“As a woman who has already journeyed almost half the way through her life, I can look back on bygone days without any regrets. I have been developing my affection for Peking opera over 37 years; I have never parted with it even for a transient second. My life is enriched and burnished because of this experience with a jewel of Chinese culture.
“It is exactly as my son wrote in his composition exercise book when he was very young, ‘From the opening of her eyes in the morning till their closing at night, my mother always fills her mind with this intensively Chinese performing art,’” declared Hsu Lu, regarded by many as ching yi chi chiu (the most accomplished of female role players).
In Peking opera circles on this island, gifted Hsu Lu is especially recognized by the older generation for performances which evidence the results of keen observation and hard study. Perhaps the younger generations’ respect and admiration are pointed more directly at her artistic attainments. Although she lingers in the beaten track of the world of opera, Hsu Lu is able to make it a unique world, entirely her own.
“The life-career of a performer, whether success or failure, is still the fruit of many years of painstaking effort by her seniors. One aspect of this in which I am able to take real pride is that for the past 28 years, no matter how well or badly I felt, I have never given up on living and performing,” Hsu announced.
“Hsu Lu” is unusual in that it is her original name, but she is not an actual child of the Hsu family. Her real father was a middle school principal in Chungking, Szechwan Province. The Hsu’s were very close friends of Hsu Lu’s real parents; since the Hsu’s had no children at the time, the latter promised to give their soon-to-be-born baby to the Hsu family, and, in 1939, when Hsu Lu was born, she was immediately sent to the Hsu family as their own.
When China’s victory was secured in the eight-year War of Resistance against Japan, the Hsu family moved back to their old home in Soochow, Kiangsu Province. At that time, the father was director of a school of porcelain production and also in business, and the Hsu family was known to almost every household in the locality.
The mother was a patron of Peking opera who would often invite local theater troupes to perform at her residence, such performances lasting at least two to three days. She also arranged for famous singers to teach her their art—being an amateur Peking opera performer at the time was very trendy. The only daughter of the family, Hsu Lu was the apple of her parents’ eyes. And her interest in Peking opera was thus environmentally cultivated when she was very young.
As she must have been imperceptibly and constantly influenced by what she saw and heard of the opera arts, it is not surprising that she developed the desire to perform with the same skill as the famous players who appeared often in her family home.
On one occasion, when the Hsu family had engaged one such opera troupe to celebrate a festival, all their relatives and friends gathered to discuss the repertoire. Suddenly, Hsu Lu’s maternal grandmother asked the little girl, half seriously, half jokingly, “Come now, sing an aria for us?”
The bashful little girl, under the gaze of the grownups crowding the reception room, sang an aria from Fen Ho Wan. Her clear articulation and perfect timing to the musical instruments surprised everyone. Mrs. Hsu was asked, “Why didn’t you tell us that you had already invited teachers to give her classes in Peking opera?” The close friends of the Hsu family who came that day agreed that Hsu Lu had a fine voice and, after strict training, would someday become a prominent singer.
Not until that moment did Mrs. Hsu fully realize why her little daughter always hid behind the door to listen as she attentively practiced her Peking opera lessons. And she, like the guests for that festival day, was very much surprised by the quality of her daughter’s performance of Fen Ho Wan. However, she did take time out to impress on Hsu Lu that she could only follow opera as a hobby, not actually be a performer.
When the Chinese Communists invested the mainland, Hsu Lu and her parents moved to Taiwan. That year she was nine years old and, in addition to primary school, studied Peking opera. Such famous players as Shen Ke-chang, Shen Chien-yi, and Li Yi-ching were her teachers. “I was fascinated with Peking opera; I hated to go to school. I would not get up for school until my mother hurried me up three times,” Hsu confessed.
The first complete opera she mastered was Nu Chi Chieh (A Female Prisoner Being Transferred Under Escort), which was presented during a parent-teacher meeting. Hsu Lu was in the leading female role, Su San, and it was all a great success. From then on Hsu Lu was recognized as a gifted young amateur.
However, her future was actually decided a year before by a non-operatic drama, Justice in the Mortal World. “I was on stage for ten days in a row; I as intoxicated with the applause of the audience,” Hsu Lu explained.
