Wumudi is a village about two hours' drive from central Beijing.

Its name means "a land of five mu" (five mu are 0.33 hectares). Located in rural Beijing's Miyun County, it looks no different from any other village in north China.

Low-level brick houses dot the landscape, most with dried corn stalks stacked in the courtyard. The area has few outside visitors.

However, anyone who happens to go to the village on a Sunday will surely hear an ensemble of a peculiar timbre coming out of a house in the middle of the village, with a man singing.

The ensemble members usually do not have an audience.

The ensemble, with its five members aged between 57 and 76, is the only group in the village that performs wuyin dagu, a traditional form of singing-storytelling performance that was popular among country people in north China's Hebei Province and Beijing.

In the first half of the 20th century, there were many semi-professional musicians in Wumudi, who often toured nearby villages to perform wuyin dagu during the slack season.

There was a time when Wumudi and its musicians had won such renown that roaming performers from other places would usually bypass the village. "They were afraid of us critical villagers," recalled 57-year-old Li Maosheng, whose father Li Jinyi was a famed wuyin dagu singer.

Li Jinyi, who was born around 1900, became well-known at the age of 15.

Li Maosheng said his father was good at performing long works that would last weeks or even months. They were mostly adapted from historical novels, such as Warriors of the Yang Family of the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The main characters of such works are usually legendary heroes whose lives have been retold again and again for generations.

Folktales are another textual source for wuyin dagu. Works of this kind are usually of medium length, lasting several hours, and include Shuiman Jinshan (Golden Mountain Flooded), part of Baishe Zhuan (The Legend of the White Snake), and Santang Huishen (Joint Inquest by Three Judges).

There are also short pieces in wuyin dagu. In Li Jinyi's time, they were often performed before long works as an opening program.

Such pieces are either humorous stories of everyday life or ballads with a moral tale.

As with most genres of Chinese folk music, traditional wuyin dagu singers adopted an oral method of teaching and studying, using neither scores nor books of lyrics.

By listening to and imitating his father, Li Maosheng learned the melodies, songs and stories. But he said he couldn't perform any of the long works in full.

Nowadays, no one is sure about the history of wuyin dagu. The unnoticed school of shuochang -- category of traditional Chinese folk music in which speaking and singing are blended and mutually influence one another to strengthen the narrative -- scarcely can be found in any textbooks on the history of Chinese music.

We only know that it originated in the 19th century in the countryside of present-day Hebei Province and Beijing.

Wuyin dagu is part of the wider dagu family, a division of shuochang or singing-storytelling performance in which the singer accompanies himself or herself with a drum and ban -- a percussion instrument made of two wooden boards.

The most famous other schools of dagu include jingyun dagu and xihe dagu, where the performer sings and talks in local Beijing dialect.

In the early 20th century, jingyun dagu and xihe dagu became established in Beijing and Tianjin. However, wuyin dagu remained based in the countryside and untouched by modern methods of distribution.

Wuyin dagu has not left behind recordings or stories of well-known performers as have its urban brothers and sisters.

"My father used to tell me that a singer of wuyin dagu should send every word to the ears of the audience," said Li Maosheng. "And the sound of each of the five instruments should be distinctive from each other."

Like Li Maosheng, his four partners in the ensemble all have their own stories to tell.

His daqin (dulcimer) partner is 76-year-old Qi Dianzhang, who used to play with Li Maosheng's father.

The daqin that Qi now plays was bought in 1949 from a nearby village for 37.5 kilograms of rice.

Qi said the original owner was said a distant relative of the imperial family and instrument collector, but Qi did not know how old the daqin was.

In 1950, Qi made his own sihu (a four-stringed bowed instrument) with a bomb casing and cow bones. He gave it to his younger brother Qi Dianming, who, now 68 years old, plays the same sihu in Qi Dianzhang and Li Maosheng's group.

The other two members of the group are 60-year-old Jia Yunming, who plays the sanxian (a three-stringed plucked instrument), and 59-year-old Chen Zhenquan, who plays the waqin (a bowed instrument that developed from the zheng, a traditional plucked instrument.) Their instruments have been passed down to them from their fathers or grandfathers.

Qi Dianzhang said his was the fourth generation in his family to perform wuyin dagu, as far as he knows.

When he was a young man, he toured with other musicians to perform not only in Miyun County but also in the neighboring mountainous Xinglong and Luanping counties and Chengde city, all in Hebei Province.

In every village where they went, they would build a stage on empty ground to put on their show. Their performance was always warmly welcomed and the villagers paid them in money and crops.

Some farmers came from dozens of kilometers away to see the performance.

Half a century has since passed. Qi Dianzhang, Qi Dianming, Jia Yunming, Chen Zhenquan and Li Maosheng are now practically the only wuyin dagu performers in Miyun County.

In his youth, Qi Dianzhang used to study wuyin dagu in Dashimen, another village in Minyun, but the sound of wuyin dagu can no longer be heard there.

Young people in Wumudi village have various entertainment options but no one seems to consider performing wuyin dagu as a vocation.

The five old musicians are occasionally invited to perform at farmers' weddings or birthday parties. Otherwise, they gather at Qi Dianming's home every Sunday to play together just for fun.

"My father performed wuyin dagu to earn some crops and clothes," said Li Maosheng. "Now, we don't worry about earning a living but I often feel guilty that we are not able to pass on our tradition to the young generations."

Li Maosheng has been noting down the lyrics that he can remember, fearing that the works will become totally lost.

A wuyin dagu piece usually starts with an opening poem.

Now Li Maosheng has a new opening poem to recite. It was written in rhyme by Jia Yunming, the sanxian player:

"An old art born among the folks

Passed from generation to generation to this day

We are the fourth generation to learn it

But we don't know when it began

As our ancestors didn't tell us

And the history book lacks this page

The five performers are old

Hoping there will be successors."

(China Daily January 13, 2003)