synaesthe-
sia” notes that “we ought not consider its usage in any way remarkable”, for the fact
that this is a rhetoric device of synaesthesia familiar to his contemporary Chinese
writers and Western writers:
In Chap. 38 of the novel The Gallant Maid for example, a “young lass” is described as
holding up in her left hand “a large and thunderously clamorous bunch of clematis flowers
and fleur-de-lis.”. There could be no better gloss to the word “clamorous” as descriptive
of “a large bunch of flowers” than the word “thunderously.” The sentence also attests to
the fact that the “vernacular” remains very often the best possible aid to our understanding
of “classical Chinese”. The use in Western languages of words such as “loud,” “criard,”
“chiassoso,” “chillón,” and “knall” to describe colours that are too bright or strong, and the
labelling of dull colours as “la teinte sourde” (a muffled tint) also assist our understanding
of the usage of this word “clamour” in ancient Chinese poetry. To employ the terminology
of psychology or linguistics, such usages are examples of what is called “synaesthesia” or
“the transference of the senses.”29

According to Qian, the auditory experience of “synesthesia” or “the transference

of the senses” takes two forms: “hearing vision” and “hearing shapes”. The category
of “hearing vision” speaks of the soundless aspect of objects as if they gave off
waves of sound, and seemingly, we experience an auditory sensation through the
sense of sight, with the use of nao (clamors) as example. In contrast, the experience
of “hearing shape” suggests a stimulus of voice in evoking a sensory experience
of vision. In the “Record of Music” section of the Record of Ritual, we find the
example of hearing shape: “those prolonged on the same key are like pearls strung
together”. Kong Yingda, in The Proper Meaning of the Record of Ritual, explains
how the process of hearing shape works: “When sound stirs the feelings of man, it
causes them to imagine in their minds the shapes of the sounds are thus”. While the
experience of “hearing vision” emphasizes the imaginary “hearing” which replaces
shape with sound (i.e., hearing the thunder in silence), the experience of “hearing
shape” suggests the imaginary “seeing” which replaces sound with shape.
The narrative purpose of the synesthetic experience varies. While “hearing vision”
is evoked to achieve the effective use of language, “hearing shape” is often a make-
shift strategy to record the quickly disappearing sound event as we have no better
alternatives. In Chap. 42 of The Romance of Three Kingdoms, the three shouts of
anger by Zhang Fei at Long Slope Bridge were described as “sound of thunderstorm”.
As we can see, the analogy between the sound of thunder and that of Zhang Fei is
based on their similarity. We may, for discussion’s convenience, define this kind of
analogy as “hearing similar sounds”, whose examples abound in the Tang poetry:
“Plucking the strings, he prayed for me,/I heard murmuring pines in many valleys”
(“Listening to the Lyre of a Monk Named Jun” by Li Bai); “Wooing, cooing, a young
couple’s whispering,/loving, longing, a modulation everlasting” (“Listening to the
Lute Music Played by Ying” by Han Yu) and “When the ancient sword first strikes
the secluded stone,/A thousand strings of pearls snap upon cold jade” (“Ballad of

29 Qian (2002).
From “Hearing Similar Sounds” to “Hearing Shapes” 215

Five Strings” by Wei Yingwu). A close scrutiny of these poems, however, indicates
that the sound images as created in the lines are interesting but not impressive.
Though Bai Juyi’s description of the sounds of pipa (a Chinese musical instrument)
in his Ballad of the Pipa as “like water rushing out from a broken silver bottle” and
“as though pearls of various sizes gliding down to a jade plate” is wonderful, the
comparison in the Tang poetry between the sound of string-playing and the sound
of pearls gliding down the jade plate is rather commonplace. As such, the evolution
from “hearing similar sounds” to “hearing shapes” is both reasonable and necessary,
because the latter is more effective in expanding human sensory imagination both
in space and time. In comparison with “Ballad of the Pipa”, Bai Juyi’s “Song of
the Lad Xue Yangtao Playing the Flute” is abundant in associative expressions of
“hearing shapes”. To cite one example: “At times it is adagio as if without bone or
muscle,/At times staccato as if with ridges. The fast notes round and circling, hurried
but unbroken,/Compact and dense like pearls on a string. The slow notes drawn out,
elongated but ordered,/Ordered and straight like brush-strokes. The low notes fall
sharply, heavy stones sinking,/The high notes rise suddenly, scudding clouds”.
Sometimes, the line between “hearing similar sounds” and “hearing shapes” may
not be that clear-cut because “sound” and “shape” are in some cases are indistin-
guishable. In Chap. 1 of Water Margin, when Marshal Hong forces people to dig out
the cave in which demons are imprisoned and held down by a stone tablet inscribed
with their names, the sound of a giant earthquake and landslide comes out:
Under it, they discovered a vast bottomless pit, from the depths of which arose a
deafening howl. It was no joke that sounds. Listen:
Haven splits, earth totters, peaks tremble, mountains fall.
The tidal wave on the river Qian Tang
Rushes for the gates of the sea.
On Mounts Tai and Hua
A mighty force splits the peaks
Like the monster, Gong Gong, moved by ancient wrath
Battering the pillars of the sky,
Or the famed assassin’s awesome strength
Smashing the First Emperor’s chariot.
The wind snaps a thousand bamboos;
Among a million soldiers the drums beat all night long.30

