China’s Proletarian Myth: The Revolutionary Narrative and Model Theatre of the Cultural Revolution Trevor Thomas Hay B.A. Dip.T. (Adelaide), B.Ed. M.Ed. (La Trobe). School of Asian and International Studies, Faculty of International Business and Politics, Griffith University. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. July, 2000. i Contents Acknowledgements i-ii Statement of Originality iii Dedication iv Abstract v-vii Chapter 1: Revisiting the Site of a `Major Disaster' 1 Chapter 2: Realism, Romanticism and the Protean Dichotomy 80 Chapter 3: Towards a Harmonious Display of Essences 133 Chapter 4: Taking the Fortress of Beijing Opera: From Ghosts and Beauties to Workers and Peasants 1964-67 171 Chapter 5: The Model Works as a Discourse 219 Chapter 6: Naming the Discourse: The Strange Case of The White-haired Girl 250 Chapter 7: The Models as Ideology, Theatre and Semiotics 306 Appendices 359 Bibliography 402 ii Acknowledgements First I would like to thank Professor Colin Mackerras and Associate Professor Michael Dutton for careful and stimulating supervision over these last years. We need a new excuse now, and some new venues perhaps, for ongoing discussion and camaraderie. Griffith University’s School of Asian and International Studies has been very generous in funding my attendance at two conferences of the Chinese Studies Association of Australia in Adelaide and Fremantle and I have also been greatly assisted by a spell in the wonderful Canberra libraries, made possible by a brief but memorable scholarship at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. I must thank Professor Mark Elvin for giving freely of his time for conversation and for introducing me to a regular little constellation of Asian specialists, including Dr. Miriam Lang and Dr. Geremie Barmé. I am grateful to my colleagues at the University of Melbourne for supporting me during this leave. I also wish to thank Fang Xiangshu of Deakin University for steering my interest in Chinese theatre towards the model works and Dr. Ronald Price of La Trobe University for his contagious enthusiasm for the work and unlimited access to his magnificent library. Carillo iii Gantner was also kind enough to let me borrow freely from his collection of Cultural Revolution works. I have thoroughly enjoyed discussing Chinese theatre with Xiong Fan of La Trobe University and watching video discs of the model works from her collection. I am very appreciative of the help of two colleagues - Doug Langley who dropped everything else he was doing to get me out of a last-minute jam with a fractious computer and Hwee Ying Lim who gave me expert, effective and cheerful aid with word processing thoughout. And finally I acknowledge the debt of gratitude I owe my wife, Jenny, for her love, support and patience. iv Statement of Originality This work has not been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Trevor Hay 14/7/2000 v Dedication To my friend and supporter of so many years, Dr. Ronald Price, who ushered me in to a cultural revolution of my own, and in memory of `the White Peony’, Xun Huisheng (1900-1968), one of China’s `four great dan', who also believed, in his own way, that theatres were `places in which to educate people’. vi Abstract China’s model works, the so-called `eight great model works’ are rarely thought of as `literature’, not only because they are of course, performance works, but because they are not thought of in the normative sense as a form of dramatic literature, but as a form of propaganda. This thesis investigates the relationship between propaganda and art by concentrating on the texts of these works and, in particular, by analysing the structure of a narrative type which is not just a blueprint for dramatic texts but a design for the Chinese revolutionary narrative, as embodied in Mao Zedong’s key utterances on literature and art, and `told’ or enacted, by the campaign to reform Beijing opera undertaken by his wife, Jiang Qing. In order to understand the precise nature of this narrative, and its relationship with theatre and the broader political arena of the Cultural Revolution, an analysis is undertaken of literary theory in both the Soviet Union and China, followed by an analysis of the aesthetic at work in the particular combinations of realism and romanticism which were discussed and implemented in each country. After a detailed examination of the way the vii campaign to reform Beijing opera was conducted, including the promulgation and `display’ of key documents and speeches by Mao and Jiang Qing, sample texts are analysed according to a method which illustrates the design of the narrative. These texts, and the model works in general, are then considered in relation to some general observations about genres of