Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1524266
A. McLaren
Western Han consists of a reproduction in color facsimile of an entire storyteller manuscript together with a facing printed reproduction of the script, an English-language translation, a lengthy i...
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1524426
J. Witzleben
For almost four decades, Alan Thrasher has been writing about Chinese music, theory, and performance practice, culminating in his Sizhu Instrumental Music of South China (2008). He is an accomplished performer of the dizi 笛子 (bamboo flute) and sheng 笙 (mouth organ), and established one of the earliest and most successful University-based Chinese ensembles in North America at the University of British Columbia, where he is now Professor Emeritus. The current volume focuses on his longstanding interest in qupai 曲牌—a term variously translated as everything from “labeled melody” to “fixed tune,” and here concisely defined thusly: “In their basic forms, qupai are essentially short structures, with melodies several or more phrases in length ...” (p. 4). To readers of CHINOPERL, qupai are probably most familiar from their use in Kunqu 崑曲 opera, but they are also essential to many genres of instrumental music. Unlike most edited volumes, this collection is the work of a small group of kindred spirits: Thrasher (responsible for four chapters) and his former student Kar Lun Alan Lau 劉嘉麟, along with François Picard (Paris), Chen Yingshi 陳應時 (Shanghai), and Yu Hui 喻輝 (Ningbo). I will begin with two caveats: first, this book assumes some basic knowledge of the genres being discussed—if you are not familiar with huju 滬劇, nanguan 南管, or Jiangnan sizhu 江南絲竹, let alone dayue 大樂 of Danbi shang 彈陛上, this is not the place to begin. Thrasher’s own 2008 book, Stephen Jones’s overview of folk instrumental music, genre-specific studies of Jiangnan sizhu, huju, jingju 京劇, and Cantonese opera 粵劇, and articles in this journal on Kunqu by Lindy Li Mark and Isabel Wong would be helpful to readers interested in knowing more about the performance practices, contexts, and aesthetics of some of the main traditions from which these qupai are drawn. Second, the focus is primarily on musical structures rather than performance practice. That is, most of the notated melodies being analyzed and compared are skeletal in nature, rather than representing the details of actual performances. Having said that, for those interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how qupai are genetically related, combined, and transformed over time and across multiple regions and genres, this book offers many rewards. Readers of this journal will be particularly appreciative of the inclusion of Chinese characters for the names of scholars, performers, genres,
近四十年来,Alan Thrasher一直在撰写关于中国音乐,理论和表演实践的文章,并在他的《南方丝竹器乐》(2008)中达到顶峰。他是笛子和口琴的优秀演奏家,并在不列颠哥伦比亚大学建立了北美最早和最成功的大学中文乐团之一,他现在是该大学的名誉教授。这本书的重点是他长期以来对曲牌的兴趣——曲牌这个词有各种各样的翻译,从“标记的旋律”到“固定的曲调”,这里简明地定义为:“曲牌的基本形式本质上是短小的结构,旋律的长度为几个或更多个短语……(第4页)。对于CHINOPERL的读者来说,曲牌可能最熟悉的是它们在昆曲中使用,但它们也是许多器乐流派必不可少的。与大多数编辑过的书籍不同,这本合集是一小群志趣相投的人的作品:Thrasher(负责四章)和他以前的学生Kar Lun Alan Lau(刘氏),以及francois Picard(巴黎),Chen Yingshi(上海)和Yu Hui(宁波)。首先,我要说明两点:首先,本书假定你对所讨论的流派有一些基本的了解——如果你不熟悉虎剧演绎、南关演绎、江南演绎,更不用说大月演绎了,这不是开始的地方。Thrasher在2008年出版的书,Stephen Jones对民间乐器音乐的概述,对江南丝竹、虎剧、景剧和粤剧的体例研究,以及林迪·李·马克和伊莎贝尔·王在这本杂志上发表的关于昆曲的文章,将有助于读者对这些曲牌产生的主要传统的表演实践、背景和美学有更多的了解。其次,重点主要放在音乐结构上,而不是演奏练习上。也就是说,大多数被分析和比较的音符旋律本质上是骨架,而不是代表实际表演的细节。话虽如此,对于那些有兴趣深入了解曲牌在基因上是如何联系、结合和随着时间、地域和流派的变化而变化的人来说,这本书提供了很多回报。本杂志的读者将特别欣赏在学者、表演者、流派、
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1527976
C. D’Evelyn
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Pub Date : 2018-01-02DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2018.1524424
David L. Rolston