The description of all kinds of loud sounds creates a breathtaking and hair-raising
scene. The “sound” and “shape” here are competing for the reader’s attention, with
the latter taking a marginally upper hand. In Chap. 2 “Little Jade Wang Tells a Drum
Story” of The Travels of Lao Can, we read:
After several turns her voice again began to rise, making three or four successive folds in the
melody, each one higher than the last. It was like climbing Taishan from the western face
of the Aolai Peak. First you see the thousand-fathom cleft wall of Aolai Peak and think that

30 Shi and Luo (2002).

216 10 Acoustic Narrative

it reaches the sky. But when you have wound your way up to the top, you see Fan Peak far
above you. And when you have got to the top of Fan Peak, again you see the South Gate of
Heaven far above Fan Peak. The higher you climb, the more alarming it seems—the more
alarming, the more wonderful. After Little Jade Wang had swung her three or four highest
flourishes, suddenly her voice dropped, and then at a powerful spirited gallop, in a short
time, with a thousand twists and turns she described innumerable circles like a flying serpent
writhing and turning among the thirty-six peaks of the Yellow Mountains.31 (emphasis mine)

The use of kan (see) and jian (see) suggests that the visionary imagination is
created in the auditory experience: Instead of hearing the rise and fall of sounds (in
high and low pitch), a scene of climbers scaling the mountain peak is revealed to us.
Right after this scene, the sound is transformed into “a flying serpent writhing and
turning among the thirty-six peaks of the Yellow Mountains”. Evoked by Little Jade
Wang’s storytelling, the experience of “hearing shapes” is mysterious and marvelous.
Here, the sensation of sound is created in terms of vision. While pointing to the
predominance of the visual culture, it also suggests the imaginary power that the
sense of sound might will. By contrast, in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the
sound effect of Zhang Fei’s shouts of anger at Long Slope Bridge is described in
other terms than the sound itself.32 In Luo Guanzhong’s description, “one of Cao
Cao’s staff, Xiahou Jie, reel and fall from his horse terror-stricken, paralyzed with
fear”. This best illustrates the destructive power of Zhang Fei’s shouts.
It should be noted that words such as kan and jian in The Travels of Lao Can
do not suggest that its author Liu’e was conscious of such a narrative technique of
“hearing shapes”. In The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, however, Hugo describes, in
unequivocal terms, the bells as if “the ear too seems to be imbued with sight”:
Then see—for at certain times the ear too seems to be imbed with sight—see how, all of a
sudden, at the same moment, there rises from each steeple, as it were, a column of sound,
a cloud of harmony…you see in it each group of notes that has flown from the belfries,
winding along apart…you may see the octaves skipping from steeple to steeple; you watch
them spring, light, winged, sonorous from the silver bell; dropping dull, faint and feeble
from the wooden……you see clear and rapid notes dart about in all directions, make three
or four luminous zigzags, and vanish like lightning. From time to time you see tones of all
shapes, proceeding from the triple peal of St. Germain des Pres, passing before you. Then
again, at intervals, this mass of sublime sounds opens and makes way for the strette of the
Ave Maria, which glistens like an aigrette of stars.33

When the ear has a vision, sounds assume a physical form: Invisible sound of
bells is transformed into “a column” and “a cloud”, and notes dart, flow, fall or
rise, “skipping from steeple to steeple” and “making way for” other bells. These

31 Liu (1952).
32 Li Dou, in Records in a Galley-Painted Pleasure Boat in Yangzhou, records the sound effect
created by Wu Xu’s telling stories of Zhang Yide: “[he] emulated Zhang Yide’s cutting the bridge
beside the river, firstly taking on the appearance of shouts of anger, and multitudes lent an ear to
listen, then he opened his mouth, with eyes widening, and made a gesture with his hands, the clamor
of the whole house overpowered people’ eyes. He said to someone: “Under no circumstances could
we mediocre persons rival the voice of Marquis Huan. Its meaning makes sounds not come from
my mouth, but rather from everybody’s heart, and he has the ability to imitate him”..
33 Hugo (1831).
From “Hearing Similar Sounds” to “Hearing Shapes” 217

expressions of sounds are not strange to Chinese readers. In the works of Bai Juyi
and Liu’e, we find similar associations of voice with the actions of falling, rising,
and flowing. This, again, testifies to the fact that the acoustic narratives in Chinese
and Western languages are essentially similar.
In comparison with “hearing similar sounds”—its limitation is obvious as it simply
replaces one sound with another sound, “hearing shapes” is a more effective strategy.
In “hearing shapes”, the storyteller is allowed a far greater freedom as the amorphous
sound event assumes some tangible visual images, which enables the storyteller to
give full play to his imaginative power. This seems to be one more case of the ear
succumbing to the eye, but this “succumbing to” is not a bad thing, since it is due
to this “succumbing to” that auditory signals are turned into visual images, and with
the abolition of the border between the ear and the eye, “hearing shapes” becomes a
highly regarded strategy in the art of storytelling.

