Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2019.1574699
Megan Ammirati
English-language scholarship concerning China’s Model Revolutionary Works (geming yangbanxi 革命样板戏) has struggled with the lingering influence of the Cold War for decades. The theater that was elevated during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) has often been evaluated in terms of its association with the state and ability to disseminate the message of the Chinese Communist Party to its audiences. While this perspective is valuable in describing what was quite clearly propagandistic performance, Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera during the Cultural Revolution by Xing Fan makes a critical contribution by proposing that model Beijing Operas (Jingju京剧) should also be appreciated from the perspective of their aesthetic accomplishments. As Fan so adroitly points out, research that solely emphasizes the political aspects of model works
{"title":"Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera During the Cultural Revolution","authors":"Megan Ammirati","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2019.1574699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2019.1574699","url":null,"abstract":"English-language scholarship concerning China’s Model Revolutionary Works (geming yangbanxi 革命样板戏) has struggled with the lingering influence of the Cold War for decades. The theater that was elevated during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) has often been evaluated in terms of its association with the state and ability to disseminate the message of the Chinese Communist Party to its audiences. While this perspective is valuable in describing what was quite clearly propagandistic performance, Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera during the Cultural Revolution by Xing Fan makes a critical contribution by proposing that model Beijing Operas (Jingju京剧) should also be appreciated from the perspective of their aesthetic accomplishments. As Fan so adroitly points out, research that solely emphasizes the political aspects of model works","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76310909","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 : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2019.1596056
L. Olivová
{"title":"In Memory of Oldřich Král","authors":"L. Olivová","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2019.1596056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2019.1596056","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74570691","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 : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2019.1592635
Vibeke Børdahl
In 1927, the well-known Norwegian author Nordahl Grieg (1902–1943) traveled to China. Not long after his return he published an essay on Mei Lanfang (1894–1961). In this evocative essay he offered an enchanting description of Peking Opera and of Mei Lanfang, maybe one of the most endearing glimpses of this art in any Western language. However, it is not well known outside of Scandinavia, although it has been translated into Chinese in the 1980s and analyzed by Liu Zhen 劉禎 in 2017. In this research note I will briefly introduce Grieg’s essay, then examine the sources available to Grieg as well as information from the Norwegian archives about his activities in order to solve some puzzles about this travel sketch. Grieg’s essay “Mei=Lan=Fang” describes Peking Opera with artistic sensitivity. Yet the experience it describes was Grieg’s first time at a Chinese theater, and as Liu Zhen has pointed out, some of the details in Grieg’s report contradict what we know of Peking opera at the time. This raises two questions. First, what background did Grieg have for understanding Chinese drama? Second, how should we understand Grieg’s essay—as a realistic description of a night at the theater or an imaginative reconstruction? (fig. 1)
{"title":"Research Note: Nordahl Grieg and Mei Lanfang: Truth of Observation or “Truth” of a Creative Memory?","authors":"Vibeke Børdahl","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2019.1592635","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2019.1592635","url":null,"abstract":"In 1927, the well-known Norwegian author Nordahl Grieg (1902–1943) traveled to China. Not long after his return he published an essay on Mei Lanfang (1894–1961). In this evocative essay he offered an enchanting description of Peking Opera and of Mei Lanfang, maybe one of the most endearing glimpses of this art in any Western language. However, it is not well known outside of Scandinavia, although it has been translated into Chinese in the 1980s and analyzed by Liu Zhen 劉禎 in 2017. In this research note I will briefly introduce Grieg’s essay, then examine the sources available to Grieg as well as information from the Norwegian archives about his activities in order to solve some puzzles about this travel sketch. Grieg’s essay “Mei=Lan=Fang” describes Peking Opera with artistic sensitivity. Yet the experience it describes was Grieg’s first time at a Chinese theater, and as Liu Zhen has pointed out, some of the details in Grieg’s report contradict what we know of Peking opera at the time. This raises two questions. First, what background did Grieg have for understanding Chinese drama? Second, how should we understand Grieg’s essay—as a realistic description of a night at the theater or an imaginative reconstruction? (fig. 1)","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72674736","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 : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2019.1594021
David L. Rolston
{"title":"Jingju lishi wenxian huibian: Qingdai juan: Xubian 京劇歷史文獻彙編: 清代卷, 續編","authors":"David L. Rolston","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2019.1594021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2019.1594021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81526427","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 : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1601456
D. Lin
This article explores three waves of English-language scholarship on Mei Lanfang from the 1920s to the present. Based on an analysis of representative works from each period, the author argues that Mei Lanfang studies in English-language scholarship have undergone shifts of perspective resulting in three distinct phases. Researchers of the early period perceived Mei as a representative of Chinese theater conceived of as a system of knowledge with cultural meanings. Researchers of the second period examined Mei Lanfang from the angle of theater studies and saw him as an important artist of Asian theater whose life experience enriched an understanding of that theater in the wider world. Researchers from the third period were mainly influenced by the perspective of “area studies.” They adopted approaches standard in different disciplines to analyze Mei Lanfang’s life, social contribution, and artistic legacy as a Chinese exemplar. All three periods shared an emphasis on understanding Mei in a socio-cultural context. This cross-cultural dialogue allowed for the application of approaches from multiple disciplines to the study of Mei Lanfang. The boundary of Mei Lanfang studies, which was at one time dominated largely by Chinese-language scholarship, was thus considerably broadened during the whole period under consideration.