After ten years of Model Peking Opera (yangban xi 樣板戲), Chinese audiences, especially residents of Beijing, were euphoric to see the return of “traditional” (chuantong 傳統) Jingju 京劇 plays to the stage. But that euphoria only lasted for a limited number of years, and Peking opera in Beijing had to turn to a new audience to bring in money: foreign tourists. This rather unusual performance review will look at two performances at either ends of two decades to investigate what changes were made to Peking opera to make it more palatable to this new audience, and to speculate, if ever so briefly, on whether the contrasts between the two productions give us reasons for pessimism or optimism, whether from the point of view of the health of Peking opera, or the education/enlightenment of foreigners. Both productions shared the same name in English: Legend of the White Snake, even if their Chinese names were slightly different, as we will see below. They share the same heroine, Bai Suzhen 白素貞, a white snake who was able to take on human shape through dint of thousands of years of self-cultivation and to get a young man, Xu Xian 許仙, to fall in love with her and marry her in quite a jiffy. She eventually gives birth to a son for him before she is stuck under a pagoda by a meddlesome monk, Fahai 法海, who does not believe in inter-species marriage. Women have been associated with snakes in the West in the Bible and The Lamia, but those snakes never became as domesticated as Bai Suzhen, nor
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Pub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2017.1403188
P. Iovene
stunning, but also raises the question who these countless translations are intended for and what purpose these translations actually serve. In the case of The Resurrected Skeleton, for instance, most scholars of Chinese literature and philosophy will already know the Zhuangzi tale, if not by reading the original text then through Stephen Owen’s Remembrances. As such one might wonder: is being familiar with the singular, classical text not enough? Idema’s answer to this question is obviously no and it is worth reminding ourselves of why this is so. By insisting on translating text after text and offering us not only a single, tasteful classic but also the multiple, sometimes less elevated variations upon a classic, Idema invites us to investigate the Chinese tradition, not simply as a series of unique canonical texts written by the literati few, but rather as an immensely variegated, often riotous, and at times delightfully scatological chorus of different voices. As such, a volume such as The Resurrected Skeleton invites us not to abandon the idea of a shared tradition, but rather, by exploring the multiple generic and ideological variations upon a single, brief anecdote, it asks us to discern the incredibly diversity that together constitute a multiplicity of Chinese traditions.
{"title":"The Metamorphosis of Tianxian pei: Local Opera under the Revolution (1949-1956)","authors":"P. Iovene","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2017.1403188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2017.1403188","url":null,"abstract":"stunning, but also raises the question who these countless translations are intended for and what purpose these translations actually serve. In the case of The Resurrected Skeleton, for instance, most scholars of Chinese literature and philosophy will already know the Zhuangzi tale, if not by reading the original text then through Stephen Owen’s Remembrances. As such one might wonder: is being familiar with the singular, classical text not enough? Idema’s answer to this question is obviously no and it is worth reminding ourselves of why this is so. By insisting on translating text after text and offering us not only a single, tasteful classic but also the multiple, sometimes less elevated variations upon a classic, Idema invites us to investigate the Chinese tradition, not simply as a series of unique canonical texts written by the literati few, but rather as an immensely variegated, often riotous, and at times delightfully scatological chorus of different voices. As such, a volume such as The Resurrected Skeleton invites us not to abandon the idea of a shared tradition, but rather, by exploring the multiple generic and ideological variations upon a single, brief anecdote, it asks us to discern the incredibly diversity that together constitute a multiplicity of Chinese traditions.","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"12 1","pages":"134 - 139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85474843","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 : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2017.1403187
David L. Rolston
