This year is the 20th anniversary of the Suzhou Pingtan (a form of storytelling and ballad singing in the Suzhou dialect) Collection and Appreciation Association. Recently, numerous pingtan amateurs and masters from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai gathered and appreciated pingtan collections in the China Suzhou Pingtan Museum.

The Suzhou Pingtan Collection and Appreciation Association was established in October 1993 and has attracted scores of pingtan lovers over the years. The first collectors began to accumulate pingtan materials from the 1950s and 1960s. Thirty years later, most of them possessed pingtan videos totaling thousands of hours, far more than those stored in some pingtan troupes, schools and museums. Their rich pingtan collections also included publications, pictures, signatures of performers and other materials, even rivaling the folk pingtan museum.

Yin Dequan has a collection of pingtan painting and calligraphy created by renowned masters. Zhou Kemin’s collection of pingtan scripts and manuscripts are very precious. Zhang Shaozeng from Shanghai has collected over 1,300 signatures from famous pingtan artists. Cheng Zuming from Shanghai has the most old pingtan records.

These pingtan lovers had seen a foreign gramophone from which old-fashioned pingtan tunes reminded them of the old days.