mythology and their relationship with folklore. Finally, a particular `dramatic’ relationship is suggested between the narrative design of the models, and the conduct of the Cultural Revolution itself. In the course of this, the notion of mythology is discussed in the context of its complex relationship with ideology and popular culture, as identified by Roland Barthes in particular, with his often enigmatic emphasis on the `semiology’ of myth. The complex blend of cultural theories which may be brought to bear on this discussion is re-visited, with a view to understanding the model works as a genre of `proletarian’ mythology which might yet survive the Cultural Revolution as a substantive dramatic genre. In conclusion, the relationship between theatre, narrative and semiotics is pursued, in attempting to establish a key viii difference between the aesthetic `method’ employed in the model works and that of socialist realism. This difference, it is argued, is the product of a basic approach to mythic romanticism which preserves the essential traditions of Beijing opera, and makes the models legitimate heir to this tradition, in spite of the bitter memories of the Cultural Revolution and its tragic campaigns. ix By the shores of the bay there is a green oak tree; there is a golden chain on that oak; and day and night a learned cat walks ceaselessly round on the chain; as it moves to the right it strikes up a song, as it moves to the left it tells a story. (Alexander Pushkin, Prologue to Ruslan and Lyudmila). x Chapter 1: Revisiting the Site of a `Major Disaster’ Assessing the Model Works What should we make of the art and literature of the Cultural Revolution? Speaking at a symposium in Idaho in 1997, Chen Xiaomei spoke of the `horror story’ tendencies of many Cultural Revolution memoirs and included scholarly dismissal of the revolutionary modern theatre among the various manifestations of this phenomenon.1 And back in 1975, about the time I was myself witnessing the works for the first time, through a haze of fatigue and boredom at the end of long days spent listening to revolutionary committees in tea communes and textile factories, Martin Ebon issued what seems to be a pertinent - and prescient - warning. Westerners should avoid an air of patronizing forgiveness for the obvious zealotry and intolerance that has marked, and presumably still shapes, literature and the arts in contemporary China; we are not dealing with some primitive tribe that practises exotically charming rites, but with the heirs of a cultural tradition that is, or should be, part of mankind's total heritage.2 1 Seeing the revolutionary modern works of the Cultural Revolution as part of `mankind's total heritage' is not easy, and the finer feelings of those who look for something of timeless value in the arts, something subtle and above all, human and humane, are frequently violated by the very memory of the Cultural Revolution, let alone by serious contemplation of its pampered and jealously guarded literary offspring. In 1983, Elizabeth Wichmann wrote: The slow process of disengaging the category, `contemporary play', from the personal politics of Jiang Qing and her comrades, as well as from its definition as a literary form synonymous with pure propaganda, is still underway. Until this process is completed, the question of subject matter for contemporary plays will remain highly problematic...3 The most famous of the `contemporary plays' were known collectively as the `eight great models' (ba da yangbanxi), although the `revolutionary modern' genre (geming xiandaixi) included more than these, as we shall see. The `eight great', which I refer to throughout as `model works', actually consisted of five operas, two ballets and a symphony - Zhiqu Weihushan (Taking Tiger Mountain by strategy), Hong deng ji (The red lantern), Hai gang (On the Docks), 2 Qixi Baihutuan (Raid on the White Tiger Regiment) and Shajiabang (the operas); Baimao nu (The White-haired girl) and Hongse niangzijun (Red detachment of women) (the ballets), and Shajiabang (the symphony).4 At the time of writing, the disengagement of these works from personal politics remains a slow process, although some scholars, like Bell Yung, writing on Shajiabang in 1984, in Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China 1949-1979, have emphatically asserted the value of particular aspects of the model theatre, such as musical innovation, which he describes as `exceptional works of art in the history of Chinese music’ which have their `offspring’ in many genres of contemporary Chinese music and drama.5 Liang Mingyue, in a very brief aside on the model works in 1985, in his Music of the Billion, speculates on the way the works might have led to a new dynamism in Chinese opera.