{"title":"Mei Lanfang Studies in Retrospect: Shifting Perspectives in English-Language Scholarship","authors":"D. Lin","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2018.1601456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2018.1601456","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores three waves of English-language scholarship on Mei Lanfang from the 1920s to the present. Based on an analysis of representative works from each period, the author argues that Mei Lanfang studies in English-language scholarship have undergone shifts of perspective resulting in three distinct phases. Researchers of the early period perceived Mei as a representative of Chinese theater conceived of as a system of knowledge with cultural meanings. Researchers of the second period examined Mei Lanfang from the angle of theater studies and saw him as an important artist of Asian theater whose life experience enriched an understanding of that theater in the wider world. Researchers from the third period were mainly influenced by the perspective of “area studies.” They adopted approaches standard in different disciplines to analyze Mei Lanfang’s life, social contribution, and artistic legacy as a Chinese exemplar. All three periods shared an emphasis on understanding Mei in a socio-cultural context. This cross-cultural dialogue allowed for the application of approaches from multiple disciplines to the study of Mei Lanfang. The boundary of Mei Lanfang studies, which was at one time dominated largely by Chinese-language scholarship, was thus considerably broadened during the whole period under consideration.","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77443127","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 : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1529730
Caroline Chia
This study explores traditional Chinese oral performance in a contemporary urban environment and is based on fieldwork on gezai xi in Singapore between 2004 and 2018. Gezai xi is a genre of highly improvisational plays performed in Hokkien (Minnan 閩南) language. While the genre was quite popular in Singapore from the 1930s to 1970s, the later language policy of privileging Mandarin and English over local languages and dialects has challenged the relevance of gezai xi performance in Singapore. How do performers of recent years learn gezai xi? What is the role of oral transmission, improvisation, and dependence on “fixed texts”1 in the education of young performers and in their daily preparations for the stage? Reading and writing seem to play only a minor role in the process of putting on a play. However, how individual performers learn their art and prepare for performance depends on the performer’s degree of literacy. In the period after the 1970s, the dependency on aural and visual “fixed texts,” such as cassette-tapes, CDs, and videos, has had a great impact on education and rehearsal practices, while written or printed texts – apart from the taishu [stage outline] – seem marginal for this art.
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1524416
L. Coderre
In some ways, Nancy Yunhwa Rao’s Chinatown Opera Theater in North America is the quintessential response to Yu’s call, for there is little doubt that the defining tunes of the Chinese diaspora in the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth were, in the most literal sense, those of the Cantonese opera. With her detailed study of the second “golden age” of Chinatown theaters—the 1920s—in North America, Rao adds to recent English-language work on Cantonese opera as a transnational art form and business, and she does so in a way that draws on an impressive variety of sources, many of them featuring thespians, their promoters, and their fans in their own words and voices. From Chinatown newspaper write-ups to playbills to sound recordings, the reader is afforded a glimpse of a complex web of commercial interests and theatrical rivalries at the very heart of the Chinese immigrant experience. Much of Rao’s contribution stems from her articulation of the important role of Cantonese opera in Chinatown communities in the 1920s, her aim being to “release these theaters from their repressed silence and perpetual invisibility, as well as separate them from the myths about them” (p. 9). Chief among these myths are the notions of marginality—of actors just passing through, of theaters’ questionable moral standing, of Chinese opera in the American musical imaginary—and fixity —of an unchanging repertoire and performance practice divorced from the geopolitical realities and dominant aesthetic trends of the day. By contrast, Rao “consider [s] Chinatown theaters to be dynamic, rather than timeless” (p. 12), wherein their dynamism is borne of commercial, cultural, and civic engagement, not isolation. Specifically, Rao argues that Chinatown opera theaters were influenced by five key factors:
