Taiwan Today

Wang Hai-po (王海波), a well-known Peking opera star in Taiwan, rarely per­forms at home these days. Instead, she has become a regular attrac­tion in mainland China, where she has ap­peared on stage more than sixty times in the past five years. She is drawn across the Taiwan Straits not only by the prestige of studying under master Fang Rongxiang (方榮翔) or working with his Shantong Peking Opera Troupe, but also by the chance to meet with mainland fans. One of her favorite activities is getting to­gether with a group of other performers for an informal outdoor appearance at a factory or tourist site. The group will ap­pear without costumes or props, and sing their favorite roles backed by only a sin­gle instrument. Most fun, Wang says, is when someone from the audience joins in, singing a complementary role with one of the performers. She finds this kind of cul­tural exchange especially rewarding be­cause it really knits people together, both professionals and the public.

These gatherings are special for an­other reason: just seven or eight years ago, they would have been impossible. At that time, the political environments in both Taiwan and mainland China made it diffi­cult for performers to travel from one side to the other, let alone join in a performance or meet with fans. Restrictions in Taiwan against cross-Straits contact did not even allow a local orchestra to play a piece of music by a contemporary mainland com­poser or a local opera group to perform a mainland script written after 1949.

All this began to change after July 1987, when martial law was lifted in Tai­wan. Gradually, the government began loosening restrictions on private contacts with the mainland. The first move, which allowed people from Taiwan to travel across the Straits, sent numerous artists trekking along with the tourists, many of them joining in performances, exhibitions, or seminars.

By the late 1980s, select mainland artists were allowed into Taiwan on an individual basis. And in 1992, more bar­riers came down under a new policy al­lowing mainland performers to appear on stage, whether as soloists or in large troupes. Today, several thousand mainland musicians, actors, and other artists appear in Taiwan every year. More than eighty mainland troupes have performed here, and a number of local performing groups have toured the mainland, many of them using ROC government funds.

Examples from nearly every cultural field have been part of the interaction: music, drama, dance, martial arts, puppetry, painting, film. But some of the most vis­ible and fruitful exchanges have been in the traditional arts, especially in Chinese opera. Some twenty mainland opera troupes have performed here, including the two most renowned companies from Beijing. Many visiting mainland perform­ers have also participated in seminar dis­cussions, lectures, and master classes, and some have stayed on for teaching stints and even television appearances. Opera actors from Taiwan have also visited the mainland, for performing as well as short­-term training. And both sides have fea­tured cooperative productions, with actors from both sides joining together on stage.

These exchanges represent the reunification of a long-separated tradition. Chinese opera—spe­cifically Peking opera—arrived in Taiwan around 1949, when the ROC government moved to the island after los­ing the civil war to the Chinese Commu­nists. Although the island already had a rich tradition in Taiwanese opera, it had had little contact with the Peking style that was revered in the mainland. Hoping to keep this gem of Chinese culture alive, the authorities established several opera troupes and an opera school. Teachers and performers who had fled to Taiwan after the war took on the mantle of preserving and passing on their art. But along with their students, they were cut off from the historical source of the opera for more than forty years.

The cross-Straits exchange now tak­ing place offers a long-hoped-for chance to re-connect with this source and to discover how Peking opera has developed in the mainland in recent decades, includ­ing during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Mainland artists, on the other hand, are curious about developments in Taiwan, where there is both a strong con­servative element working to preserve the old form and a strain of Western-influ­enced experimentation.

Cross-Straits exchange in Peking op­era is especially instructive because it comes at a time when the art form is suf­fering on both sides from declining au­diences and a lack of interest among younger generations, who are drawn to pop concerts and other more trendy forms of entertainment. In Taiwan, the three main government-sponsored opera troupes began laying off members this summer and will soon merge into one group. The situation is much better in the mainland, where the size of the continent and the population offer more touring opportunities. Even so, actors there complain that they perform less regularly than just a few years ago. “We stay at home cook­ing,” says mainland actor Yu Wanzeng (于萬增), “and greet our colleagues with a helpless smile when we meet at the market.” Others complain that operas sometimes attract only several dozen spectators, many of them senior citizens. “An art without an audience,” laments mainland opera instructor Lang Shichang (郎石昌), “is like a fish out of water.”

