Ventriloquism is an excellent folk performance skill and a type of acrobatics.

OriginIn ancient times, people used hunting, imitating the sounds of animals, to trick prey into obtaining food. According to historical records, in the story of "Meng Weijun's Night Invasion of Hangu Pass" during the Warring States Period, "Chicken Singing and Dog Thief" was the first to apply ventriloquism to the military.

By the Song Dynasty, ventriloquism had become a fairly mature performing art, commonly known as "next door play".

From the Song Dynasty to the Republic of China, it was popular in Hangzhou, and performers used their mouth, teeth, lips, tongue, throat, nose and other vocal organs to imitate various sounds of nature, such as birds and beasts, wind, rain, thunder and lightning, and so on.

It can make the listener feel immersive. This kind of skill belonged to one of the "hundred operas" in the Qing Dynasty.

There is a man in the capital who is good at ventriloquism. One day, in the middle of a large banquet to entertain the guests, in the northeast corner of the living room, an eight-foot-high curtain was placed, and the ventriloquist sat in the curtain, in which only a table, a chair, a fan, and a piece of waking wood were placed.

The guests sat together in front of the curtain. After a while, I only heard a shot of waking wood in the curtain, and the audience fell silent, and no one dared to speak loudly.

In the distance, the barking of dogs in the deep alleys was heard, followed by the sound of women yawning and stretching as she shook her husband and talked about the relationship between husband and wife.

The husband was talking in his sleep, and at first he did not agree much to her, but the woman shook him incessantly, so that the voices of the two of them gradually intermingled, and the bed made a "rattle" sound from it. After a while the child woke up and cried loudly.

The husband asked his wife to soothe the child and breastfeed him, and the child cried with his nipple in his mouth, and the woman hummed and sang to coax him. The husband gets up to urinate, and the woman also takes the child in her arms and gets up to urinate.

The other older child in the bed woke up and nagged loudly. At this time, the sound of the woman patting the child with her hands, the sound of humming and coaxing the child, the crying of the child with the nipple, the sound of the older child just waking up, the sound of the bed coming out, the sound of the husband scolding the older child, the sound of urine untying into the bottle, the sound of untying into the bucket, all kinds of wonderful effects are heard at the same time.

Not a single guest in the room did not stretch their necks, squint their eyes, smile slightly, and silently admire, thinking that it was wonderful.

After a while, the husband's snoring sounded, and the woman's beating of the child gradually stopped.

The sound of rats moving was faintly heard, the basins and utensils were crooked, and the woman coughed in her dreams.

The mood of the guests relaxed a little, and gradually straightened their sitting posture.

Suddenly a man cried out, "There is a fire," and the husband arose and cried out with a loud voice, and the woman arose and cried with a loud voice.

The two children cried together. In a moment, hundreds of people shouted, hundreds of children cried, and hundreds of dogs barked.

In the middle was the sound of crackling and collapsing houses, the sound of fire burning and crackling, the sound of whirring wind, and a thousand sounds sounded at once; It was mixed with the sounds of hundreds of people crying for help, the shouts of the firefighters as they pulled down the burning houses, the sound of rescuing things, and the sound of splashing water.

Whatever sound should be there in this case, there is nothing that is not.

Even if a man has hundreds of hands, and each hand has hundreds of fingers, it is impossible to point out which sound among them; Even if a person has hundreds of mouths, and each mouth has hundreds of tongues, he can't name one of them.

In this case, the guests did not fail to change their faces in fright, and left their seats, rolled up their sleeves to expose their arms, their thighs trembled, and they almost wanted to run away first.

Yangzhou artist Guo Maoer is good at ventriloquism, and the local magnates and gentry like him very much. Geng Shennian and I (the original author) were in Yangzhou, and a friend brought Guo Maoer to be a guest. During the banquet, Guo Maoer performed a performance for everyone.

He hid behind the screen next to the banquet and was silent for a few moments. Suddenly, I heard two people meeting on the way, greeting each other, and the voice was an old and a young.

The old man took the young man to his house to drink, and after a while, the young man was drunk and resigned, and the old man persuaded him to have another drink, and the young man drank it all and thanked him and left.

Listening to the master close the door, the young man staggered farther and farther away. Suddenly, there was a sound of falling, and there was no movement.

In another moment, a passer-by shouted, it turned out that the young man had fallen down due to drunkenness, and it was an acquaintance who was passing by, and sent him home.