The opera Nu Chi Chieh brought the little girl luck that she had not dared to dream of. Through it, Hsu’ Lu was brought to the attention of Chi Ju-shan, master of Peking opera. On witnessing her performance, Chi was so excited, he told the little girl’s maternal grandfather, “On the mainland, I successfully trained famous Mei Lan-fang. In Taiwan, I am going to help Hsu Lu become a star of opera.” He stood up, hurried backstage, and asked Hsu Lu, “Would you like to study Peking opera regularly?”
Chi brought Hsu Lu to perform for a special opera fan, General Wang Shu-ming, then Commander-in-Chief of the ROC Air Force. Right on the spot, little Hsu Lu did all the sketches and arias she knew—so determinedly, it set the General roaring with laughter. He asked the little girl, “Do you really want to learn Peking opera?”
On her way back, Hsu Lu said to herself, “It’s not bad at all learning Peking opera. The man said he would ask (famous) Su Sheng-shih and Liu Ming-pao to teach me operas with fighting scenes. Ha Yuan-chang will teach me Ta Yu Sha Chia. All will come to my house to teach me. How wonderful!”
Wang established Tapeng Drama School directly for Hsu Lu, and she, still a primary school student, became its first and then only student.
In the beginning, she had to attend both regular primary school and the drama school. She was told to forget the fragments from Peking opera that she had learned before. Perhaps most difficult, she had to incessantly seek permission of her mother for the future; Mrs. Hsu was strongly against Hsu Lu’s dream of making a career on stage. The child’s determination almost set off a family revolution.
At last, Mrs. Hsu relented, asking her finally, “Do you choose formal schooling or Peking opera?”
She chose opera, and Mrs. Hsu spelled out the conditions, “First of all, you have to promise me that you will never learn the bad habits of stage performers. Second, you may not give up regular studies. Lastly, whenever you come on other talented girls, you must remember to be open-minded and to help them learn.”
“I understood at that time that knowledge of Chinese literature, history, geography, and music were significant to the performance of Peking opera. However, such courses as physics, chemistry, and mathematics were not germane to this traditional Chinese art. Therefore, I studied opera at the Tapeng Drama School and Chinese culture under family tutors,” Hsu Lu recalled.
She laughed, “One big reason I wanted to whole-heartedly study Peking opera was because I did not like to do regular school homework. I thought opera was much greater fun. I enjoyed myself when I was singing or otherwise performing on stage, while people off stage appreciated me. Furthermore, on stage, my dearest wishes were fulfilled. For instance, I wanted to be a princess, and my dream could come true on stage.”
Since Hsu Lu was the first and then only student of the Tapeng Drama School, all the teachers devoted all their attention to teaching her, and she became skilled in performing countless roles.
Mastery of opera action requires painstaking effort. In the past, every memorable performance and even the graceful posturing of top players was the direct result of tutoring by famous teachers, and the teachers were disciplinarians who didn’t spare the rod. Hsu Lu’s apprenticeship was different. During her strictest training periods, she never suffered one thrashing, even a whack from a ruler.
“Since I, myself, chose opera, I made stricter demands of myself than my teachers did. Then, how would I merit a spanking?” she shrugged.
During the first couple of years of the Tapeng Drama School, Liu Ming-pao and Su Sheng-shih were her special teachers, and they demanded that 10-year-old Hsu Lu work at memorizing lines and body movements for more than 15 hours a day. “Both were single and did not ask for any additional reward. My parents only invited them to dinner,” Hsu said.
Whenever Liu Ming-pao handed her a Peking opera script and told her to memorize it within a week, she would try to accomplish it in three days. And then a week later, she would not only be able to recite the lines, but also to ponder and discuss the frame of mind of the leading female character.
Practicing the required acrobatic skills was much harder for her than memorizing lines. Every morning at 7:30, Hsu Lu would wait outdoors for teacher Su Sheng-shih. A cup of tea was always prepared specially for him. She credits Su’s guidance for her outstanding interpretations in such operas as Pa Wang Pieh Chi (Conqueror Hsiang Yu Departs with His Beloved Concubine Yu), and Mu Lan Tsung Chun (Heroine Mu Lan Joins the Military Service in Place of Her Sick Father).
Peking opera circles on the island, as a result of Hsu’s outstanding performances, now began to believe that new talent could be trained here, away from the fountainheads on the mainland. And after Hsu Lu, the school was continued, recruiting such students as Ku Ai-lien, Niu Fang-yu, and Yang Tan-li.
Besides teachers Su Sheng-shih and Liu Ming-pao, Hsu Lu now began to study with Chu Chin-hsin. She credits him with helping her understand what Peking operas really intend, and how to comprehend intuitively the quintessence of each play.
Hsu considers herself a very lucky person. Every senior theatrical personage of the time was willing to pass on his or her special skills and knowledge to her. “Take Chu Chin-hsin for instance. At the time he was very old and his physical condition was poor. But whenever he taught me some movement, he was always very patient, demonstrating every detail. However, those students who came after found that he could no longer physically demonstrate the movements.”
Pai Yu-wei was another very important teacher for Hsu. She taught her how to convey sound, putting her own unique conceptions into opera theories.
After five years of study at the Tapeng Drama School and one year in practice, Hsu Lu completed her training and apprenticeship in the “trade” and was ready to make her debut as a professional.
The year she completed her drama school training, she traveled to Europe with fifty members of the Tapeng Troupe, performing two operas in seven countries—Hsiao Fang Niu (The Village Girl and the Buffalo Boy) and Tien Nu Sang Hua (Celestial Maidens Strewing Flowers). One day, after Hsu had joined the other troupers in curtain calls at a London theater, a lady came to her backstage to tell her how well she had performed. Hsu was later told that the lady was a celebrated English actress named Vivien Leigh. Another time, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace visited her backstage and complimented her on her performance.
In the fall of 1963, Hsu Lu, 24, had already become a leading light of operatic circles in Taiwan. She opted now to explore the profundity of Peking opera theory. But she also wanted to live a more complete life. She was feeling closed in. On the recommendation of Professor Yu Ta-kang, a master of Chinese classics, she entered the department of drama of the College (now University) of Chinese Culture, living now among other students—from a small theatrical domain to a more real life.
She went to movies and climbed mountains with her classmates, enjoying campus life fully. “I didn’t realize before that the world was so big,” she reportedly said on one occasion, artlessly.
Even now, she muses on the solemnity of her youthful life, before college:
“I still remember when the troupe performed in the seven European countries. I was the youngest. However, I was asked always to dress like a mature woman. I wore a long chi pao (traditional Chmese dress), and my long hair was in a bun on top of my head. Wherever I went I had to act and talk like an adult. And I felt it was painful.”
The professor who recommended that she take elective courses at the College of Chinese Culture was an unforgettable teacher for Hsu. He helped her to a full understanding of the beauty and meaning of classical Chinese literature and drama. After a class was dismissed, Professor Yu might discuss an opera for Hsu—changing some lines or, on occasion, even rewriting an entire script. Yu revised librettos for Yu Tsan Chi, Hung Mei Ko, and Liang Hung Yu especially for her.
Few are aware that Professor Yu’s engrossment in Peking opera was mainly because of Hsu Lu. It was Hsu who led him into the palace hall of Chinese opera, though he could sing only a little.
In 1965, Hsu Lu’s marriage was a big event in operatic circles. And it was another enlargement of life for her. “My husband, a bio-chemistry professor, led me into academic circles that were unknown to me before,” Hsu said. Their scientific guests were fond then of discussing historical Chinese events, like previous acquaintances, but their viewpoints were different than those of her friends in literary and artistic circles. “Sometimes when I could offer an opinion, I would feel pleased with myself. Of course, my opinions were from an operatic vantage. My contact with them imperceptibly expanded the domain of my thought, which was also significant to my performing career,” Hsu said.
Hsu’s husband, Wang Chi-hsiang, was a professor at National Tsing Hua University for many years, then accepted an invitation from a university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he has since been teaching. “I still remember that not long after we were married, he kept asking me to teach him to sing, and especially to perform the role of Chou Yu in Chun Ying Hui (A Grand Gathering of Brilliant Minds). I tried to be patient when I taught him, but he just didn’t have a good voice,” Hsu smiled.
During the first three years of marriage, Hsu gave birth to a boy and a girl. On the surface, she was now, at home, distant from the opera stage. Actually, she also made use of the opportunity to polish her skills and to further digest the operas she had learned over the years. “No one can say that I ever stopped practicing! Those three years were the most important and rewarding of my life.”
Hsu successively joined the Taiwan Peking Opera Troupe, the Peking Opera Troupe of Taiwan Television Enterprise, and the Mingto Drama School. In 1981, she joined her parents-in-law and settled in Canada, but continues to visit Taiwan often and has, in the interim, performed here.
In Canada, she plays the “perfect wife,” a role she very much enjoys, but her mind is never still. “Actually, my life has been full of twists and turns. People may not know this. However, the unhappy events have never really affected the pace of my life,” she offered.
Before she was 17, Hsu Lu’s favorite play was The Goddess of the Lo River. “I was enchanted by the beautiful, misty love between Tsao Chih (192-232 A.D., a poet of the Three Kingdoms) and the Concubine Mi.” But, after Hsu married and later returned to the stage, she became fascinated with the leading feminine role in Po Wang Pieh Chi. She says that not until then did she begin to realize that a woman was able to see love as even more important than her own life.
She has performed professionally in more than one hundred plays and she really loves every role, so much so, that at times it seems to her that her own character is the combination of them all. “My whole life is inseparable from my exquisite art. Sometimes, life experience has increased my breadth in Peking opera. And sometimes, Chinese opera has helped me realize truths about this mortal world. In the past, I was a person given over to aesthetics. I demanded that everything, both on stage and in real life, be beautiful and perfect. But now, I am no longer that strict. As long as I live happily and meaningfully, beauty can take a rear seat,” she said.
Recently, Hsu Lu flew back here to visit her relatives. Her friends in theatrical circles seized the chance to ask her to go on stage again. “It was hard for me to reject their warmheartedness, so I decided to perform the three acts of Mu Tan Ting (The Peony Pavilion). Hsu Lu is generally regarded as the performer who most brilliantly interprets the role of Tu Li-niang in the opera.
“Having played this role more than a dozen times,” she remarked, “each time I perform it, I find my heart still entirely captured by the graceful melodies and lines, the vivid image of delicate Tu Li-niang, and the lively characters acters depicted.”
Mu Tan Ting is always performed to kun chu, melodies originating in Kunshan, in the Kiangsu area, which dominated the Chinese theatrical arts for more than 200 years (1522-1779). “Where there is sound, there is a song; where there is movement, there is dance;” such are the distinguishing features of kun chu.
“Wandering in the Garden and Waking From A Dream, two acts from the opera, are a paragon of the art form. In Wandering in the Garden, the entire stage is animated by the songs and dances of Tu Li-niang and her personal maid, Chun-hsiang. Their mien and footwork, sometimes quick and dazzling, sometimes unhurried, produce a scene sparkling with a rhythmic, harmonious beauty,” Hsu averred.
“I still remember when I played the role many years ago. The stage was set up in Western style, with real scenery. The musicians were moved down to the front of the stage. And unfortunately, the sound from the gongs and the drums then became a din. The effect of the performance was highly unexpected,” she recalled.
From that time on, Hsu began to study abstruse meanings in the drama’s complex language, and she noted a special, harmonious beauty in the role’s required postures. She demanded of herself that she convey the rich, varied, moods and implications of Mu Tan Ting through each minute line and movement.
“So long as the basic characteristics of kun melody can be maintained, I do not object to accommodating new ideas in some areas. The scene involving the flower deities for instance—flower lanterns were replaced by flowers of satin ribbon. Then, the changing lighting helped the flow of the story and the development of atmosphere and ambience. Designed by Nieh Kuang-yen, our stage took black and gold as theme colors—a black carpet, black curtain, and a huge golden peony,” Hsu continued.
Hsu Lu played two roles. In the first act, Chun Hsiang Nao Hsueh (Chun-hsiang Teases the Old Tutor), she played the naughty slave-girl Chun-hsiang.
“In the past, whenever I performed Mu Tang Ting, I always played the leading lady, Tu Li-niang. That was because I thought myself a quiet person. However, I longed to play the naive, naughty slave girl, Chun-hsiang—perhaps to escape layers upon layers of restraints in real life.
“Actually, this performance of Mu Tan Ting enabled me to relive my happy, early teenage years...” Hsu said.
