Inscribing Jingju/Peking Opera David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access Studies in the History of Chinese Texts Edited by Martin Kern (Princeton University) Robert E. Hegel (Washington University, St. Louis) Manling Luo (Indiana University, Bloomington) volume 12 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hct David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access Inscribing Jingju/Peking Opera Textualization and Performance, Authorship and Censorship of the “National Drama” of China from the Late Qing to the Present By David L. Rolston LEIDEN | BOSTON David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access Cover Illustration: Backstage performance abstract giving lists of characters and the actors to perform them scene by scene for a Cheng Yanqiu play that premiered in 1924. Pasted on slips with actors’ names (in this case the slips of paper are red or faded red and are clearly no longer complete) are used to update such an abstract. Wang Wenzhang 王文章, ed., Jingju daishi Cheng Yanqiu 京劇大師程硯秋 (Jingju master Cheng Yanqiu; Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 2003), p. 41. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rolston, David L., 1952– author. Title: Inscribing Jingju/Peking opera : textualization and performance, authorship and censorship of the “national drama” of China from the late Qing to the present / by David L. Rolston. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2021. | Series: Studies in the history of Chinese texts, 1877–9425 ; volume 12 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021011864 (print) | LCCN 2021011865 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004461925 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004463394 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Operas, Chinese—China—Beijing—History and criticism Classification: LCC ML1751.C58 B447 2021 (print) | LCC ML1751.C58 (ebook) | DDC 792.50951/156—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011864 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021011865 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1877-9425 isbn 978-90-04-46192-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-46339-4 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by David L. Rolston. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xix Introduction: What Is Jingju, and Why Should We Care about It? 1 1 Names, Names, Names 1 1.1 “National” Dramatic Forms before Jingju: Kunqu 5 1.2 Yabu vs. Huabu 9 1.3 Anhui Troupes in Beijing: Mixing Performance Styles 13 1.4 From Luantan to (Xipi plus Erhuang equals) Pihuang 16 1.5 Beijing and Jingju 20 1.6 Old vs. New Plays, Beijing-Style vs. Shanghai-Style 24 1.7 Becoming National Drama 26 1.8 Spreading Out from Beijing 30 1.9 Spreading to the Borders 40 1.10 A National Form? 42 1.11 Jingju Outside China/Outside Chinese 44 1.12 A National Drama? 50 2 Why Should We Care about Jingju? 50 2.1 The Great Classroom: Theater and Education 51 2.2 Listening to Plays Is the Same as Reading Books 54 2.3 Representing China: Military and Political Leaders 56 2.4 Representing China: Cultural and Underworld Leaders 62 2.5 Everywhere You Look and Listen: Transmission through Old Media 65 2.6 Everywhere You Look and Listen: Transmission through New Media 73 2.7 A Nation of Jingju Fanatics 91 1 Jingju Repertoire(s) and Types of Plays and Playscripts 95 1 The Repertoire(s) 95 2 Types of Plays 123 3 Types of Playscripts 162 3.1 Manuscript Copies 165 3.2 Printed Copies 177 3.3 Play Format: Division into Scenes 187 3.4 Musical Notation 189 David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access vi Contents 3.5 Play Texts That Record Stage Movement in Detail (Chuantou, Paichang, Shenduan pu, etc.) 192 3.6 Textualization of Parts of Plays 196 3.7 Competition, Innovation, Printing, and a Preliminary Look at the Question of Libretto Fixity 201 2 Textualization and Authorship before Xikao (Research into Plays) 210 1 Authorship and Textualization of “Classical Chinese Indigenous Theater” 213 2 Two Kinds of Early Literati Jingju Playwrights and the Common Fate of Their Plays 226 3 Early “Ordinary” Actors as Playwrights 266 4 Literati Who Became Actors and Also Wrote Plays 280 5 Early “Professional” Playwrights 288 3 The Production of a Mass-Market Collection of Jingju Playscripts: Xikao (Research into Plays) 293 1 The Publication History of Xikao 296 2 What Is Xikao? The Title(s) 315 3 What Is Xikao? Looking for the Master Plan 355 4 Who Put Xikao Together? 