“Rehearing the Classics”

The introduction of “acoustic narrative” into Chinese Narratology makes it necessary

for us to “rehear” the Classics.
To “re-read” the classics, we need new approaches, without which “re-reading”
would be of little value. “Rehearing” is exactly such a new approach, since it asks
us to re-orient our attention to the acoustic elements in the text. As discussed above,
“hearing” has largely been neglected by our over-reliance on “seeing” in our reading.
It is high time that we changed this situation and explored how (re) orientation to
“hearing” would change our interpretation of the classics.
“Rehearing” the classics requires a careful consideration of the historical context
in which the aural narrative was produced. In other words, we should be aware that
the acoustic experience changes with historical times. The dominance of the eye
and sight comes with the formation of print culture. The classics of Pre-Qin period
(before the era of “picture-reading”) contain rich acoustic experience, as they were
produced at a time when the communication between people was mainly realized
through the channel of the aural sense. In the essay “Responses to Questions from
the King of Chu”, Song Yu provides a description of a grand banquet: “…a guest
sang in the capital of Yun, who began with Xiali and Baren, and thousands of people
sang with him”. This was indeed a grand party of singing. The Analects of Confucius
records Confucius’s experience in Qi: after he heard the shao, he “for three months
would not know the taste of meat”. In Han Fei Zi, Duke Ping of Jin was willing
to put his own life at risk in order to hear the saddest music in the world. Such
cases exemplify the difference between ancient Chinese and contemporary people in
terms of the former’s greater sensitivity to acoustic signals and their fervent pursuit
of melodious sound. It is the recognition of this difference that makes us understand
properly the sound events they told and the emotions embedded in these events.
The difference between ancient and modern people does not just lie in the sensi-
bility to sounds, but also in the manners of “hearing”. One important task of ancient
218 10 Acoustic Narrative

offices was to collect information about social realities and to hear public opinions.
There is an abundance of ancient texts recording the events of tingzhen (administering
affairs of state by listening):
The king of old times is willing to listen to people since the benevolent rule is established.
And then he will ask blind musicians to recite the precepts of the previous dynasty at court
and ask hundreds of incumbent officials to voice criticism and admonishment so as not to be
deceived; adopt the reports of trade caravans, identify good or ill luck in folk songs, inspect
public affairs conducted by hundreds of officials at court, ask about good and bad reputation
on the road, redress the balance when something goes wrong. All of these are the complete
strategies for vigilance and defense. (Guoyu: Discourses of Jin VI)
From the king downwards, everyone has his father, elder brothers, sons and younger brothers,
to supply the defects and watch over the character of his government. The historiographers
make their records; the blind make their poems; the musicians recite their satires and remon-
strances; the great officers admonish and instruct, and inferior officers report to these what
they hear; the common people utter their complaints; the merchants display their wares in
the market places; the hundred artificers exhibit their skillful contrivances. (Zuo Zhuan: 14th
year of Duke Xiang of Song)

It should be noted that poem-collectors not only recorded the words of folksongs,
but also recorded the original intonation of the folk song (either of satire or of
celebration). This was very important, as it was the only possible channel for those
who held high offices to have access to the voice of the common people. While the
ancient rulers understood that the tone of a speech as a way of conveying the speaker’s
true emotions is even more important than the semantic content of the speech itself,
people today seem to have forgotten this fact. In a recent survey about happiness
conducted by China Central TV (CCTV), the disregard of the interviewees’ tone and
intonation shows a sharp contrast with the ancient attention to the process of lingcha.
The great sensitivity to and emphasis on sounds were translated into the wide use
of onomatopoeia in the Pre-Qin period. The Book of Poetry opens with birds’ singing
“Guan! Guan! Cry the fish hawks”. A close investigation by lingcha indicates that the
collection of poems records natural sounds (such as those of worms, animals, wind,
rain, thunder, and water) and sounds of human activities (such as those of carriages
and horses, the military troops, bells and drums, logging, mowing, gold and iron, jade
and stone). Statistically, there are more than 120 “landscapes” in the collection, and
at least 53 out of the total 300 poems use onomatopoeic words, which contributes to
the poetic beauty of The Book of Poetry. Though after the Pre-Qin period, there was
an obvious increase of the use of visual imagery in literature, one example of which
was The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons which defined “Fu” (a special
genre) by comparing its “richness of patterns” with “that of carving and painting”,
but this does not mean that acoustic narrative has declined ever since. If the use of
onomatopoeic words, which is more closely linked to oral transmission, is not as
frequent as in The Book of Poetry, the use of “hearing similar sounds” and “hearing
shapes” is always on the rise in written literature. As such, the emphasis of rehearing
the classics should be placed on how the representation of sounds has evolved.
In many cases, written literature also resorts to onomatopoeic words for special
rhetorical effects. The sound of the striking clock in Dream of the Red Mansion
is appropriately described as “lo tang, lo tang” because the hearer here is an old
“Rehearing the Classics” 219

