Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2022.a873831
Yihui Sheng
{"title":"The Queen of Kunqu—In Memory of Hua Wenyi","authors":"Yihui Sheng","doi":"10.1353/cop.2022.a873831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2022.a873831","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"41 1","pages":"219 - 222"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66888466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2022.a873829
W. Idema
{"title":"Pu Songling: The Union of Beast and Beauty","authors":"W. Idema","doi":"10.1353/cop.2022.a873829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2022.a873829","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"41 1","pages":"182 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49547804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2022.a862268
B. Yung
Abstract:In 1828, a volume of about one-hundred song lyrics, titled Yue'ou 粵謳(Cantonese Songs), was published in Canton. The songs are mainly composed in the voice of courtesans on Pearl River's pleasure boats, who sang to their lovers with tenderness, yearning, and often despair; some are in the voice of the author, Zhao Ziyong 招子庸 (1795?–1847), who warns the women and men not to fall in love since that always ends in heartbreak. These songs became celebrated because of their pathbreaking use of Cantonese language, such natural colloquialisms enhancing the song's expressivity. The fates of most of these women add to the songs' poignancy: sold to their "mother" as little girls, they were trained in the fine arts of pleasing men, including singing and playing the pipa, until at around thirteen years of age they assumed the role of courtesan. Living in opulent furnishings on the flower boats, which disappeared by the 1930s, their best hope was to become someone's concubine, their worst fate to be banished to the streets when their beauty faded. The article includes a rare recording, made in 1980, of a Yue'ou song as performed by an elderly woman who had been a blind professional singer during the flower boats' heyday, and its transcription.
{"title":"The Scholar and the Courtesan: Songs on the Pearl River's Flower Boats","authors":"B. Yung","doi":"10.1353/cop.2022.a862268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2022.a862268","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1828, a volume of about one-hundred song lyrics, titled Yue'ou 粵謳(Cantonese Songs), was published in Canton. The songs are mainly composed in the voice of courtesans on Pearl River's pleasure boats, who sang to their lovers with tenderness, yearning, and often despair; some are in the voice of the author, Zhao Ziyong 招子庸 (1795?–1847), who warns the women and men not to fall in love since that always ends in heartbreak. These songs became celebrated because of their pathbreaking use of Cantonese language, such natural colloquialisms enhancing the song's expressivity. The fates of most of these women add to the songs' poignancy: sold to their \"mother\" as little girls, they were trained in the fine arts of pleasing men, including singing and playing the pipa, until at around thirteen years of age they assumed the role of courtesan. Living in opulent furnishings on the flower boats, which disappeared by the 1930s, their best hope was to become someone's concubine, their worst fate to be banished to the streets when their beauty faded. The article includes a rare recording, made in 1980, of a Yue'ou song as performed by an elderly woman who had been a blind professional singer during the flower boats' heyday, and its transcription.","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"41 1","pages":"37 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66888441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2022.a862266
C. Swatek, Robert E. Hegel
Given his publication record, one might assume that David L. Rolston is a scholar of narrative fiction. For his first major publication, David served as editor of How to Read the Chinese Novel, a milestone in providing English-language readers a glimpse of reading practices and practical criticism contemporaneous with Ming and Qing novels themselves. Not merely the compiler of the translations that comprise six of the book’s seven chapters, David’s work can be seen throughout the volume, from adding innumerable notes and explanations to the “How to Read” (dufa讀法) translations; to writing essays on the sources, history, and formal aspects of traditional fiction criticism; to compiling explanatory appendices and an extensive bibliography for each of the masterworks covered. This project was completed before David finished his Chicago doctorate. His 1988 dissertation, well over 1000 pages long, fills four binders; its nominal topic is the eighteenth-century Rulin waishi 儒林外史 (The Scholars in its English translation). But in contrast to other dissertations of that period, David’s concerns were in no way limited to this one great novel. That is, as with so many of his other projects, the dissertation explored not only the text but also, in considerable detail, its social and literary contexts. In effect, this doctoral work provided the foundation for two of his later major publications in this field. A prime example is its multifaceted exploration of traditional fiction criticism: although it concentrates on commentaries on Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳 (Water Margin) and Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 (The Plum in the Golden Vase), his original observations on the rise and development of fiction criticism in his dissertation would contribute substantially to a later, major publication. David’s second publication in the field of vernacular literature studies (both fiction and drama) was his nearly monograph-length “Oral Performing Literature in Traditional Chinese Fiction: Nonrealistic Usages in the Jin Ping Mei cihua and Their Influence.” This is a study of how popular songs and drama are incorporated into the late-Ming novel (subsequently translated by David’s Chicago mentor David T. Roy in five volumes). It filled the entire 1994 issue of CHINOPERL Papers 17. In this work, David brought together his extensive knowledge of that great Ming novel and other “oral performing literature” of its time—oral storytelling in prose, prosimetric storytelling, qu (songs曲), yuanben (farcical skits 院本), and full-blown drama (zaju [northern plays 雜劇]), and chuanqi [southern plays 傳奇])—especially songs and drama. He does not confine himself to Jin Ping Mei cihua, but devotes later segments of the article both to subsequent novels that imitated Jin Ping Mei in its nonrealistic uses of oral performing literature and to novels that abandoned these innovations by the Jin Ping Mei author. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 41.1 (July 2022): 1–6
{"title":"Introduction: Special Issue Honoring David L. Rolston","authors":"C. Swatek, Robert E. Hegel","doi":"10.1353/cop.2022.a862266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2022.a862266","url":null,"abstract":"Given his publication record, one might assume that David L. Rolston is a scholar of narrative fiction. For his first major publication, David served as editor of How to Read the Chinese Novel, a milestone in providing English-language readers a glimpse of reading practices and practical criticism contemporaneous with Ming and Qing novels themselves. Not merely the compiler of the translations that comprise six of the book’s seven chapters, David’s work can be seen throughout the volume, from adding innumerable notes and explanations to the “How to Read” (dufa讀法) translations; to writing essays on the sources, history, and formal aspects of traditional fiction criticism; to compiling explanatory appendices and an extensive bibliography for each of the masterworks covered. This project was completed before David finished his Chicago doctorate. His 1988 dissertation, well over 1000 pages long, fills four binders; its nominal topic is the eighteenth-century Rulin waishi 儒林外史 (The Scholars in its English translation). But in contrast to other dissertations of that period, David’s concerns were in no way limited to this one great novel. That is, as with so many of his other projects, the dissertation explored not only the text but also, in considerable detail, its social and literary contexts. In effect, this doctoral work provided the foundation for two of his later major publications in this field. A prime example is its multifaceted exploration of traditional fiction criticism: although it concentrates on commentaries on Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳 (Water Margin) and Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 (The Plum in the Golden Vase), his original observations on the rise and development of fiction criticism in his dissertation would contribute substantially to a later, major publication. David’s second publication in the field of vernacular literature studies (both fiction and drama) was his nearly monograph-length “Oral Performing Literature in Traditional Chinese Fiction: Nonrealistic Usages in the Jin Ping Mei cihua and Their Influence.” This is a study of how popular songs and drama are incorporated into the late-Ming novel (subsequently translated by David’s Chicago mentor David T. Roy in five volumes). It filled the entire 1994 issue of CHINOPERL Papers 17. In this work, David brought together his extensive knowledge of that great Ming novel and other “oral performing literature” of its time—oral storytelling in prose, prosimetric storytelling, qu (songs曲), yuanben (farcical skits 院本), and full-blown drama (zaju [northern plays 雜劇]), and chuanqi [southern plays 傳奇])—especially songs and drama. He does not confine himself to Jin Ping Mei cihua, but devotes later segments of the article both to subsequent novels that imitated Jin Ping Mei in its nonrealistic uses of oral performing literature and to novels that abandoned these innovations by the Jin Ping Mei author. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 41.1 (July 2022): 1–6","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"41 1","pages":"1 - 6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44209216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2022.a862267
W. L. Idema
Abstract:The story of Zhang Wanliang and Guo Dingxiang, who upon their deaths became king and queen of the stove, was a popular item in "stove singing," a genre of amateur entertainment from Gushi district in southern Henan. The story was best known by the name of the female protagonist. It was orally transmitted and performed not only as a ballad but also as a play. Guo Dingxiang has been published in three different editions of 1981, 2007, and 2009, respectively, which not only are quite different in length but also in nature, even though the basic plot is the same in all three versions. This article assembles the available evidence on the textualization process, and highlights the differences between the resulting versions. The textualization started as a private initiative, but in the early twenty-first century was supervised by a governmental committee. While the protagonists in the 1981 edition were given a background as poor peasants, they are the offspring of elite families in the later versions. Compared to the 2007 edition, the 2009 edition devotes more space to the inner life and motivation of the protagonists as more emphasis is placed on internal cohesion.
