The Contemporary World in Republican-era Adaptations of Old Themes in Traditional Genres of Performative Literature: The Newest Version of the Complete Song of the Mutual Accusations of the Cat and the Mouse

Abstract

In her recent monograph on the bannermen tales (zidishu 子弟書) of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Elena Chiu discusses how the title heroine of Pu Songling’s 蒲松齡 (1640–1715) classical tale The Girl in the Green Dress (Lüyi nü 綠衣女) is turned into a young Manchu woman in terms of dress and hairstyle when the tale was adapted as a bannermen tale by one Zhuchuang 竹窗. Such changes are of course only to be expected when a story is reworked for performance at a later date, at a different place, and for a different audience. Some of such changes will be made inadvertently, but others will have been introduced on purpose to achieve a certain humorous effect by introducing anachronistic or otherwise outof-place persons, objects, or terminology. This is perhaps even more clearly demonstrated in a rewriting of Pu Songling’s The Painted Skin (Huapi 畫皮) as a danxian paiziqu 單線牌子曲 by Ye Shuting 葉 樹亭 of the early years of the twentieth century. In this well-known tale a young man while walking outside meets an attractive young woman and takes her home with him, where he installs her in his study, unbeknownst to his wife. The young man has a passionate affair with the woman, until he discovers she actually is an ugly demon dressed in a human skin—he observes her as she has taken off her skin and is touching it up. In Ye Shuting’s version the young girl at their first meeting is described as a typical high school student of those days: