i pitch, thereby creating the mellifluous, sone- acters include such divergent women as : what plaintive, singing to flute accompaniment Empress Wu Zetian, a contemporary Chinese : which characterizes kunqu drama. Wei was female judge and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Pon : assisted in his research by Zhang Yetang, an linlian has been praised for its relevance to : authority on the northern nodal repertoire. Chinese theatre and to Chinese society of the 1980s. , Weiwtinglun(ts+t- ) , Writer of Sichuan opera (cruarTu) who Yu Zhenfei {1902-e2) achieved a greal reputation as an innovalive Actor in r
divergent women as l contemporary Chinese toy's Anna Karenina. Pan ;ed for its relevance to o Chinese society of the trivcxr. He was born at u Zonghai - an erudite :r whom he had his first- ;ix. After apprenticeship jingxi master actors, he ned for the perfection of the young scholar-hero 3g!1ar1y partnering Mrr rg professional career Yu tigably to preserve kunqu, ion of performers at the cademy of Dramatic Art 'ork was disrupted by the He is an accomplished j I as.singer and actor, and l :y'l,i:::"'__ l leijingopera performance, maturgy and stagecraft. I the institution produced schools at all levels is itive examination: about 5 rin admission. There is still fmales, the rationale being men. #omen tO sing female roles n 1951 Premier Zhou Enlai tor Zhang Chrinqiu: 'up to hat's the end'. If this po1iry omen will perform all dan hat a handful of female g trained, so the art may :rformers has risen greatly the reasons for this are the I discrimination which prer highly organized recruit- :m, an improved standard ofliving, and the govelnment's high evaluation of 'att workers' as a profession. There arc, however, still strong gradations in the status ofpelformers: stars may be among the nost influential and respected members of society, while ordinary performers live in serious poverty and social disregard. Since the earliest days of its existencc thc CCP has strongly encouraged amateur artists who, it considered, could assist its propaganda work among the nasses to an extent even greater than professionals. The slogan pushed was 'snall in scale, rich in variety' (xiaoxing duoyang), neaning that long o[ courplicatcd picccs |equiring exteusive training or elaborate and expensive costLlmes should be avoided. The spoken drama, simple songs and dances, or balladry iterns, were greatly preferred to traditional music drana. The Cultural Revolution gave great priority to 'mass ilnateur propaganda tror.lpcs' and for several years in the late 1960s they were morc or less thc only soulce of <strong>China</strong>'s theatrical Iif'e. Since the late 1970s amateur troupes have declined markedly. To fill their place semiprofessional troupes have arisen everywhere in Cl'rina, especially in the countryside where fully plofessional theatre is less accessible than in the cities. Peasants fbrm troupes on their own initiative and only the tnost talented and skilled local performers are chosen. They spend most of the year as peasants, and during the slack season they go around performing, mainly traditional regional music dramas. The reward is financial, for although the performers do not receive salaries, they are paid out ofbox-office returns according to their coDtribution to the particular drama. Even if they perform in the street and there is no box-office, they are quite likely to be thrown tips from the audi ence. ln 1983 there were about 3000 seniprofessional troupes in the single province ofAnhui, and the number was still rising. Conclusion Clearly the peliod since 1978 has brought cnormous changes to the Chinese theatre in all respects. A major feature of society in general and the theatre in particular is a dichotomoris impulse towards modernization on the one hand and a traditionalist revival on the other. The najor thrust is still socialist in that content tends to reflect socialist society and nany fully professional ttoupes remain state-owned. However, despite a reversal fiom mid-1 989 to the beginning of 1 992 due to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis, the overall direction of change since 1978 has been towards greater variefy and liberalisn in terms of form and content, and free enterprise in organization, with ideology reflecting nationalism more strongly than Marxisn-Leninism. Experience in other countries suggests that economic modernization affects traditional arts adversely. Despite the current enthusiasm in <strong>China</strong> for traditional music drana as an exanple of its national arts, the sane could easily happen there in the next few decades. Genres Chuaniu (Sichuan opera). The forn of music drama fbund in Sichuan, <strong>China</strong>'s most populous province, and one of the lnost important of the country's regional sfyles.lt grew out of five different musical and theatrical styles that originally were independent, four belonging to the main systems of Chinese theatre and introduced frorn outside the province. The earliest of these, gaoqiang, came into Sichuan around the 17th century. A variant of the 'musicoiYiyang'drana, it featured an offstage chorus. Slightly latcr, clapper opera, known in Sichuan as tanqianq, ('strum music'), was introduced from Shaanxi to the north. Next huqin qiang { 'music of the huqin t. a variant ol'the PTHUANG syslerrr, inlroduced the two-string huqin instrunent. Aristocratic 1{uNeuwas popular with the officials of Sichuan. The one fbrm native to Sichuan was dengxi ('lantern theatre'), a folk style based on local mask dances of village shamans. Early in the 20th century, the theatre was reforned and the five stylcs began to be perforned on the same stage and were regarded as a uniry, though every iten still retained its style of origin in its umsic. The first teahouse-theatres were introduced into Sichuan's cities. Probably the greatest of the refblners was Kang Zilin (1870-1931), a fine actor, teacher and leader of the famous Three Celebrations (Sanqing) Conpany (est. 1912). Apart from the decade ofthe Cnltural Revolution, Sichuan opera has flourished under the Comnunists, especially since 1978. The Sichuan Province Chuanju Research '.,,tt., 51
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