{"title":"Mei Lanfang quanji 梅蘭芳全集 (The complete works of Mei Lanfang). Edited by Fu Jin 傅謹. 8 vols. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe and Zhongguo xiju chuban she, 2016.","authors":"David L. Rolston","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2017.1403187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2017.1403187","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"22 1","pages":"173 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86248262","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 : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2016.1242833
W. L. Idema
The seventeenth of forty chapters on gui 鬼 (ghosts) in Taiping guangji 太平廣記 (Extensive records assembled in the Taiping era; 981) contains a tale called “Tang Xuan” 唐晅. It gives its source as Tongyou ji 通幽記 (Communications from the unseen world), a collection compiled by Chen Shao 陳劭 that most likely dates from the last years of the eighth century and that is no longer extant. Right before the attribution to Tongyou ji, we are told by the narrator the following: “Shi jian Tang Xuan shouji” 事見唐晅手記 (the events [of this story] appear in Tang Xuan’s own manuscript notes). Modern scholars such as Li Jiangguo have held this to refer to an originally independently circulating text named Tang Xuan shouji 唐晅手記. In the late Ming, “Tang Xuan” was not only reprinted as part of the Taiping guangji, but also in a number of other collections of classical tales, sometimes under the title of “Tang Xuan shouji.” The story of “Tang Xuan” is very simple in outline. Tang Xuan has married his niece, Zhang Shiniang張十娘, whom he has loved since childhood. After a while he has to leave his wife for a trip to Luoyang. While staying there, he learns from a dream that his wife has passed away. When he eventually returns home after a
{"title":"From First-Person to Third-Person Narrative, and Then to Hakka Ballad: From “Tang Xuan shouji” (Tang Xuan's Manuscript Notes) to “Tang Xuan” to “Tang Xian ji” (The Story of Tang Xian)","authors":"W. L. Idema","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2016.1242833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2016.1242833","url":null,"abstract":"The seventeenth of forty chapters on gui 鬼 (ghosts) in Taiping guangji 太平廣記 (Extensive records assembled in the Taiping era; 981) contains a tale called “Tang Xuan” 唐晅. It gives its source as Tongyou ji 通幽記 (Communications from the unseen world), a collection compiled by Chen Shao 陳劭 that most likely dates from the last years of the eighth century and that is no longer extant. Right before the attribution to Tongyou ji, we are told by the narrator the following: “Shi jian Tang Xuan shouji” 事見唐晅手記 (the events [of this story] appear in Tang Xuan’s own manuscript notes). Modern scholars such as Li Jiangguo have held this to refer to an originally independently circulating text named Tang Xuan shouji 唐晅手記. In the late Ming, “Tang Xuan” was not only reprinted as part of the Taiping guangji, but also in a number of other collections of classical tales, sometimes under the title of “Tang Xuan shouji.” The story of “Tang Xuan” is very simple in outline. Tang Xuan has married his niece, Zhang Shiniang張十娘, whom he has loved since childhood. After a while he has to leave his wife for a trip to Luoyang. While staying there, he learns from a dream that his wife has passed away. When he eventually returns home after a","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"77 1","pages":"159 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88946911","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 : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2017.1403190
Chuen-Fung Wong
{"title":"Zai ni wenhou de xiaorong zhong dangyang: Jinian Hafo daxue shouwei Huayi nü jiaoshou Zhao Rulan 在你溫厚的笑容中蕩漾: 紀念哈佛大學首位華裔女教授趙如蘭 / Remembering Rulan Chao Pian: Harvard’s First Female Professor of Chinese Heritage","authors":"Chuen-Fung Wong","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2017.1403190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2017.1403190","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"16 1","pages":"144 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82675983","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 : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2017.1337696
Paize Keulemans
Who knew that, in the mid-1920s, Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) had written a satirical take on the old tale in which the Warring States philosopher Zhuangzi encounters and discourses with a skull? Who kne...
