When Buddhism prevailed in the Tang Dynasty, believers not only sang Buddhist scriptures to tell historical stories, but also told folk current events, such as Hu Qiu's novels and Zhang Yichao's essays. In the Song Dynasty, it evolved from "Bianwen" to drum characters, and some professional scripts appeared. These words have been polished by the scribe and have a high artistic quality. From the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, drum words became increasingly popular in the north and gradually spread to the south.
The history of Hubei drum book is rarely recorded in the official history. Tracing back to the master-apprentice relationship of drum calligraphers, it is speculated that there were famous drum calligraphers as disciples in the late Daoguang period of Qing Dynasty. It must have been circulating for a long time before this. Among them, Ding Haizhou (Ding Tieban), an early famous artist, is said to have made a living by performing from Shandong to Wuhan, Hubei via Henan. He has studied under five disciples, namely, Kuang Yushan, Pan Hanchi, Wang Mingle, Chen and so on, and has gone through seven generations of mentoring. At the same time, there are Wei (that is, Wei Guangshan) and Liu (that is, Liu Huangchuan) from Henan, as well as drum artists such as Gong Boting and Liu.
Drummers from the north still retain the characteristics of northern drum songs when they rap. With a northern accent, they beat drums and rap with two crescent-shaped steel sickles (or iron or copper) in one hand and a wooden stick in the other. Later, in order to be easily accepted by Hubei people, their apprentices gradually switched to singing with Hubei accent, and their singing style changed, and gradually adopted the accent that local people liked. Then, the steel sickle was gradually replaced by the cloud plate, and the drum was changed into a small drum. Rap is also a local accent, which is welcomed by the local people and becomes more and more popular until Wuhan, eastern Hubei, northern Hubei and other vast areas. In this way, drum writing took root, blossomed and shaped in Hubei, and became an important school in Hubei.