{"title":"The Textualization of Guo Dingxiang","authors":"W. L. Idema","doi":"10.1353/cop.2022.a862267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2022.a862267","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The story of Zhang Wanliang and Guo Dingxiang, who upon their deaths became king and queen of the stove, was a popular item in \"stove singing,\" a genre of amateur entertainment from Gushi district in southern Henan. The story was best known by the name of the female protagonist. It was orally transmitted and performed not only as a ballad but also as a play. Guo Dingxiang has been published in three different editions of 1981, 2007, and 2009, respectively, which not only are quite different in length but also in nature, even though the basic plot is the same in all three versions. This article assembles the available evidence on the textualization process, and highlights the differences between the resulting versions. The textualization started as a private initiative, but in the early twenty-first century was supervised by a governmental committee. While the protagonists in the 1981 edition were given a background as poor peasants, they are the offspring of elite families in the later versions. Compared to the 2007 edition, the 2009 edition devotes more space to the inner life and motivation of the protagonists as more emphasis is placed on internal cohesion.","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"41 1","pages":"36 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48551269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2022.a862270
Helen Rees, M. Russell
In 2019, a five-year-long collaboration between the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and the British publisher Adam Matthew Digital came to fruition, with the official launch of the award-winning digital publication Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings.1 For purchasing institutions, this makes available sixty field collections featuring unique sound recordings, photographs, films, videos, interviews, field notes, and other documents. Before 2019, anyone wishing to consult these collections would have had to come in person to the Archive, but following extensive research on rights clearance and ethics, they are now accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world, whose institution buys the publication.2
{"title":"Digital Publication of Catherine Stevens's Recordings of Chinese Vocal Genres (1960) and Other Audiovisual Collections from East Asia","authors":"Helen Rees, M. Russell","doi":"10.1353/cop.2022.a862270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2022.a862270","url":null,"abstract":"In 2019, a five-year-long collaboration between the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive and the British publisher Adam Matthew Digital came to fruition, with the official launch of the award-winning digital publication Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings.1 For purchasing institutions, this makes available sixty field collections featuring unique sound recordings, photographs, films, videos, interviews, field notes, and other documents. Before 2019, anyone wishing to consult these collections would have had to come in person to the Archive, but following extensive research on rights clearance and ethics, they are now accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world, whose institution buys the publication.2","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"41 1","pages":"102 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44658539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2022.a862271
C. Mackerras
This is a masterly book of old-fashioned Sinology. It is thoroughly researched and uses both Chinese-language and English-language sources with equal ease. There are few researchers active today who are so much at home in both languages and their associated cultures. I very much like the style of writing. Generally speaking, it is scholarly but often quite personal and even amusing and retains the interest of the reader. As anyone can see from the number of pages, it is encyclopedic in scale and conception. And if anybody has the qualifications to write such a book, it is David Rolston. Well known to readers of CHINOPERL as a colleague and former editor, he is master both of Chinese literature and drama, including Jingju 京劇. Through both research and direct experience, his knowledge and understanding of his subject is unparalleled. When I say this book is old-fashioned Sinology, I have in mind two main factors. One is the extreme detail, lists of books, the enormous attention to footnotes, and their length. The second is that there is comparatively little attention to theory. Toward the end of the preface (p. xv), the author tells us he does not feel obliged to “theorize,” because this book is unique in the literature so far. He believes “common sense” is more useful. I think he has a point. Theorizing can become a kind of fetish in scholarly literature. Moreover, there is a school of thought that believes that theorizing can be equivalent to imposing a Western framework on non-Western forms of scholarship, philosophy, or arts. Perhaps it is better to research Jingju in its own terms, rather than Western. But I do have the feeling that issues like censorship, which is highlighted in the title, could be usefully theorized a bit more than Rolston thinks necessary. There is a great deal about censorship in this book, but not much about the theory of censorship. There is, for example, not much explanation of the different kinds of censorship and the theories that have been proposed to explain them. On the other hand, though this book may lack theory, it is replete with ideas and analysis. Rolston’s skepticism about theory is no indication at all of paucity of ideas. And I may add that, though this book definitely does see Jingju in its own terms, the West and Western influence is quite present in it. There are quite a few comparisons with Western ideas and the whole idea of textualization seems to derive from the multiple ways the West impacted Chinese society and culture from the late CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 41.1 (July 2022): 107–114
