The Contemporary Chinese Historical Drama
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QyikmjimYij FOUR STUDIES / Rudolf G. Wagner China's "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-1961 was a time of official rejoicing over the achievements of Communism, but it was also a time of human- generated famine and immense suffering. Growing dissent among intellectuals stimulated creativity as writers sought to express both their hope for the success of the revolution and their dissatisfaction with the Party's leadership and policies. But the uneasy political climate and the state's ; control over literature prevented writers from directly addressing the compelling problems of the '. time. Rather, writers resorted to a variety of sophis- ' ticated and time-honored forms for airing their grievances, including the historical drama. In this ^ important new book, Rudolf Wagner examines i three historical dramas written and performed between 1958 and 1963 in an effort to decode their hidden political and cultural meanings. He pursues dark allusions and double entendres as he situates the plays in the context of the historical materials they used and the contemporary political, legal, and social issues they indirectly addressed. He concludes with a broad survey of the politics of the historical drama in China during the last fifty years, suggest- . ing further avenues of inquiry into the relationship ; between literature and the state. The resulting analysis provides a fascinating reading of the plays themselves. It also offers a new The Contemporary Chinese Historical Drama Copyrighted material The Contemporary Chinese Historical Drama Four Studies Rudolf G. Wagner UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • Oxford This volume is sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England © 1990 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wagner, Rudolf G. The contemporary Chinese historical drama: four studies / Rudolf G. Wagner. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-520-05954-9 (alk. paper) 1. Chinese drama—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Historical drama, Chinese—History and criticism. 3. Politics and literature—China. I. Title. PL2393.W34 1989 895.1'20514'09—dc 19 88-38075 CIP Printed in the United States of America 123456789 For C. Copyrighted material Contents Introduction ix Chapter 1 1 A Guide for the Perplexed and a Call to the Wavering: Tian Han's Guan Hanqin^ (1958) and the New Historical Drama Chapter 2 80 Tian Han's Peking Opera Xie Yaohuan (1961) Chapter 3 139 Monkey Kin^ Subdues the White-Bone Demon: A Study in PRC Mythology Chapter 4 236 The Politics of the Historical Drama Glossary 325 Bibliography 333 Index 353 vii Introduction These studies are part of a larger project exploring methods of inter- preting contemporary Chinese literary texts. As a general guideline, I have followed two rules in attempting to reconstruct the horizon of understanding within which these texts operate and from within which their logic can best be understood. First, follow every lead. And second, focus on the fringe rather than on the center. For someone removed from these texts, in terms of both time and cultural location, there is no a priori way to decide what form of com- munication the text in question may be adopting. What is being com- municated may in some cases be identical with the surface text. In others, it might be discovered only if the text is read against another text, be it a political guideline or social and political reality as seen by the author, or only if it is read against another literary product by the audior himself or others. Or, it might take all of these forms at the same time. Thus anything that points toward an entrance into the subtext, even if it is in the form of minute changes in the illustrations that often accompany the texts, may help in giving access to this realm. In the case of the texts studied in this volume, the political situation at the time when they were written, the former experience of the authors with the uses of history, and, in many cases, the authors* own explicit statements make it clear that writers, censors, and readers all shared the assump- tion that these texts must be deciphered in order for their hidden mean- ing to be discovered. What might seem odd in a literary study—for ix Copyrighted material X Introduction instance, the utilization of agricultural statistics and mortality rates, or the introduction of the internal ruminations of political leaders, or dis- quisitions on certain historical dates, even the introduction of Mwquoted historical records of persons alluded to in the texts—may give access to hidden meanings. To attend to such clues is all part of this still incom- plete attempt to follow every lead. Our most obvious lacuna today is the lack of information concerning the actual performance of the plays and public reaction to them. I have tried my best to handle these prob- lems with the available printed material, but there is no question that interviews with actors and directors, censors and spectators who actual- ly saw the performances, and witnessed the public's reaction to it, would have been of great value. The second guideline for my study, to focus on the fringe, has both an economic base and a theoretical superstructure. Even the simple topic of historical drama comprises an incredible wealth of material. To focus on this totality would mean to drown in material and be forced to resign oneself to a descriptive endeavor. By keeping the entire body of material in mind but focusing on a very few pieces for a detailed study, I could achieve research economy on the one hand and gain insights into the entire body of material on the other. The texts selected for study here are not the core pieces of the genre, but its fringe. To take as the center of my study Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, for instance, would have meant to throw myself into a battle in which the entire leadership of the country seems to have joined. Misinformation, falsification, and suppression of information are much more likely in such a core piece than they are in the pieces studied here like Guan Hanqing or Sun Wukong sanda baigujing. The structure of these latter pieces is clearer and more easily discernible. Thus, to go for the fringe in the analysis of the center is not only economical; there are also good reasons to do so. To explore the relationship between the fringe and the center, I have added a study of the topoi common to the new historical drama that make them a distinctive group of texts. The enterprise of these studies is thus a hermeneutical one. As the studies all deal with the historical drama, some words may be said as to the place of the historical drama in the group of texts domi- nating the intellectual field and political attention between 1958 and 1966. These were years of a multifaceted crisis in China. The common aspirations that had held the leadership together before 1949 had faded to a point where the leadership had become fragmented with infighting and where political intrigue had become a primary occupation. The Copyrighted material Introduction xi already-weak Chinese legal system was further eroded by the rapid collectivization after 1955, which had eliminated individual property rights. The final collapse came in mid-1957, with the Anti-Rightist cam- paign, when three to four hundred thousand people, mostly younger members of the elite, were shipped off from their homes and jobs for reeducation in the poorest areas of the country, without either trial or 1^1 redress. It was an ideal occasion for weak characters to get rid of their challengers and for strong characters to bruise their heads. By 1959, the subsequent economic experiment of the Great Leap landed, through an inextricable interaction of political, ideological, and natural factors, in what scholars now call the greatest famine in Chinese history. And this with a leadership so cut off from realities that they thought China was going from one bumper harvest to the next, and massively increased grain purchases in the midst of the disaster. The Communist government had discontinued the old imperial institution of the censor, with his duty to remonstrate with the highest leader. Sun Yat-sen had included a modernized form of this institution in his constitution under the name of the Control Yuan, but after 1949 no institution remained that had the duty of loyal remonstrance and conunanded the respect due to those who take on this heavy burden. Nevertheless, many leaders of the intellectual community saw them- selves in this censorial tradition, especially in times of crisis when dis- agreements among the highest leaders left some leeway for those further down the ladder. But even though they were concerned with the "social fabric coming apart," they were in most cases also partisans of one faction of the center or another, a circumstance that made much of their criticism both partisan and hypocritical. Given the political climate at the time, they did not use straight language but relied on a variety of sophisticated and time-honored forms of remonstrance. They "dis- covered" that the Ming-dynasty official Hai Rui, who became a role model for many since the late fifties, was not simply a sti£F-necked judge who would proffer his head to the next villain to come along, but also a wily politician, a man who was aware of political realities and devised tactics to take them into account without compromising "the aspira- tion of his life." From Hai Rui and others they learned indirect forms of discussing contemporary problems.