Taiwan Today

The earliest record of Chi­nese theatrical art is found in "The Historical Rec­ords" written by Sze Ma Chien of the Han Dynasty. In the chapter on humor, Sze Ma Chien writes of one Yu Meng, a court jester of the Kingdom of Chu in the time of the Spring and Autumn (722-484 B.C.). The Prime Minister of Chu, Sun Shu-ao, knew Yu was a good man and treated him as a friend. On his death bed, the Prime Minister said to his son: "When I am gone, you will not have much to live on. But if you will go to see Yu Meng and tell him that you are my son, he will be able to do something for you." The impoverished son had no other recourse but to go to see Yu. The latter took him into his home, put on Sun Shu-ao's clothing, and acted the part of the son's father. The son was asked to show Yu how to act like his father. After a year or so, he had acquired all the man­nerisms of Sun Shu-ao and the courtiers of the King could not tell the difference between him and the deceased Sun Shu-ao. One day at a banquet, the King was surprised to find that his de­ceased prime minister carne forward to drink to his health. After he had found out what it was all about, he regretted that he had treated Sun's son and heir so slovenly and bestowed on him the land of Chin Chiu as fief. Up to present time, the word "yu" and its com­binations still mean a player.

Actually Chinese dramat­ic art is traceable to times farther back than this story. The most important elements of Chinese drama are sing­ing and dancing. It is rightly said of Chinese classical dramas: "All sounds are sung; no movement is ex­pressed without dancing." Both singing or music and dancing had been well developed when there was writ­ ten history. The legend has it that the music of the time of Ko Tien Shih (葛天氏) was for three people to take hold of the tail of an ox and throw up their feet to sing the song of Pai Kwai. In ancient times, when a new dynasty began, one of the first things the reigning emperor would do was to establish rituals and to write music. This was started by the good Duke of Chou who acted as regent to the youthful Emperor Cheng (1115-1078 B.C.) of the Chou Dynasty. It must be during this time that some­thing like a national an­them was started, for each of the principalities and duke­doms that Duke Chou ordain­ed for the emperor had a song of its own so that at the time of Spring and Autumn, Prince Chih Tsa of Wu was able to tell the fortune of a state by merely listening to its national anthem.

By the time of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), music and dance must have reached a high degree of development; for when he heard Shao, a dance music, on his visit to the country of Chi, he was so absorbed that for three months he had no taste for meat, and he said: "I hardly knew that one could make music to such a state of ex­cellence."

Early Periods

Both music and dances were well developed in the Han Dynasty (208 B.C.-A.D. 220). According to historical records of the time, there were music for the emperor's worship at the temples, mu­sic for his hunting, and music for reception of his subjects. It was at this time that China opened up the vast territories to the west. As a result, musical instru­ments used by the barbarians in the west were introduced into China. It was from the so-called West Territory that Pi Pa and fifes were first introduced.

It was also during the Han Dynasty that what would now be called vaude­ville acts, such as, rope walk­ing, sword swallowing, fire eating, etc., were first recorded. A popular play of the time was built around Huang Kung of Tung Hai of the Chin Dynasty, who claimed in his young days that he could subdue snakes and ti­gers with his gold sword. He tied up his hair with a red silk band and claimed that he could raise clouds and fog and that by the wave of his sword cause a mountain and river to appear. When he grew old he became addicted to drinking, and whatever his powers had been, he could no longer do any mag­ic. One day a tiger appear­ed, and Huang tried do sub­due it with his sword. Instead, he was killed by the tiger. Aside from this, no other play of the Han Dynasty is known.

Sui Dynasty

Emperor Yang (A.D. 605­-617) of the Sui Dynasty was given to worldly pleasures. He kept three hundred-odd musicians, singers and players at his court. In the sec­ond year of his reign, chief Jan Kan of the Tu Chueh tribesmen was coming to pay him respects. The emperor wanted to impress the foreign chief and gathered from all parts of the country musi­cians and players at Changan which was then capital of the country. After this, rep­resentatives from other neighboring countries came regularly to pay respects to the emperor during the new year and stay for fifteen days. Outdoor theaters were established outside of the Tuan gate and inside the Chien Kuo gate of Changan for a distance of 8 li. Offi­cials put up stands along the road where they viewed the plays from morning till night. The players were dressed in silks and brocades. The sing­ers and dancers were mostly women. Sometimes as many as thirty thousand players participated. The noise of the drums reached to high heavens; the grounds were brightly lit. The people put on masks of animals. Some men were dressed like women. Players and vaudeville actors were found everywhere put­ting on shows for the enter­tainment of the public. It is to be regretted that no ex­isting record shows what kind of plays was used at the time. But due to the large number of people who par­ticipated and the popularity of the plays, it can be gathered that dramatic arts must have been well developed at that time.

