Chinese
Recorded in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Canton and elsewhere, 1900s–1940s
Chinese early disc culture covers opera and narrative singing, regional folk and popular song, and instrumental solos and ensembles. Major dialect groups and theatrical genres appear under a single broad umbrella on the international market.
About this hearth
From the first years of the century, foreign and local companies recorded extensively in treaty ports and cultural capitals, with Shanghai a dominant hub for the industry. Peking opera, Cantonese opera, other regional operas, tanci and related narrative forms, and solo instruments such as erhu, pipa and dizi fill large stretches of the catalogues. Popular song and film-related material grew quickly in the interwar decades. The records preserve highly developed theatrical and literati traditions as well as the new urban entertainment of the gramophone age.
Recorded in: Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Canton
The music-makers and the dress
8 period photographs of this hearth's own music-makers and dress, every one dated from its source's own records. Pictures are shown as documentary record, credited to the holding collection; anything here is removed on request. Sources: Wikimedia Commons (8).
Press any photograph to open it full size — the player keeps going behind it.
Restored Recordings
Every track below is a remaster. Press play on the full sequence, or pick a single recording.
43786 A 林树森 徐策跑城
43831 B 2 徐淑贤 打渔杀家
852 A 36013 A 金少山 盗御马 头段
三娘教子
京剧《桑园寄子》
About the restoration
Every recording here is a historical track sourced from a public archive and remastered through a purpose-built chain — the same fixed chain for every file, no machine-learning enhancement. The aim is simple: sound better, and meet YouTube's audio standards. Rights status differs per recording and sources are credited where known; anything still in copyright is published with attribution and removed on request. The surface noise of the original transfer is still audible, because removing it completely would mean removing the recording too. How the restoration works →