This makes performing in Taiwan all the more attractive. Although fans here are also dwindling, they are more likely to turn out for a mainland opera perform­ance—if only for the novelty of the event. Such shows also draw younger people than are usually found among operagoers.

In addition, mainland stars find spec­tators here highly appreciative of their tal­ent. While many of them have performed overseas, they find most foreign audi­ences do not understand the nuances of a Peking opera performance or appreciate the unique abilities of different actors. “The audiences in Taiwan are lovely,” says Yu Wanzeng, who performed here in 1993 with the China Beijing Opera Theater. “They applaud whenever an ac­tor or actress performs well, no matter whether the person is famous or not.” Yu finds additional encouragement in the level of understanding among Taiwan critics. “The magazine reviews are very sharp and very helpful for performers,” he says, “because the standards they have are as high as almost five decades ago.”

Mainland actor Mei Baojiu (梅葆玖) also feels energized by the enthusiasm of local audiences. “It makes it easy to build a rapport with them,” he says. By com­parison, mainland actors find their own audiences overly critical. “If they find any fault, they’ll say, ‘Find a master! Go back and study!’” Yu says.

But it is this kind of critical attitude that Taiwan actress Wang Hai-po values in her contacts with the mainland. She even feels the obliging nature of Taiwan operagoers is a detriment. “Our audi­ences have spoiled the performers,” she says. “They shout ‘bravo’ even before the performer appears on stage.” Wang finds that even fellow performers are too generous in their compliments. “Every­body says you’re good. Why? Because they don’t want to offend you and because it takes less time than telling you how to improve. But compliments can­ not help you progress.”

Many people in Taiwan opera circles agree that the overall environment for the art is better in mainland China, where the tradition originated and where most mas­ters and resources are. Wang is enthralled with the level of professionalism and mastery of the art that she has discovered on more than twenty trips across the Straits. Although she is an experienced and respected opera star in Taiwan, hav­ing performed for many years with the now-defunct Hai Kuang Troupe, she feels she can learn a great deal from the new exposure. “Performing in the mainland makes me happy because I’m a pupil again,” she says. “Every supporting performer or stagehand can correct my acting because they are all much more experi­enced. At least they’ve seen good live per­formances. What I’ve learned has been mainly from videotapes.”

Wei Tzu-yun (魏子雲), an opera playwright in Taiwan, believes most local actors could improve through the exposure of cross-Straits exchange. Too many of them, he feels, do not fully understand either the characters they play or the uni­que implications of each gesture. “Main­land performers have good basic skills, but those in Taiwan don’t, except for a few who came from the mainland around 1949,” he says. “It takes time, energy, and certain methods to set a foundation.” To mainland actor Li Guang (李光), the rea­son is simple. “We have more models to follow here,” he says.

The mainland’s bigger market is another advan­tage. It is not unu­sual for a single script to be performed hundreds of times, while the maximum in Taiwan is about a dozen shows. And many produc­tions are only one-shot affairs. Audiences here also expect a greater variety of pro­grams, preferring to see something novel every time they attend the theater. Wang feels this attitude shows a lack of true ap­preciation for the opera. “You can enjoy seeing Ssulang Visits His Mother again and again, even after you’ve seen it many, many times,” she says, referring to a well­ known opera. Each time, she explains, the actors should be better than before and there should be subtle differences in the performance.

But Wang finds fault not only with the audience. “Taiwan’s opera performers love to act and they like to act a good script, but they don’t want to spend the time to do a script well.” Tien Wen-chung (田文仲), who produces television programs on Peking opera, also feels the desire for novelty is harmful. “When it’s variety that counts,” he says, “there is no art.”