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Since its initial publication in 1598, the twenty-sixth reigning year of Emperor Shentzung of the Ming Dynasty, Mu Tan Ting (The Peony Pavilion), by poetic dramatist Tang Hsien-tsu (1550-1616), has been regarded as unequaled among classical works of its genre. And among its fifty-five scenes, Chun-hsiang Nao Hsueh (Chun-hsiang Teases the Old Tutor), Yu Yuan (Wandering in the Garden) and Ching Meng (Waking From A Dream) have always been able to illuminate the traditional Chinese opera stage...and to tug at the heartstrings of successive audiences. Through the ages, scholars have never been exhausted in their constant efforts to more fully analyze this masterpiece.
Mu Tan Ting draws its high literary merit from the elegant turns and twists of Tu Li-niang’s enchanting story, from the writer’s beautiful language, and because of its unmatchable literary attainment.
In the twenty-third chapter of the famous classic novel, Hung Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), author Tsao Hsueh-chin quotes from Waking From A Dream in Mu Tan Ting: Here, the flowers bloom
in spangled color
Among dry wells and weathered walls.
But the sparkling fairy scene
Only feeds my despair,
At joy and gladness withdrawn
To other gardens, other mansions.
Through the musings, then, of his beautiful, delicate character, Lin Dai-yu, Tsao Hsueh-chin conveys his immense appreciation of Tang Hsien-tsu’s literary talent: “It’s true,” she thought, “there is good poetry, even in plays. What a pity most people think of them only as entertainment. So much of the real beauty in them must go unappreciated.
In thought and writing style, Tsao Hsueh-chin was deeply influenced by Tang’s four immortal masterpieces—Tzu Chai Chi (A Story of A Purple Hairpin), Han Tan Chi (A Dream of Han Tan City), and Nan Ko Chi (A Dream of Nan Ko Prefecture), and of course, Mu Tan Ting. Tang creates in the latter, a love story that transcends life and death, time and space. He chants the eulogy of Tu Li-niang, a passionate young woman who dares to depart from the feudal ethical code to pursue a romance that was to move even a judge in hell. In the tradition of romantic Chinese literature, Mu Tang Ting is a dazzling milestone.
The Kuan Sui, a chapter of the Book of Odes (compiled and edited by Confucius), makes evident that poetic works affirming love have not been rare in Chinese literature. Scholars often compare Hsi Hsiang Chi (Romance of the West Chamber), written by Wang Shih-fu of the Yuan Dynasty, with Mu Tan Ting. However, in Western Chamber, the attitude of Tsui Ying-ying, the heroine, toward love is passive. She relies entirely upon her personal maid as a go-between. What Mu Tan Ting unfolds is quite different; in Waking From A Dream, after Tu Li-niang’s tryst with Liu Meng-mei, she ponders the remembered scene in an explicit way that is without reserve.
Tu Li-niang is the daughter of a reputed family, a “pearl in the palms” of her parents. Her father is magistrate of Nanan Prefecture at a time when the feudal ethical code was the rule for every Chinese. A young lady from such an influential family who dared independent thought was condemned.
However, Tang Hsien-tsu reveals a hearty sympathy for this woman he created, who dies for love and is revived after death to pursue it. Under Tang’s pen, the romance between Tu Li-niang and Liu Meng-mei is boldly and intensely depicted. Mu Tang Ting is truly a psalm of love.
Although a work contemporary with Mu Tan Ting, Chin Ping Mei (Golden Lotus), offers direct and explicit delineation of sex and love between its male and female characters, none of them are spiritually created. Their lives and themselves are incomplete.
Mu Tan Ting exquisitely and minutely paints the mind of a young lady arriving at puberty. Born and brought up in a privileged family, she is forbidden even to go as far as the rear garden of her own family residence.
In the first scene, Chun-hsiang Teases the Old Tutor, a conflict rises between the old tutor and the slave girl, Chun-hsiang. The old pedant buries himself year round in a heap of musty old books and has, furthermore, failed again and again in the civil examinations, which has taken the edge off his spirit.
Since he is Tu Li-niang’s private teacher, he has to fulfill this duty, and he does so by urging her to read the classics and practice calligraphy, thereby infusing into his cloistered young student, his own high-reaching and impractical views.
