In the rural areas around Yancheng and Funing, there have been witch fairs in history, including: praying for a bumper harvest for seedling fairs and seedling fairs; Extend happiness and eliminate disasters, be a Taiping meeting, a Mars meeting, etc.

With the change of history, this kind of performance has been enriched continuously, and after a long period of evolution, it has gradually developed into a incense play.

Incense Opera is a local opera closely related to folk belief in ghosts and gods, also known as Three Fires and Three Fires, which was finally formed around the first year of Tongzhi in Qing Dynasty (1862).

Its singing is composed of incense popular in China and Huai Bangzi popular in Huaiyin and Baoying.

At the same time, incense artists often join hands with gate artists, so many tunes in incense plays come from gate valves.

Yancheng dialect belongs to Jianghuai Mandarin, the China Mandarin dialect.

Yancheng dialect has the common linguistic features of Jianghuai dialect, but it also has some characteristics of its own.

Yancheng dialect has certain regional differences, which can be roughly divided into three parts: Fu Bin, Jianyan and Fengtai.

Fengtai film is distributed in Dafeng and Dongtai, influenced by the neighboring Taizhou and Xinghua dialects, and has the characteristics of Jianghuai dialect Tairu film, which belongs to Jianghuai Mandarin Tairu film. For example, some ancient voiced initials are voiced. Today, voiced initials are disyllabic, while words are disyllabic and tones are disyllabic.

There is no such phenomenon in the small piece of Fu Bin, which basically retains the characteristics of Hong Chao piece in Jianghuai dialect and belongs to Hong Chao piece in Jianghuai Mandarin, located in Funing and Binhai.

Jianpian is distributed in Tinghu, Du Yan and Jianhu, which is in the transitional zone between Hong Chao and Tairu, and has the characteristics of overlapping. However, Hong Chao's film is characterized by being too milky, but it still belongs to Hong Chao's film in Jianghuai Mandarin.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, with the development of social economy and culture, especially the popularization of education and Putonghua, the differences between the old and the new Yancheng dialect have become increasingly obvious. Some old voices and words are gradually being replaced by new ones. For example, the title of father has changed from "grandfather" to "father".