{"title":"Inscribing Jingju/Peking Opera: Textualization and Performance, Authorship and Censorship of the \"National Drama\" of China from the Late Qing to the Present by David L. Rolston (review)","authors":"C. Mackerras","doi":"10.1353/cop.2022.a862271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2022.a862271","url":null,"abstract":"This is a masterly book of old-fashioned Sinology. It is thoroughly researched and uses both Chinese-language and English-language sources with equal ease. There are few researchers active today who are so much at home in both languages and their associated cultures. I very much like the style of writing. Generally speaking, it is scholarly but often quite personal and even amusing and retains the interest of the reader. As anyone can see from the number of pages, it is encyclopedic in scale and conception. And if anybody has the qualifications to write such a book, it is David Rolston. Well known to readers of CHINOPERL as a colleague and former editor, he is master both of Chinese literature and drama, including Jingju 京劇. Through both research and direct experience, his knowledge and understanding of his subject is unparalleled. When I say this book is old-fashioned Sinology, I have in mind two main factors. One is the extreme detail, lists of books, the enormous attention to footnotes, and their length. The second is that there is comparatively little attention to theory. Toward the end of the preface (p. xv), the author tells us he does not feel obliged to “theorize,” because this book is unique in the literature so far. He believes “common sense” is more useful. I think he has a point. Theorizing can become a kind of fetish in scholarly literature. Moreover, there is a school of thought that believes that theorizing can be equivalent to imposing a Western framework on non-Western forms of scholarship, philosophy, or arts. Perhaps it is better to research Jingju in its own terms, rather than Western. But I do have the feeling that issues like censorship, which is highlighted in the title, could be usefully theorized a bit more than Rolston thinks necessary. There is a great deal about censorship in this book, but not much about the theory of censorship. There is, for example, not much explanation of the different kinds of censorship and the theories that have been proposed to explain them. On the other hand, though this book may lack theory, it is replete with ideas and analysis. Rolston’s skepticism about theory is no indication at all of paucity of ideas. And I may add that, though this book definitely does see Jingju in its own terms, the West and Western influence is quite present in it. There are quite a few comparisons with Western ideas and the whole idea of textualization seems to derive from the multiple ways the West impacted Chinese society and culture from the late CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 41.1 (July 2022): 107–114","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"41 1","pages":"107 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41934687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2021.a840224
Naixi Feng
{"title":"Passionate Space of a Beijing Theater: Annotated Translation of an Excerpt from The Precious Mirror of Ranking Flowers (Pinhua Baojian)","authors":"Naixi Feng","doi":"10.1353/cop.2021.a840224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2021.a840224","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"40 1","pages":"128 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42510122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2021.a840226
Allison Bernard
Abstract:This paper analyzes the historical drama The Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan, 1699) to provide new insight into how the medium of theater made history in early Qing China. The Peach Blossom Fan famously engages narratives of the Ming–Qing dynastic transition, which lasted for several decades after 1644. Previous scholarship has drawn attention to the ways in which the playwright Kong Shangren (1648–1718) uses historical detail, and how he frames historical events on stage. My article builds on this work to argue that in The Peach Blossom Fan, the theater conceptually shapes and intervenes in the historical process itself. I suggest that "history" is not a fixed entity that can be faithfully (re)presented on stage. Rather, The Peach Blossom Fan brings history into being by synthesizing the stories and memories of the Ming–Qing transition, thus valorizing stage performances as historical events, and revealing how theater can create history. Playwright Kong relies on techniques and strategies of metatheatre to explore the "making" of history—a term I use with reference to Michel de Certeau. The Peach Blossom Fan foregrounds performance conventions, such as references to characters' face paint, to pass judgment on its cast of late Ming characters. The play also juxtaposes distinct dramatic temporalities to cultivate its reading audience as witnesses to and judges of its story of dynastic transition. This paper will focus on selected episodes from the play, including the beating of late Ming playwright and politician Ruan Dacheng and the suicide of the Ming general Shi Kefa, to reveal how metatheatre embeds diverse modes of historical presentation and interpretation. The past, I show, becomes history through the process of theater.