woman from the countryside who has no idea of a striking clock. That said, we have
to admit that onomatopoeia has lost popularity since The Classic of Poetry, as many
onomatopoetic words in the Pre-Qin period have gradually become obsolete and the
number of sound events in storytelling has become smaller and smaller. Yet reduced
number does not mean reduced importance. As we can see in many later works,
sound events are made to happen at the most critical moment so as to create a strong
impression on the reader. A perfect example is found in Chap. 55 of The Scholars:
Ching slowly tuned his strings and began to play. The clear notes woke the echoes all around,
and the birds alighted in the boughs to listen. Soon he turned to a tragic air, expressing grief
and longing, and as Old Yu heard the most moving passages the tears ran down his checks.
After this, the two friends were constantly together. But now Ching took his leave.34

The story ends with a note of “tragic air”. The rich and colorful depiction of the
evil sides of the scholars forms a sharp contrast with the brief sketch of the gathering
of the two unworldly hermits. Given that this sound event happens at the final yet
critical moment of the story, it echoes “Wang Mian drawing lotus” in Chap. 1, thus
highlighting the overall theme of “rejecting the corrupted scholars and turning to
common folks”.
The act of rehearing the classics may assume various forms. We can “hear” one
individual work, and we can also “hear” a group of works on the same topic, such as
rain, animals, bells, and musical strings. Lu You alone wrote more than ten poems
about the experience of “listening to rain”.35 Insofar as sounds have cultural associ-
ations, one important task of rehearing the classics is to categorize sounds. Besides,
it is equally important to re-advocate the traditional means of chanting and reciting,
as Zheng Qiao argued in The Annals of Music History, “It is not good that we can
just read and explain ancient poems without being able to sing them”. To appreciate
the classics, we need to get rid of the old reading habit of swallowing the contents
without thinking and re-reading the classics through our acoustic channel is like
consuming them by chewing them. As Zeng Guofan admonished, “With classics
like The Four Books, The Book of Poetry, Book of Change, Zuo Zhuan, Selections
of Refined Literature, poems by li Bai, Du Fu, Han Yu and Sushi, prose by Han Yu,
Ouyang Xiu, Zeng Gong, Wang Anshi, you cannot get their majestic beauty without
reading them loudly, or their subtlety without chanting them”.
Finally, I would clarify that the primary purpose of rehearing the classics is to re-
experience them. As associations from hearing are of necessity indefinite, we should
not always try to reach a consensus of opinion in our interpretation of any sound event.
Faced with the ambiguity of sound events, we need to adopt a diplomatic strategy
of “ambiguous response”. It is recorded in Spring and Autumn Annals of Han and
Jin Dynasty: Volume II that “when Emperor Huan of Han visited Fancheng, all the
common people went to watch, except for one old man who continued to plough
in solitude. Official Zhang Wen sent people to ask why but he didn’t answer and
instead let out a roar”. As for the meaning of the “roar”, the narrator does not offer

34 Wu (1973).
35 SanYe (2012).
220 10 Acoustic Narrative

any explanation, nor does he care to. The ambiguity of sound messages is especially
helpful to express the complexity of emotions which words fail to convey. In Chap. 98
of Dream of the Red Mansion, on her deathbed, Lin Daiyu cries: “Baoyu, Baoyu!
How you are…” Daiyu’s complicated feeling toward Baoyun is implied in the silence
of “not saying”. As these examples illustrate, experiencing the classics by way of
sound events is perhaps more valuable than offering a definitive interpretation to
them.
To be more precise, it does not really matter whether the sound events in the
fictional world are reliable or not, what matters is the impression and experience they
give rise to. Therefore, as a new approach to understanding the classics, “rehearing”,
like the Russian Formalist concept of defamiliarization, is aimed at enhancing our
sensory experience. To “rehear” the classics, and to “discover new forms of making
narrative sense”, one primary means will be, to borrow Cuddy-Keane words, “reading
for sonics rather than semantics, for percepts rather than concepts”.36

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