Despite the demand for variety, new scripts are harder to come by in Taiwan. In fact, many of the new operas performed here are by mainland playwrights. Local playwright Wei Tzu-yun says few people in Taiwan have the knowledge necessary to write a good opera script. They must have a keen understanding of the music as well as a strong background in Chinese history. Only about ten scriptwriters are active here, while hundreds can be found in the main­land. There, they can receive special train­ing at an opera school.

The operas written in Taiwan also tend to be of the same type, usually based on his­torical or legendary events. But according to Wang An-chi (王安祁), a professor of Chinese literature at National Tsing Hua University, mainland scripts are so plen­tiful and diverse that they are categorized according to three types. “First are the old scripts that have already been performed for decades,” she explains. “The second group is newly written historical stories. And the third category is modern stories, in which the performers are dressed in everyday clothes but the singing and act­ing styles belong to Peking opera.”

Opera music is another area in which many feel that the mainland ex­cels. Taiwan playwright Wei Tzu-yun, for example, feels the music in mainland operas progresses more smoothly from passage to passage. They don’t have the abrupt transitions that he finds in local performances, which follow a more tra­ditional musical approach. One advantage in the mainland is that musicians of­ten specialize in playing Peking opera music and will work on a long-term ba­sis with one troupe, or even with one par­ticular performer.

In Taiwan, they are more likely to play only part time with an opera troupe, spending more time on other types of mu­sic. This allows less chance for a rapport to develop between musicians and per­formers, and less opportunity for musi­cians to develop a sense of spontaneity in response to the action taking place on stage. “Musicians in Taiwan are accompanists while they are composers in main­land China,” Professor Wang says. She points out that mainland orchestras have also incorporated non-traditional tech­niques and instruments into the opera or­chestra, such as violin music. “Even though Taiwan is more internationally oriented,” she says, “opera performers here insist on keeping the tradition as it was.”

Actress Wang Hai-po finds that the overall process of putting together an op­era production is also more professional in the mainland. Every program, she says, goes through a long series of rehearsals at which a group of experts from different fields, including drama, music, and litera­ture, are asked to give their input. And be­cause a production can go through hundreds of performances once it opens, there are many opportunities to modify and perfect the script, acting, staging, and other elements. After each showing, the company also holds a discussion at which the experts give additional suggestions to the performers. “A program has to be experimented with for several years before it’s set,” Wang says. “That’s why they can produce masterpieces that might last for decades and that can be performed over and over again.”

By comparison, most opera perform­ances in Taiwan take a far more cursory and centralized approach, Wang says. Often the whole show is run by the leading actor or actress, who must be a sort of superperson, responsible for directing the performance as well as managing the company and marketing the production. “How can you examine yourself if you are the playwright, the director, and the actor at the same time?” Wang asks. She finds the results are often below par. “What you see by Taiwan troupes are only rehearsals, being performed prob­ably only once,” she says. “The opera in Taiwan is like a bubble. It’s fragile and hard to hold on to.”

But not everything in mainland opera is perfect. Criticisms are often leveled against some of the stylistic alterations that have taken place over the years. One common complaint stems from the changes initi­ated in the 1950s, when many traditional scripts were shortened and the dialogue simplified, removing parts that were re­dundant or considered vulgar. While mainland performers say the scripts used in Taiwan are overly traditional and con­servative, those in local opera circles feel the updated mainland scripts have lost some of their original beauty and mean­ing. Taiwan playwright Wei Tzu-yun finds the new versions have often been shortened at the expense of logic. He cites one revised opera in which a character leaves a city without having to travel across the protected strip of land and moat that would have surrounded it in earlier times. Because of cuts in the script, the character makes an immediate appearance in an enemy camp that would have been much farther away. “You can certainly make changes as long as they’re reason­able,” Wei says. “But how can one get to the enemy’s camp just by jumping over the city wall?” He feels such changes also undermine a valuable asset of Peking op­era—that it can serve to pass on knowledge about the past to younger generations.