{"title":"\"Making History\": Metatheatre in the Peach Blossom Fan","authors":"Allison Bernard","doi":"10.1353/cop.2021.a840226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2021.a840226","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper analyzes the historical drama The Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan, 1699) to provide new insight into how the medium of theater made history in early Qing China. The Peach Blossom Fan famously engages narratives of the Ming–Qing dynastic transition, which lasted for several decades after 1644. Previous scholarship has drawn attention to the ways in which the playwright Kong Shangren (1648–1718) uses historical detail, and how he frames historical events on stage. My article builds on this work to argue that in The Peach Blossom Fan, the theater conceptually shapes and intervenes in the historical process itself. I suggest that \"history\" is not a fixed entity that can be faithfully (re)presented on stage. Rather, The Peach Blossom Fan brings history into being by synthesizing the stories and memories of the Ming–Qing transition, thus valorizing stage performances as historical events, and revealing how theater can create history. Playwright Kong relies on techniques and strategies of metatheatre to explore the \"making\" of history—a term I use with reference to Michel de Certeau. The Peach Blossom Fan foregrounds performance conventions, such as references to characters' face paint, to pass judgment on its cast of late Ming characters. The play also juxtaposes distinct dramatic temporalities to cultivate its reading audience as witnesses to and judges of its story of dynastic transition. This paper will focus on selected episodes from the play, including the beating of late Ming playwright and politician Ruan Dacheng and the suicide of the Ming general Shi Kefa, to reveal how metatheatre embeds diverse modes of historical presentation and interpretation. The past, I show, becomes history through the process of theater.","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"40 1","pages":"127 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48286931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1353/cop.2021.a840225
B. Yung
Abstract:A Cantonese version of the episode "Wu Song Kills the Tiger" (Wu Song dahu 武松打虎) from Shuihu zhuan was performed by the blind singer Dou Wun 杜焕 (1910–1979) to a live audience of customers in the Fu Long Teahouse in Hong Kong in 1975. He performed it in the style of nanyin 南音, the once most popular Cantonese narrative genre with sung portions in verse and spoken portions in prose. Nanyin was important as entertainment before the mid-twentieth century, particularly in brothels, opium dens, and teahouses throughout the Cantonese spoken region in the Pearl River Delta; but it is no longer performed in those contexts. Dou Wun was the last surviving professional singer at the time of the recording, a few years before he died. This paper introduces Dou's life, the circumstances of his performance and the recording, and the basic structure and style of nanyin performance, and presents a transcription into written Cantonese and its English translation. It includes a brief discussion of Dou's artistry, particularly his use of padding zi (chenzi 襯字) to elaborate on the basic text and music.
{"title":"Wu Song Kills the Tiger: Transcription and Translation of a Cantonese Narrative Song from a Live Performance, with an Introduction","authors":"B. Yung","doi":"10.1353/cop.2021.a840225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cop.2021.a840225","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:A Cantonese version of the episode \"Wu Song Kills the Tiger\" (Wu Song dahu 武松打虎) from Shuihu zhuan was performed by the blind singer Dou Wun 杜焕 (1910–1979) to a live audience of customers in the Fu Long Teahouse in Hong Kong in 1975. He performed it in the style of nanyin 南音, the once most popular Cantonese narrative genre with sung portions in verse and spoken portions in prose. Nanyin was important as entertainment before the mid-twentieth century, particularly in brothels, opium dens, and teahouses throughout the Cantonese spoken region in the Pearl River Delta; but it is no longer performed in those contexts. Dou Wun was the last surviving professional singer at the time of the recording, a few years before he died. This paper introduces Dou's life, the circumstances of his performance and the recording, and the basic structure and style of nanyin performance, and presents a transcription into written Cantonese and its English translation. It includes a brief discussion of Dou's artistry, particularly his use of padding zi (chenzi 襯字) to elaborate on the basic text and music.","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"40 1","pages":"144 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48284549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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