Since Tu Li-niang is so properly brought up, she is able to quietly accept the tutor’s guidance and conform to his restraints. However, the naive and artless Chun-hsiang, Li-niang’s personal maid, has a different attitude. She teases, refutes, and resists the teacher and his teachings. To the old man, the Book of Odes is a wonderful volume of moralistic teaching. But Chun-hsiang sees such views only as shackles. Chun-hsiang and the teacher reflect vastly different outlooks on life and concepts of value.
Chen Liang-tsui, the tutor, is the representative of ossified, outworn classicism; Chun-hsiang symbolizes a lively, natural romanticism. Tu Li-niang, on the surface, forces Chun-hsiang to apologize, thereby maintaining her teacher’s dignity. But in her mind, she begins to yearn for another kind of world. She finally gives up her traditional dignity as a master to implore the servant girl to wander with her in the forbidden garden.
Born a beauty, and romantically dressed for the adventure in the garden, Tu Li-niang adds radiance to the flowers, whose splendor has previously been wasted on deserted wells and crumbling walls. Romantic Li-niang cannot refrain from comparing herself to flowers, in love with their own fragrance. Then she ponders: “If even the earth and stone of the garden wall can wear away, how is my own youth and beauty to resist the ruin of time?” And with a heavy heart, she begins to doubt if there can be true happiness in the world. A sweet birdsong in the garden now seems to her a cutting satire. She returns disappointed and unhappy.
Back in her room, Li-niang calls to mind all those stories of gifted scholars and their beautiful ladies down through the ages. And she cries for her youth, slipping idly by, and again for the imprisoning aspects of her family background. Because her parents have been trying to seek the ideal partner for her, her marriage has been long delayed. And Li-niang questions why mother nature plays such tricks on her.
As she murmurs against heaven and blames others for her misfortunes, her beliefs in the traditional feudal ethics collapse. Although she does not actually behave “immorally,” subconsciously she has the desire to resist.
The God of Flowers now notes, “Because Li-niang became very sentimental after wandering in the garden, Liu Meng-mei, a handsome young man, has thereby entered her dream.” Thus the two sections of Mu Tan Ting—Wandering In the Garden and Waking From A Dream—begin with a dream and end with a dream. It is a stipulation that romance can only be sought in dreams.
In her dream, Tu Li-niang’s lover appears smiling, a willow twig in his hand (his name, Meng-mei, translates to “dream of a willow tree”). Although they meet now for the first time, both feel they are, somehow, so close to one another.
Tu Li-niang’s secret meeting with her lover occurs in the dream and proceeds under the protection of the deities of the flowers. Then, after she wakes from the dream, Li-niang cannot bear the loneliness. She paints a self-portrait one day, placing her secrets and worries within it, then dies in a short time.
Liu Meng-mei, her dream lover, really lives in the world and happens to see the portrait of Tu Li-niang. Overcome by her beauty, he obtains the painting and worships it every day.
Finally, Tu Li-niang’s spirit seeks out Liu, and the two fall in love. Liu later finds that this woman he loves so much is a ghost, and the spirit tells him that if she finds a man who truly loves her, she will be brought back to life. Liu Meng-mei opens Li-niang’s grave, and the young lady revives, as the story climaxes in a happy finale....
Western Chamber, another famous classical Chinese romance, is dedicated to traditional scholar-official views: Although the romance between Tsui Ying-ying and Chang Chun-jui has broken through the obstructions of feudal ethics, their marriage is built on a foundation of family status and scholarly honor. This is the area in which Western Chamber differs most from Mu Tan Ting.
During his remaining years, author Tang Hsien-tsu was deeply influenced by Buddhist thought. The “impermanence of life” became the central theme of his other famous dramas, Dream of Nan Ko and Dream of Han Tan Prefecture. It was natural that, in later years, he became inactive and was inclined to live incognito.
When he finished writing Mu Tan Ting, Tang Hsien-tsu was only 49 years old. His literary expression of human emotions had marked a zenith in Chinese writing at a time when he was positive toward life. Mu Tan Ting reflects that most vigorous period.
Of his four immortal works, Mu Tan Ting is the only challenge to time. Tu Li-niang dies because of love, and her stubbornness moves a judge of hell. She is able to return from the grave and join the man she loves. Love conquers death itself. Their happiness is time suspended, young love for eternity....