在某种程度上，饶允华(Nancy Yunhwa Rao)在北美的唐人街歌剧院(Chinatown Opera Theater)是对余的呼吁的典型回应，因为毫无疑问，在19世纪和20世纪的大部分时间里，华人侨民的典型曲调，从最字面的意义上讲，是粤剧的曲调。她详细研究了唐人街戏剧的第二个“黄金时代”——20世纪20年代——在北美，饶氏在最近的英语作品中加入了粤剧作为一种跨国艺术形式和商业的研究，她以一种令人印象深刻的方式利用了各种各样的资源，其中许多都以演员、他们的推动者和粉丝自己的语言和声音为特色。从唐人街的报纸报道到剧本再到录音，读者可以一窥中国移民经历的核心，一个由商业利益和戏剧竞争构成的复杂网络。饶的大部分贡献源于她对粤剧在20世纪20年代唐人街社区中的重要作用的阐述，她的目标是“将这些剧院从压抑的沉默和永久的隐形中解放出来，并将它们与关于它们的神话分开”(第9页)。这些神话中最主要的是边缘化的概念——演员只是过客，剧院可疑的道德地位，在美国音乐的想象和固定中，中国戏曲的不变的剧目和表演实践脱离了地缘政治现实和当时占主导地位的审美趋势。相比之下，Rao“认为唐人街的剧院是动态的，而不是永恒的”(第12页)，它们的活力来源于商业、文化和公民的参与，而不是孤立的。具体来说，饶认为唐人街的剧院受到五个关键因素的影响:
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1526468
W. L. Idema
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:
在她最近关于18世纪和19世纪的旗子故事的专著中，叶莲娜·邱讨论了蒲松龄(1640-1715)的经典故事《穿绿衣服的女孩》(l yi nü)的女主角是如何在服装和发型上变成一个年轻的满族女人的，当时这个故事被一个竹庄(www.zhuchuang)改编成旗子故事。当然，只有当一个故事在以后的某个日期，在不同的地方，为不同的观众重新制作时，才会出现这样的变化。有些改动是无意中做出的，但有些改动是有意引入的，目的是通过引入不合时宜或不合时宜的人物、物体或术语来达到某种幽默效果。这一点在20世纪初叶树亭将蒲松龄的《画皮》改写为《丹仙拍子曲》时或许得到了更清晰的体现。在这个著名的故事中，一个年轻人在外面散步时遇到了一位迷人的年轻女子，他把她带回家，在他妻子不知情的情况下把她安置在他的书房里。这个年轻人和这个女人有一段激情的恋情，直到他发现她实际上是一个穿着人皮的丑陋的恶魔——他看着她脱下她的皮肤，正在抚摸它。在叶淑婷的版本中，他们第一次见面时的年轻女孩被描述为那个时代典型的高中生:
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1524415
B. Clark
While the shadow theater has enjoyed a certain amount of prestige due to the perceived literary nature of its scripts, “wooden” puppet plays have historically been marginalized. As Dr. Chen points out, even the terms used for shadow puppetry and wooden puppetry are different, though in most languages, they appear to be grouped together with the necessary modifiers that come from either their intrinsic differences (shadow) or their method of manipulation (glove, rod, string, horizontal iron-rods). China is an especially rich source of traditional puppet theater, with examples of most forms still extant, but often in different regions. English translations of traditional Chinese puppet scripts are extremely rare. Dr. Chen has already produced two books of shadow theater plays, as well as another marionette play in her newest book, Journey of a Goddess (SUNY Press, 2017).Marionette Plays from Northern China, her first collection of string-puppet plays, contains translations of eight scripts gathered during fieldwork in Heyang City 合陽, Shaanxi. String puppets (marionettes), while quite common in the south (especially Fujian), are virtually unknown in other parts of the north. At her last count, only three troupes still perform in Heyang, down from nearly fifty before mid-century. During the Cultural Revolution, many handwritten copies of scripts (which included performance transcriptions) were destroyed. While some were published, even those books are now hard to find. Consequently, this valuable volume is the result of both dedicated field work and skilled, theatrically sensitive translation. Dr. Chen introduces the volume with a concise overview of Chinese puppet theater history, with an emphasis upon the string theater ofHeyang. (Heyang claims to be the historical origin of string puppetry, although this is notwell supported, despite puppet facial features that might sculpturally date the tradition back to the Tang.) Continuing, she introduces each play’s dominant themes, literary references, dramatic characteristics, and historical context. The eight plays include three “post-midnight skits,” three plays dealing with historical events with various degrees of accuracy, and finally two romances. One of the latter, The White Undershirt (Bai hanshan 白汗 衫), displays familiar scenes of romantic intrigue and mistaken identity. The local hero of the Heyang puppet theater is Baldy, a classic clownish everyman figure with an appropriately bald pate. He is featured in a short “midnight play,” a once highly suggestive burlesque-type comedy for adult male audiences. Dr. Chen includes the previously published Baldy’s Wedding Night (Tuzi naofang 禿子鬧 房), in which Baldy discovers his new bride’s baldness on his wedding night, much to his initial horror and the spectator’s delight. Though Dr. Chen observes that the original sexual wordplay is muted for contemporary audiences, she also notes that some suggestive visual nuances (Baldy’s pate, for example) are still
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1524413
T. Chun
other than in Thrasher’s own contributions, there is relatively little connection between one chapter and the others. A concluding chapter tying the various threads together would also have helped to give a greater sense of unity. However, the common theme linking all of these parts together is obvious, and taken collectively they make a significant contribution to our understanding of the ways in which these melodic building blocks of Chinese music have been reshaped, transformed, and combined into the rich variety of musical styles and repertories we enjoy today. Even for someone like myself who has a long-term involvement in Chinese musical performance practice and scholarship, this book offers many new discoveries, and it is a reminder of how many genres and pieces still remain to be explored and appreciated.
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