Refers to the style of cuan shizi 攢十字 [collecting ten words] that often appears in folk songs and chatafables. Cuan shizi, as the name suggests, has ten words/characters in a line, which can be punctuated into a 3-3-4 structure. According to scholar Ling Yuzhi 凌郁之, this language style appears to have two functions:
(1) to narrate long monologues by characters (this is also seen in other tanci fictions such as Tianyu hua 天雨花 [Flowers raining from the heaven] and Bisheng hua 筆生花 [Flowering brush]);
(2) to elaborately illustrate the appearance of characters or the surroundings of space.
See Ling Yuzhi, “’Cuan shizi’ de quyi bingfu” “攢十字”的曲藝稟賦 [The nature of ‘collecting ten words’ in folk art forms], Zhongguo shehuikexue xuebao guojia shekejijin zhuankan 中國社會科學報國家社科基金專刊, 2019. http://www.nopss.gov.cn/BIG5/n1/2019/0227/c373410-30905467.html