Other controversial changes in mainland opera took place during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when many stars were sent to re-education camps and traditional scripts were re­placed by “the eight model operas,” which told stories revolving around peasants and soldiers. Professor Wang An-chi believes act­ing styles were dramatically affected by these changes. “They ex­aggerated their acting during that period to show their patriotism,” she says. “They’ve failed to return to a more subtle style even when performing the old scripts.”

Nevertheless, most people in Taiwan opera circles agree that the art form has largely recovered from any setbacks it suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Many even think it benefited from the ex­perimentation of that period. “If we disre­gard the political ideology in the eight plays, we can easily see that they had some advantages,” TV producer Tien says. For one thing, he says, the music was en­riched by adding Western instruments to the original four to six types of Chinese instruments used in an opera orchestra. Professor Wang finds that mainland opera melodies are also more complex due to in­novations during this era. “Folk songs and local melodies were added,” she says. “It was a breakthrough in concept.”

Experimentation has also taken place in Taiwan’s opera world, some of it gar­nering as much controversy as any changes that occurred in the mainland. The best-known innovators are the Ya-yin Ensemble, directed by actress Kuo Hsiao­-chuang (郭小莊), and the Contemporary Legend Theater, run by actor Wu Hsing­ kuo (吳興國). The former is known for re­vamping the make-up, costumes, and singing style of Peking opera, the latter for its highly theatrical adaptations of Shakespearean plays, which incorporate many staging techniques from Western theater.

While both companies have attracted large audiences, they have often been criticized in more traditional opera cir­cles, both locally and in the mainland. “Kuo Hsiao-chuang’s singing method is not Peking opera style, and the Contem­porary Legend Theater attracts the public because it’s unusual,” says mainland actor Yu Wanzeng. “This is good for the performer rather than for Peking opera. It’s necessary for Peking opera to change, but it should be done gradually. Nobody will know it’s Peking opera if you turn it 180 degrees. Then you lose the older audience and also fail to attract the young.”

But Yu and other mainland perform­ers see advantages to such experiments as well, and they point out that the mainland has also toyed with combining Eastern and Western influences. One troupe, for example, did a Peking opera version of Othello. “Every change has both positive and negative effects,” actress Li Shiji (李世濟) says. “It’s better to let people find what is good through trial and error than to regulate the direction.” Mainland performer Li Guang feels the public rather than the performers themselves are the most appropriate judges of such experi­ments. “If the audience feels it’s good, it’s good,” he says. “If they feel it’s strange, then the change is out of line.” Lin Hsiu­-wei (林秀偉), company manager of the Contemporary Legend Theater, also em­phasizes that it takes time to find changes that work. “The spirit of culture lies in its diversity,” she says. “Each trial and ex­periment should be treated with patience.”

Still, most mainland actors feel such experiments should be thought of as snacks between more nourishing meals, and they should not be allowed to replace the traditional opera form. “No matter how new a script is or how foreign it is,” Li Guang says, “a performance should show the flavor of Peking opera if it is staged by a Peking opera troupe.”

Retaining that flavor means paying close attention to perfecting the traditional singing, speaking, and movement skills unique to the art. Chen Shoou-rang (陳守讓), principal of the National Fu Hsing Dramatic Arts Academy, Taiwan’s best-known Chinese opera school, be­lieves this is the area in which the main­land can have the most lasting influence in Taiwan. Each semester since Septem­ber 1994, he has invited five teachers from the Beijing Chinese Opera School for teaching stints at the academy. It’s a chance for the opera “to get nourishment from its roots after such a long separation,” Chen says.

