Suzhou Tanci, referred to as Tanci, originated in Suzhou, Jiangsu, and prevailed in the Yangtze River Delta region of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. It is a kind of rap art with a combination of rhyme and prose, with narration as the main part and endorsement as the supplement. The language used is Suzhou dialect. The main artistic means of Tanci are speaking, answering, playing and singing. Shuo is a combination of narration and endorsement, which has both third-person narration and first-person role.

Suzhou Tanci has its artistic characteristics of reason, taste, interest and cleverness. His songs are usually seven-sentence, which rhymes with pentatonic or Zhongzhou. The basic tune "Book Tone" is sung in a clear and fluent chanting style. The tone of the book is mainly based on language factors, advocating clear articulation and full of charm. Standard basic tunes can be improvised into various bibliographic songs with the content, so-called "sing one song, sing a hundred songs".

The performance form of Suzhou Tanci is very flexible, and the traditional performance form is divided into single file and double file. Single file is the actor's own performance and singing; The two gears are divided into "hands-on" and "hands-on". Hand-made mainly rap, self-playing sanxian, hand-made pipa. Later, the form of third grade or even group singing was developed.

Suzhou Tanci can be roughly divided into three schools: Chen (Yu Gan), Yu (Xiushan) and Ma (Rufei). Chen Diao is vigorous and powerful, which is suitable for expressing tragic and generous feelings. Representative actors include Yang Zhenxiong and Jiang Yuequan. Yu's melody is slow, tortuous, intense, smooth and euphemistic, which is called "three turns and nine turns". The representative actors are Qi and Xia. The horse is simple and refreshing, with strong charm, strong tune and good narrative.