Chedeng, also known as “Cheyaomei”, “Yaomeideng”, “Chechedeng”, or “Cailianchuan” (Colorful Lotus Boat) and “Paohanchuan” (Running Land Boat), is a kind of folk performance that the “Yaomei” (The youngest sister; performed by a man dressed as a woman) stands inside a festooned awninged boat, wiggles and moves as the clown (Pinyin: Xiaohualian) with a colorful fan in his hand and the boatman (Pinyin: Shaoweng) sing and accompany. Most of the librettos are off the cuff, the forms of singing are “rise, level, fall,” and its characteristic ending is the vocal accompaniment of “Jin Qian Mei Hua Luo” (a typically inserted sentence creating a happy atmosphere without specific meaning).
In 1951, Chongqing folk artists Tang Xinlin, Sun Qinghe, Li Kangsheng, etc. performed “Chechedeng” on the stage of the tea house with the prop of “Siyewa”Bamboo Clappers and the instrument of Erhu, developed the “two-phrase”tune structure from the single phrase (the level phrase), sung the stories and characters with as many as a hundred phrases and called it the “Chedeng Tune”. The tunes develop into sets of music and lead to the programming of appearance, posing, gait, movement, etc. of stage performance. In the first Sichuan Folk Art Performance in 1958, the Ode to the Great Leap of Chongqing adapted and performed by Tang Xinlin, and other artists were well received. Then the “Chedeng Tune became popular among people, “Chedeng” spread rapidly to different places, vocal accompaniment varieties exceeded ten, and the performance was carried out by multiple performers with diverse forms. Later it gradually becomes a significant variety of Sichuan folk art, and it still exists today.
In June 2008, the State Council of the P.R.C. approved listing Chedeng among the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage.
National-level representative inheritors: Tan Baishu, Huang Jisen
Municipal-level representative inheritors: Peng Hui, Zhou Chuanxun