371 5 Where Did the Playscripts Come From? 392 6 The Photos 397 4 After Xikao: The Rise of Theater Studies, Copyright, and New Censorship Regimes 406 1 Evaluation of Xikao 406 2 New Approaches That Arose at Least Partially in Reaction to Xikao 421 2.1 The Rise of Xixue/Juxue 421 2.2 The Development of Stronger Conceptions of Copyright, Authorship, and Performance Rights 428 2.3 New Censorship Regimes 444 5 New Kinds of Playwrights 482 1 Chen Moxiang: The Most Prolific Jingju Playwright of the Republican Era 482 2 Weng Ouhong: The Most Prolific/Famous Jingju Playwright 504 3 Playwriting after Weng Ouhong 513 David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access Contents vii 6 New Kinds of Publication 524 1 Single Plays Published in Anthologies 530 2 Single Plays Published as Books 536 3 Single Plays Published in Periodicals 549 4 New Media and the Recording of Image, Movement, and Sound 565 5 Recording More Detail in Play Texts: Adding Graphic Elements and Photographs 568 6 New Recording Media and New Ways of Telling Plays (Shuoxi) 576 7 New Recording Media: DVD Bonus Features, Digitization, Hypertexts, and the Web 580 Epilogue: Living with Textual Fixity 585 Appendix: List of Plays in Xikao 589 Bibliography 622 Index 711 David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access Preface Jingju 京劇 (Peking opera)1 is known as a performance medium that privileges the actor over the playscript. Mainly for this reason, and because of the com- mon conception that Jingju actors tended to be functionally illiterate, there has been a tendency to underestimate the importance of Jingju playscripts and other kinds of the textualization (in any media) of how plays have been or should be performed. This book focuses on the processes by which this theatri- cal tradition became textualized in a wide variety of forms, for a wide variety of purposes, for a wide variety of practitioners, consumers, and government censors. Written forms of this theatrical tradition became more important as its status, and the status of its practitioners, rose in society. These processes of textualization, along with some of the forces driving them (especially state censorship), worked to stabilize performance practice and remove a lot of the fluidity and improvisation that marked the tradition in its earlier stages. Certain aspects of my scholarly career have led me to stress written forms of Jingju (Peking opera) and to spend more time reading its libretti than most anyone I know. I did my doctorate in an area studies department that stressed written Chinese over spoken Chinese and literature over performance, as was very common then, even in the case of literary traditions that were not very “literary” and were thought to have been heavily influenced by oral storytelling. However, during my first trip to “Greater China” right after finishing my mas- ter’s degree (in 1980–1982 as a student on the campus of Taiwan University), I fell in love with xiqu 戲曲 (Chinese indigenous theater) and with its most influential form,2 Jingju, in particular. Having not had the advantage of grow- ing up listening to and watching performances of xiqu and possessing a pair of subpar ears (courtesy, I think, of eardrum ruptures and scarring when I was young), I found that I needed to do much preparation, in the form of reading playscripts, before I went to hear or watch3 performances; and when attend- ing theater performances, I had to keep my eyes on the subtitles to follow what was being sung (the fact that, for both movies and stage performances, Chinese subtitles are provided more consistently for sung portions than for 1 A history of the ways Jingju has been referred to, and the connotations of each, will be pre- sented in the Introduction. 2 Evidence for this claim will also be given in the Introduction. 3 As will become evident in the Introduction, different audiences, at different times, stressed the aural over the visual or vice versa in performances of Jingju. David L. Rolston - 9789004463394 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 03:08:38PM via free access x Preface dialogue can be taken as evidence that, even for native Chinese, the former is harder to understand orally than the latter). During those years on the campus of Taiwan University, I was fortunate to participate in a variety of activities that focused on Jingju: a one-on-one Jingju class at the “Stanford Center” (devoted at that time to improving the Chinese of American graduate students), a class on Jingju taught for regular Taiwan University students, and a student club devoted to learning and performing Jingju.