Nanjing Baiju: Listening to a City Breathe

Nanjing Baiju: Listening to a City Breathe 

Introduction

If a city could breathe, then among the sounds Nanjing exhales, Baiju would surely be there.

It is not a silent artifact in a museum. Nor is it a cold entry in a textbook.

It is the sound of weavers singing in their workshops six hundred years ago. It is also the folk memory of a grandmother tapping on a bowl, singing an old tale to her grandchildren.We want you to hear this sound, not to memorize knowledge about it, but to feel something:

This is a person singing.

This is a child laughing.

This is a city, breathing.

What is Baiju?

Imagine a picture like this: a group of weavers, holding their rice bowls and chopsticks, singing while they work. They sing about their hardships, they chat about everyday life, and their audience is just the co-worker at the next loom. No charge, no fame. Just for the joy of it.

That is Baiju.

"Bai" means "free," "Ju" means "a performance." Put them together, and you get something like a busker's show, except instead of a guitar case, the payment is just: showing up, listening, being there.

It was born in the Nanjing yunjin (cloud-pattern brocade) workshops during the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, rising and falling with the fortunes of the brocade trade. By the mid-20th century, it was on the verge of disappearing. Thanks to preservation efforts, in 2008, Nanjing Baiju was added to the National Intangible Cultural Heritage list (No. Ⅴ-81), with the Qinhuai District of Nanjing as the nominating region.

Performed in the authentic old Nanjing dialect of the city's southern districts, Baiju artists use plates and bowls as percussion instruments, blending speech and song to tell stories of ordinary people. Representative pieces include “Jifang Ku” (Hardships in the Workshop), “Da Yiyuan” (Beating the Councilman), and “Jinling Bian Di Jing” (Scenes of Jinling) , capturing the weavers' sorrow, the humor of the streets, and the unique charm of old Nanjing.

Why Baiju Matters

l.Another China, Through a Different Window

High-speed trains. Skyscrapers. A booming economy.

This is the China often told in Western media, and it's real. But there is another China, too: the China of ordinary days—working, griping, finding joy in small things.

In Baiju, there are no emperors or generals. Only the sweat of weavers, the ducks on the street, the alleyways of the old city. It sings about rising before dawn and working until late at night. It tells of losing a duck and searching every corner in a panic, like a national treasure has gone missing. It echoes with that simple daily greeting—"Have you eaten yet?" , carrying warmth and care between neighbors.

Through Baiju, you see a different China. One that breathes, laughs, and feels.

ll.A Record of Who We Are

Baiju is like an old photograph, but one you hear. It captures the real Nanjing: the street vendor's call, the steam rising from a wonton stand. The city breathing.It reminds us that every place has its own sound. And that sound deserves to be heard. 

In the era of globalization,we scroll through the same TikTok videos. We wear the same sneakers. We play the same games.The more we share, the more we forget: where we come from, and what our own voice sounds like.

This is not just about Nanjing.

If you're from London, you know Cockney rhyming slang. If you're from New York, you know the Brooklyn accent. Wherever you're from, there's a sound that takes you home.

Baiju is a key. It opens a bigger question:

Why does local culture matter?

III. Art for Everyone

Art doesn't have to live in museums and galleries. Sometimes it lives in the bowl in your hand, the tune on your lips. In the ordinary moments of an ordinary day, a seed of beauty can grow.

Baiju proves this.

It was never music for the elite. No grand halls, no high art pretensions. It was sung for weavers and neighbors, for everyone living their life with care. It came from daily life, and it went right back there. It made people happy. It moved them. In the most ordinary of days, it planted a seed of beauty.

Who Will Sing Next?

Baiju is not in an easy place.

Fewer people speak the old Nanjing dialect. Young audiences find traditional folk music unfamiliar. Some think it sounds "dated," some find it "noisy." The China Intangible Cultural Heritage website officially lists Nanjing Baiju as an "endangered art form," noting that it "urgently needs protection and preservation."The older generation of artists is fading, and for those who might take their place, making a living is hard.

These are struggles shared by many traditional art forms. But with Baiju, something else happens too: there are people who simply refuse to let go.

The old masters keep singing.

Huang Lingling has been teaching and performing at the Ganxi Former Residence,for free,as a labor of love,for over twenty years.She first learned Baiju at 14. She has now been singing for more than six decades. Not for fame. Not for applause. Just so Baiju can still be heard.And her daughter felt the pull too. She left her job at a foreign company, the kind of career many aspire to,to work alongside her mother, carrying Baiju forward. From a corporate office to a historic house in Nanjing. From white-collar worker to cultural inheritor. The path she walked back is exactly the path Baiju needs to walk forward.

