Field songs are folk songs with a long history, which are popular and sung among farmer who work in the rice-growing field in busy farming seasons m the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtse River. Their typical singing form is that a mastersinger sings it with the accompaniment of gongs, drums, suona and other instruments, and it is characterized by large structure, dozens of interlinked melodie such as "Jiashan field song" of Zhejiang Province, "rice-seedling-transplanting work song" of Jiangsu Province, "tian shan'ge" of Shanghai .
In addition, there are diverse names and types such as "transplanting gong and drum song", 'weed-pulling gong and drum song", "cart and water gong and drum", "fanqiang", "washan (digging mountains) drum song", "wadi (digging field) drum song", "jiao-ge gong and drum song", "hua haozi work song".
(ChinaCulture.org August 2, 2005)