When the dog barks when he knocks on the door, the neighbor's dog barks as well.

The young man's wife answered the door, passers-by said goodbye, and the wife helped her husband to the bed, chattering and complaining.

Then they went to sleep, and the young man suddenly vomited again, and the wife got up to look for a basin, and the husband had vomited on the ground.

The wife kept scolding, tossing and turning for a while, and finally quieted down.

A moment later, the father came to call his son to get up and kill the pig, and everyone realized that the ventriloquist was describing a butcher.

The young man got up, and the father and son dragged their feet to the pigsty, and the sound of tying pigs, sharpening knives, and killing pigs came out one after another.

The father said, "Let's start selling meat!" Immediately there were many voices of people buying meat, some buying pigs' heads, some buying offal, some picking fat and thin, and some counting money.

In the midst of the disturbance, there was a snap of the ruler, all the sounds disappeared, and Guo Mao'er walked out from behind the screen.

……

A ventriloquist entered the empty room with a fan and a ruler.

There was a conversation between husband and wife in the house, and the content was about the New Year.

Then the husband took the money to buy sacrificial things and bargained with the shopkeepers. When he returned, he knocked on the door and asked his wife to cook the sacrifice.

Just listen to brush the pot, fetch water, light the fire, and set the table......

Suddenly, a few debt collectors came, and the master said good things and asked for an extension to next year, but the debt collectors, both men and women, refused to gossip.

Gradually, the quarrel and finally the fight. For a while, the sound of toppling the table, breaking the dishes, the persuasion of the neighbors, mixed with the crying of children, the barking of dogs outside the door, and the sound of the group came out in unison, vividly.

Everyone was listening intently, and suddenly there was a sound of the ruler, and there was silence in the room.

……

A twenty-four-five-year-old woman came to the village, carrying a medicine bag to sell medicine.

Some people came to see a doctor, and the woman said that she couldn't see a doctor, and she wanted to ask the gods at night.

At night, the woman shut herself in a very small room, and the people who sought the doctor stood outside the window and listened, and everyone did not dare to make a sound, and occasionally spoke, and their voices were kept very low.

After the people were completely silent, the sound of the curtain being lifted could be heard in the house. The woman in the house said, "The ninth aunt is here!" One woman replied, "Here we are!" Then the woman said, "Lamei has also come." ”

Then the three of them began to chat, listening to the content, Lamei was the maid of Jiugu.

After a while, the curtain hook sounded again, and the woman said, "The sixth aunt is here!" Then he smiled and said, "Chunmei brought the little boy here!" Another girl's voice said: "The little boy doesn't sleep, you must follow the lady, it's so heavy, I'm tired to death!" ”

Then the sixth aunt and the ninth aunt greeted each other, the two maidservants whispered, and the children laughed, and it was noisy.

The conversation of several people gradually thinned out, and another fourth aunt came, and everyone had a pleasantry, and the fourth aunt said that she came from thousands of miles away, so she was late.

The woman began to ask the patient about her condition, and after the fairy aunts discussed, the ninth aunt called for pen and ink, and then heard the sound of grinding ink.

I thought that the prescription had been written, and the medicine began to be packed, and the friction paper made a trembling sound.

The woman handed out the herbs and prescriptions through the crack in the door, and closed the door tightly, and the voices of the fairy girls saying goodbye sounded for a while, and then returned to silence.

The villagers all think that the woman is really psychic, and there are many people who come to buy medicine.

The woman left the next day, and there was no significant improvement after taking the medicine.

Pu Songling said: "This is a trick of the rivers and lakes, the woman relies on ventriloquism to deceive people and sell medicine." But the voices of the three fairy girls are different, or clear, old, or delicate, and the voices of the two maids are also different. This man is a ventriloquist. ”

……

Meng Weijun was imprisoned by King Qin Zhao.

A doorman pretended to be a dog and stole the white fox fur and gave it to the favorite concubine of King Qin, the favorite concubine interceded, and Meng Weijun was released. He galloped to the mainland overnight, and it was not dawn when he arrived at Hangu Pass, and the guards could only switch it when they heard the rooster crow.

And King Qin Zhao regretted it and sent people to chase after him.

Another doorman is good at learning the crowing of chickens, and the chickens are all crowing. Meng Weijun thus survived to his homeland.

That's the story about ventriloquism.