One generation held on. The next is reaching out.

Children are learning too. Eighteen primary and secondary schools in Nanjing, along with five universities, now have Baiju heritage programs. Tens of thousands of students have encountered the art through the "Intangible Heritage on Campus" initiative. Their Nanjing dialect is still wobbly, their singing far from polished. But they sing with all the seriousness they have.

They may not fully understand what "heritage" means. They may not know the word "tradition."But they know this is a song their grandmothers sang. This is a tune their teacher taught them. This is their own voice.

And so Baiju keeps breathing,because someone, somewhere, refuses to stop singing.

Why It Deserves to Be Saved

l. A Living Record of Language and History

The old Nanjing dialect, the one spoken in Baiju ,is disappearing. Fewer people use it in daily life. But the accent, the rhythm, the words,they're all still there, preserved in Baiju's verses.

Baiju is a sound archive of Nanjing's voice. A time capsule. A place where a way of speaking, and a way of life, can still be heard.

ll. The Roots of a City's Memory

Baiju is the oldest form of folk art in Nanjing. Everything that came after, Nanjing storytelling, local ballads, grew from it. Think of Nanjing's culture as a tree. Baiju is the root: underground, invisible, but holding everything up.

Keep Baiju alive, and you keep the roots alive too.

lll. A Bridge Between People, and Between Times

For someone from Nanjing, Baiju is the sound of home. No matter how far you go, one line of that dialect, one phrase like "Have you eaten yet?",and you're back.

For someone new to the city, Baiju is a window. Through it, you see how ordinary people here lived, laughed, and found joy in small things.

For everyone, Baiju is a reminder: every place has a voice. And that voice deserves to be heard and remembered.

It connects past and present. It connects us to each other.

Listening to Nanjing: Three Ways to Understand Its Voice

1. The "Shao" — Like a Dog Who's Just Happy to See You

There's a word in Nanjing dialect: shao. It means "talks too much." But not in an annoying way.

Imagine a golden retriever who won't stop licking your face. You're saying, "Okay, okay, enough." But you're also smiling. You don't really want it to stop.

That's shao. It's talkative. It's affectionate. It's Nanjing's way of saying: I'm here, I'm with you, I care.

2. "Have You Eaten Yet?" — The Nanjing Version of Talking About Weather

In London, you talk about the weather. It's polite. It's safe. It's how you acknowledge another person's existence without getting too personal.

In Nanjing, people ask: "Have you eaten yet?" (A chi guo la?)

It's not about food. It's the same thing, a way of saying, I see you. I hope you're okay. We're in this together.

3. Baiju and the Nanjing Dialect — Like a Handwritten Letter in Your Grandmother's Voice

A letter keeps someone's words. But a recording keeps their voice—the crackle, the warmth, the way they said your name.

Baiju does that for Nanjing. It's not just the words. It's the sound of them. The feeling of another time, reaching forward to touch you.

So why go through all this? Why ask someone on the other side of the world to listen to a dialect folk song from one Chinese city?

Maybe the answer is this:

TikTok shows us how we're the same. The same dances, the same jokes, the same sounds filling headphones everywhere.

But there's another kind of sound. The one that tells you who you are. The one that knows where you're from.

Nanjing Baiju is not a thing of the past. It's still breathing. The plates are still being tapped. The old dialect is still being sung. The free show, the bai ju, goes on.

Listen. This is Nanjing, answering.

Sources

During the writing of this article, the following publicly available reports and materials were consulted:

1.China Intangible Cultural Heritage Website. (n.d.). Basic Information on Nanjing Baiju. https://www.ihchina.cn/Article/Index/detail?id=13721

2.Nanjing Municipal People’s Government. (2025). Five Individuals from Nanjing Selected as Sixth-Group National-Level Inheritors of Intangible Cultural Heritage. https://www.nanjing.gov.cn/njxx/202503/t20250318_5097327.html

3.Jiangnan Times. (2025). Qinglan Ji (8): A Lifetime for One Opera – Mother and Daughter Take Turns to Preserve Baiju. https://m.thepaper.cn/baijiahao_31593542

4.Nanjing Municipal People’s Government. (2018). “Nanjing Baiju” Inter-School Alliance: Letting Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture Take Root on Campus. https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2018-06-14/doc-ihcwpcmr0410165.shtml

5.Qinhuai District People’s Government of Nanjing. (2025). Five Measures from Qinhuai District Revitalize National Intangible Cultural Heritage Nanjing Baiju. http://www.njqh.gov.cn/ywdt/qhdt/202511/t20251113_5688476.html

Text: Zhe Wu, Yinuo Wang