Emperor Yang's time was also the beginning of puppet shows. There is a record to the effect that the emperor entertained his subjects at a show where two-foot long pup­pets dressed in silk and wearing gold and jade ornaments enacted 72 historical plays. They danced and sang as if they were human beings.

Tang Ming Huang

Dramatic arts received the greatest fillip during the reign of Emperor Ming Huang of the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 713-756). For the enter­tainment of his favorite mis­tress Yang Kuei Fei, he had a large troupe trained in the garden which occupied a part of the palace grounds. The garden was given the name of Li Yuan - Pear Garden­ - and because of the populari­ty of the players among the officials and the elite class of the time, the name "Pear Garden" has since become synonymous with a theater, and actors and actresses have since been known as "children of the Pear Garden."

The wearing of masks in Chinese drama is traceable directly to the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907). One of the plays of this time depicts one Wang Chang-kung of the North Chou Dynasty (A.D. 556-581) who was a brave gen­eral. As his looks were too feminine to command the re­spect of the enemy, he wore a mask with black lines that gave the wearer the appear­ance of being able to bring down pestilence and destruction by his evil looks alone. It is believed that the wear­ing of this mask won him many battles. From this came the standard mask for gen­erals and other military men in the Chinese theater, one with heavy black lines curv­ing upward and outward that lend the air of ferocity to the wearer.

A large number of Sung plays are known today. Due to the pressure of the Tar­tars, the Sung emperor moved his capital to Hangchow. Most of the actors and ac­tresses in the former capital Kaifeng moved south with the government. Despite the continued threat of the Tar­tars in the North, the Sung court and the officials want­ed to give the public the im­pression that all was well. As a result, theaters and all sorts of amusement places were well patronized. Some two hundred eighty titles of various dramas are known to this day. Many of the prac­tices and techniques of the time have come down to us.

Yuan Dramas

It was during this time that the so-called Southern drama flourished. This was the outgrowth of folklore embellished by the pen of literary men. Some of the scripts of the Southern drama are still extant, they may be regarded as the beginning of the written Chinese scripts. For this reason, the terms used in the Southern drama are still being used today. Because of its plebeian ori­gin, it has considerable in­fluence among the general population.

The Northern drama started in the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1206-1368). It is, therefore, sometimes called Yuan drama. Being favored by the Mongolians who came to rule China at this time, the Northern drama soon spread to all parts of the country. Many Yuan scripts have been preserved to this day, and they are ranked with Tang poetry and Sung tse (a form of rhymed prose) as the best products of Chinese literature. The characteristic feature of the Northern drama is that it is sung by only the two chief characters, the hero and the heroine.

The most representative work of the Yuan dramas is Wang Shih-fu's "The West Chamber," the story of which is briefly as follows:

Yin Yin and her mother were staying at a Buddhist temple for rendering me­morial service to her deceased father. Scholar Chang hap­pened to visit the temple on his way to the capital to take the national examination. While in the temple, he saw and was struck by the beauty of Yin Yin, who was accom­panied by her girl servant named Red Maid. He asked the abbot to allow him to stay in the temple also. As no respectable girl of this time would talk to a stranger, Scholar Chang had to make the acquaintance of the girl servant first. Red Maid showed her cleverness in bringing and passing messages between Chang and Yin Yin.

Chang was not the only one that admired the beauty of Yin Yin. A bandit chief in the neighborhood had also seen Yin Yin and dispatched a note to the abbot threaten­ing to raid the temple unless Yin Yin could be delivered to his camp before a certain date. In her desperation, the mother offered to marry her daughter to anyone who could rescue the girl from the hands of the bandit. It so happened that Scholar Chang knew a certain military commander in the neighborhood. Upon learning the outrageous demand of the bandit chief from Chang, the commander sent some soldiers to drive the bandits away.