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Pub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/01937774.2017.1404254
Rostislav Berezkin
The complex and awkward name of “The ‘Zhoupu Cup’ national scholarly invitational scroll recitation contest” (“Zhoupu bei” quanguo xuanjuan xueshu yaoqingsai 周浦杯全國宣卷學術邀請賽) apparently was invented to mean that the performances of “scroll recitation” teams (making use of traditional narratives known as “precious scrolls” [baojuan 寶卷]) invited from different places of the Lower Yangtze region were followed by a short conference on the current state and problems of preservation of the genre. The event took place on November 21, 2015, in the cultural services center of Zhoupu town (originally in Nanhui 南匯 county, now a part of New Pudong City District [Pudong xinqu 浦 東新區] of Shanghai). It is not the first event of this type. Similar scroll recitation festivals/competitions had already taken place in Jinxi 錦溪 town (part of Kunshan 崑山 city, which is under the jurisdiction of Suzhou in Jiangsu) in 2009, 2011, and 2013, inspired by the awards of “intangible cultural heritage” (feiwuzhi wenhua yichan 非物質文化遺產) status to several local traditions of performance. This event in Zhoupu was especially noteworthy as it was related to an attempt to revive scroll recitation in Pudong, where it had almost disappeared by the beginning of the twenty-first century. It also gives us a glimpse of the current situation regarding the transmission, adaptation, and performance of traditional and modernized scroll recitation in the whole region historically known as Jiangnan (south of the Yangtze river). In particular, we can learn from it about special features of modern performances in the greater Shanghai area. Among nine teams of performers participating in the contest, eight came from the suburbs of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, and northern Zhejiang. Besides scroll recitation in Pudong, they represented this type of performance in Shangta 商榻 town (now in Qingpu 青浦 district of Shanghai); Tongli 同里 town (in the Wujiang 吴 江 district of Suzhou city); Jinxi town; Wuxi 無錫 and Changzhou 常州 cities (both in Jiangsu); and Shaoxing 紹興 city in Zhejiang. The ninth team, from
{"title":"The 2015 Contest of Baojuan Performers and Academic Conference in Zhoupu and Modernized “Scroll Recitation” in Pudong","authors":"Rostislav Berezkin","doi":"10.1080/01937774.2017.1404254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01937774.2017.1404254","url":null,"abstract":"The complex and awkward name of “The ‘Zhoupu Cup’ national scholarly invitational scroll recitation contest” (“Zhoupu bei” quanguo xuanjuan xueshu yaoqingsai 周浦杯全國宣卷學術邀請賽) apparently was invented to mean that the performances of “scroll recitation” teams (making use of traditional narratives known as “precious scrolls” [baojuan 寶卷]) invited from different places of the Lower Yangtze region were followed by a short conference on the current state and problems of preservation of the genre. The event took place on November 21, 2015, in the cultural services center of Zhoupu town (originally in Nanhui 南匯 county, now a part of New Pudong City District [Pudong xinqu 浦 東新區] of Shanghai). It is not the first event of this type. Similar scroll recitation festivals/competitions had already taken place in Jinxi 錦溪 town (part of Kunshan 崑山 city, which is under the jurisdiction of Suzhou in Jiangsu) in 2009, 2011, and 2013, inspired by the awards of “intangible cultural heritage” (feiwuzhi wenhua yichan 非物質文化遺產) status to several local traditions of performance. This event in Zhoupu was especially noteworthy as it was related to an attempt to revive scroll recitation in Pudong, where it had almost disappeared by the beginning of the twenty-first century. It also gives us a glimpse of the current situation regarding the transmission, adaptation, and performance of traditional and modernized scroll recitation in the whole region historically known as Jiangnan (south of the Yangtze river). In particular, we can learn from it about special features of modern performances in the greater Shanghai area. Among nine teams of performers participating in the contest, eight came from the suburbs of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, and northern Zhejiang. Besides scroll recitation in Pudong, they represented this type of performance in Shangta 商榻 town (now in Qingpu 青浦 district of Shanghai); Tongli 同里 town (in the Wujiang 吴 江 district of Suzhou city); Jinxi town; Wuxi 無錫 and Changzhou 常州 cities (both in Jiangsu); and Shaoxing 紹興 city in Zhejiang. The ninth team, from","PeriodicalId":37726,"journal":{"name":"CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature","volume":"228 1","pages":"164 - 172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72750598","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}