Contemporary China - Yavanika

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
China'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 China 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,
China'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