This multimedia publication on narrative songs from southern China brings together audio recordings, documentary video, song texts and their English translation, as well as introductory essays. The songs, recorded in the early 1990s in New York City by the Asian American Arts Centre, were sung by Ng Sheung Chi, or Uncle Ng, of Toisan County (Taishan in Mandarin) in the Pearl River Delta. A farmer all his life but also a superb singer of a type of narrative folksong called muk’yu (“wooden fish”), Ng immigrated to New York in 1979 at the age of 69, and continued to sing his beloved muk’yu songs, on Chinatown street corners, in neighborhood parks, in community centres, and anywhere else, with or without an audience. The original recordings and the video documentary form part of the Asian American Arts Centre's work to collect, document, and exhibit community arts, preserve Uncle Ng’s artistry and capture precious moments of his singing and ruminations about his life and music. The publication is a testimony of Uncle Ng not only as a singer of unheralded folk music in its pristine form, but also of his contributions to the Chinese American community in New York City.

Open resources:

download your copy of

/ video documentary

(16 mins, English subtitles, mpeg2 format, playable with home DVD)

/ 8 muk'yu songs

(68 mins, wav format, playable with CD player)