For the mainland teachers, working in Taiwan is a welcome experience, but it can also be highly demanding. “The workload is heavy here,” says Yang Zhengang (楊振綱), who came to Taiwan this spring. Not only do instructors at Fu Hsing have about two-thirds more students than in the mainland, but they must work with students on their basic acting technique as well as help them un­derstand and interpret the traditional scripts. In Taiwan, particular scripts are used for practicing certain skills, while students in the mainland focus on skills for three years before they begin working on individual scripts. Li Jinsheng (李金聲), who came to Fu Hsing from Beijing for the spring 1995 semester, finds the mainland method more effec­tive. “Progress is slow at first but fast af­terward,” he says. “It seems not much of the basics are taught here.”

Some mainland teachers also feel limited by regulations on both sides al­lowing them to stay in Taiwan no more than six months at a time. They believe students make better progress if they work with the same instructor for a two­-year stint rather than switch from teacher to teacher. “It becomes difficult for stu­dents to establish a style,” says Cui Rongying (崔榮英), who was among the first group of mainland instructors to come to Taiwan.

Fu Hsing principal Chen Shoou­-rang, however, believes the students ben­efit from being exposed to a number of different styles. He is also pleased with the progress that has been made under the program, citing the fact that all three winners in the academy’s bi-annual competition last winter were taught by mainland instructors. He plans to expand the cooperation with the Beijing school to include music and acrobatics.

The benefits of cultural ex­change in opera have not been entirely one-sided. Hong Peilin (洪培林), vice president of the Beijing Chinese Opera School, has been impressed with a three-year-old program at Fu Hsing in which teachers and stu­dents visit local elementary and second­ary schools to introduce the opera. “We’ve learned to do this now, too,” he says. The Beijing school has even ex­panded the idea to include colleges, and some students have been inspired enough to form opera clubs on campus. School President Sun Yumin (孫毓敏) sees the advantage of such activities as two-fold. “We hope we can find some potential performers,” she says, “and if not, at least we might find some new audience members.”

Another way to attract audiences is the use of screens along the sides of the stage for projecting the words of the script as they are sung or recited, often in highly stylized, hard-to-understand syllables. While the device has long been used in Taiwan to help audiences grasp the meaning of the story more quickly, it is new to the mainland. But performers from Beijing, who have seen how beneficial titles are in their Taiwan performances, expect them to catch on quickly among mainland opera compa­nies. “It’s a good method for helping the public understand the art,” says main­land actor Li Shiji. “Understanding is the first step. Then they will learn to enjoy it and study it.”

Taiwan also surpasses the mainland in stage management skills. Beijing actor Li Guang says the island has a much higher and more professional level of technical expertise among all backstage personnel. One thing in particular that is lacking in the mainland, he says, are stage managers, the people trained to oversee all technical aspects of a production.

Mainland performers are also gain­ing something more tangible from their appearances in Taiwan: money. The cash that opera troupes can earn in Taiwan, where tickets sell for much more than in the mainland and where they are guaranteed a performance fee for each tour, promises to inject much-needed revenue that can go toward maintaining their art. Individual performers can also earn a much better income locally by teaching or making television appearances.

This is in sharp contrast to the cir­cumstances for Taiwan performers who venture across the Straits. Because no financing is available from the mainland, they must either secure funds from the government in Taiwan or, more likely, pay their own way. Wang Hai-po, for ex­ample, receives almost no compensation from the opera company that she per­forms with in the mainland. She supports her trips there through funding from the Ministry of Education and from her salary as hostess for a local television program that introduces Peking opera.

Some mainland actors worry that this situation detracts from the potential benefits of cross-Straits exchange. Yu Wanzeng thinks too many troupes are coming to Taiwan simply to cash in. “I want to protect the place from those mainland groups that consider Taiwan just a ‘treasure island,’” he says. “If every troupe visits just to make money, there will be no future for Peking opera in Taiwan.” He hopes instead that the two sides will concentrate on more concrete plans to help promote Peking opera and to attract larger and younger audiences. “People will come,” he says, “if you have something to offer.”