After the danger of the bandits had disappeared, the girl's mother had no inten­tion of honoring her pledge and refused to entertain Chang's claim. Through the intercession of Red Maid, Chang and Yin Yin exchang­ed messages more and more often. When Chang finally asked for a meeting, the girl coyly sent him the follow­ing stanza which, because of its beauty and explicit­ ness without betraying the writer's feeling, had become immortal in Chinese literature and an all-time favorite for theater goers.

Someone waits in the moon­lit night,
In the western room with the door ajar.
Across the wall the flower shadows move -
Ah, perhaps my love has come!

Upon receipt of the verse, Chang went at the ap­pointed time and place and spent the evening with his beloved. When the old lady learned what had been going on between him and her daughter, she had to consent to their marriage. But she insisted that he should pass his national examination be­fore he should be married. The story ended happily in Chang's passing the examina­tion and marrying his loved one.

Ming Dynasty

The Northern drama came into disfavor after its patrons, the ruling Mongo­lians, had been overthrown by Chu Hung-wu, first emper­or of the Ming Dynasty. In its stead, the Southern drama again came into favor. Typical of the Southern drama of this period is the Pi Pa Chi - The Lute - the story of which follows:

Tsai Peh-kai bade fare­well to his parents and his wife Wu Niang and went to the capital city to take the national examination. After he had passed the examina­tion, he married Prime Min­ister Niu's daughter and did not return home. His parents died in the famine. Wu Niang cut her hair and sold it together with whatever else she had of value to get enough money to bury them.

Then she begged her way to the capital where she found her husband and was reunited with him.

Emperor Tai Tsu (A.D. 1368-98) of the Ming Dynasty saw the script of the play and liked it, and through his patronage the Southern drama flourished as never before. As it grew, the South­ern drama became more and more vulgarized. Reaction set in the form of Kunshan drama. As its name indi­cates, this form of drama ori­ginated in the city of Kun­shan in Kiangsu Province. From its very beginning the Kunshan drama was in the hands of literary pedants who delighted in using end­less literary allusions to ex­press a single idea. How­ever, because of the patron­age of the scholars, it became popular in many parts of the country. As it developed, it became so pedantic and gaudy in style that it lost its appeal to the general public. However, this reaction did not set in until well after the establishment of the Ching Dynasty (A.D. 1583-1911).

Ching Dynasty

In his long reign of sixty years, Emperor Chien Lung (1736-96) of the Ching Dynasty made three trips in­cognito to the South. For his entertainment the wealthy salt merchants of Yangchow vied with each other in main­taining theatrical companies in their establishments. Some had several troupes-one for Kunshan drama and the others for other kinds of dramas, especially the Northern. Thus all kinds of dramas received a fillip in the mid­dle of the dynasty. On the Emperor's seventieth and eightieth birthdays, the best troupes of the country con­gregated in Peking to cele­brate the occasions. After the celebration some of the troupes remained. This ex­plains why in the latter part of the dynasty, Peking led the country in drama.

It was during this time that the so-called Peiping opera was born. This included many of the features of local dramas as a result of the congregating in the an­cient capital of many local troupes. Especially worth mentioning is the Shensi school and the Erh Huang and Hsi Pi styles, both of which were started in Hupeh but popularized by the Anhwei troupes. Eventually all these different styles combined to form the Peking drama. In contrast to the stilted liter­ary style of the Kunshan drama, the Peking drama is written in simple literary style and uses dialogues to a great extent. This put the Peking drama in great favor with the public, while the Kunshan drama was rapidly losing ground.

In the last two hundred years or so, partly through the patronage of the Manchu court and partly through the support given to it by the scholars, Peking (now Pei­ping) opera has become pop­ular throughout the whole country. It was said that Empress Dowager kept more than ten troupes at her court. In addition, there were other theatrical companies in Pe­king which were regularly subsidized by the court. What the imperial house did was followed by other high offi­cials and rich merchants. In the last days of the Manchu Dynasty, large numbers of actors became nationally known - Sun Chu-hsien, Tan Hsin-pei, Kai Chiao-tien, Yang Hsiao-lu and Mei Lan-fang, to mention just a few. The popularity of these actors was also responsible for popular­izing the Peiping opera to unprecedented heights.