Shen Renwei

01 · Lineage & Regional School

In 1959 he joined the Shanghai People's Huju Troupe as an actor and later became a leading actor of the Shanghai Huju Troupe, now the Shanghai Huju Opera Theatre, as an important transmitter of the Wen school. Within the regional tradition and school record of Huju Opera in Shanghai: Huju opera is a typical representative of Shanghai's regional culture. It reflects the appearance of the modern Chinese metropolis from different aspects, and throughout its growth it has shown considerable vitality and vigour. Huju opera originated in the field songs and folk ditties of the farmers on both banks of the Pu River. In the course of transmission it was influenced by tanci (ballad singing) and other folk narrative singing, and developed into tanhuang, a form that combines speech and song. During the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty, tanhuang in the Pu River area developed into the 'duizi xi' (paired play), in which two performers both played and accompanied themselves, and into the 'tongchang xi' (same-stage play), in which three or more actors costumed the characters while separate musicians provided accompaniment. By 1898, performers had already been moving into Shanghai and singing at fixed venues in teahouses; this was called bentan. In 1914, bentan was renamed shenqu. After 1927, shenqu began to stage wenmingxi (civilised drama) and plays on current affairs. In 1941 the Shanghai Huju Society was founded and shenqu was formally renamed Huju opera. In the course of this evolution, male and female vocal registers had already been differentiated.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, of Han ethnicity, born in April 1938 in Shanghai. A national second-class actor. In 1956 he was admitted to the Huju performance class of the Shanghai Opera School, where he was personally taught by Xiao Wenbin, a revered elder master of Huju and founder of its Wen school, and he also studied the Xie and Wang schools. His range is broad: he is equally at ease in xiaosheng and laosheng roles and in both heroic and villainous parts, and his acting is sincere and plain, with a strong flavour of local life; his singing is based on the Wen school but draws widely on the strengths of others, forming an artistic style that is broad, steady and rich in flavour. His main works include Xingxing zhi Huo (A Single Spark), Da Leiyu (The Great Thunderstorm), Antang Xiang Hui (Meeting in a Nunnery), Muzi Ling (Mother and Son Ridge), Mingyue Zhao Muxin (The Bright Moon Shines on a Mother's Heart), Jin Xiu Niang (Golden Embroidery), San Jie Xinniang (Fetching the Bride Three Times) and Fangqiao Qingyuan (Love at Fang Bridge). Within the documented technical tradition of Huju Opera in Shanghai: Huju opera is the representative genre of Shanghai, circulating in Shanghai, southern Jiangsu and the Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou areas of Zhejiang Province. Huju music is gentle and soft, its melodies beautiful and pleasing, carrying a strong flavour of the Jiangnan water-town landscape. Its vocal music derives from the field songs of the farmers, and over long practice it gradually formed a rich repertory of melodies and a distinctive style. Huju vocal music is good at narration and equally skilful in lyrical expression; its melodies fall mainly into two large classes, the banchiang-ti (metrical-section) system and the qupai-ti (tune-pattern) system. The banchiang-ti vocal system includes metrical variations built mainly on the long-section forms. It represents the style of Huju, is applied widely, and is generally called the 'basic tune' (jiben diao). Most qupai-ti vocal patterns are tune patterns from Ming-Qing folk tunes, folk narrative singing and Jiang-Zhe ditties; others are patterns absorbed from other genres, together with mountain songs and miscellaneous tunes. In most cases, however, they are used only to suit the scene and the moment, as interpolated pieces of an incidental character. The accompanying instruments of Huju opera are led by the bamboo-tube erhu, supported by the pipa, yangqin, sanxian, flute, xiao and other instruments. Later a small number of Cantonese instruments were taken on, and the inflections of some Jiangnan sizhu music and Cantonese tunes were folded into the interludes between vocal phrases. The role types of Huju opera differed from period to period. In the period of the paired play a single sheng and a single dan predominated; in the period of the same-stage play the sheng line and the chou line became distinct. The sheng line included xiaosheng and laosheng, and xiaosheng was further divided into the formal xiaosheng and the gallant xiaosheng. The dan line was also called baotou and was divided into the formal baotou, the empress baotou, the painted baotou, the old baotou, the slovenly baotou and so on. At the time, because troupes had few personnel, actors often had to double several roles. As Huju performance moved towards wenmingxi and spoken drama, the classification of its role types gradually blurred; neither movement nor speech developed role-specific conventions, and singing in every part also used the natural voice. Huju opera has a rich repertory, including traditional plays such as An Tang Xiang Hui (Meeting at the Convent Hall), Yang Naiwu and Little White Cabbage, The Pearl Tower, Meng Lijun and The Twin Pearl Phoenixes, as well as newly written plays on modern subjects such as Qiu Haitang (Autumn Begonia), Family, Thunderstorm and Luohan Qian (Arhat Coin). Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "An Tang Xiang Hui (Meeting at the Convent Hall)": Huju opera has a rich repertory, including traditional plays such as An Tang Xiang Hui (Meeting at the Convent Hall), Yang Naiwu and Little White Cabbage, The Pearl Tower, Meng Lijun and The Twin Pearl Phoenixes, as well as newly written plays on modern subjects such as Qiu Haitang (Autumn Begonia), Family, Thunderstorm and Luohan Qian (Arhat Coin). "Yang Naiwu and Little White Cabbage": Huju opera has a rich repertory, including traditional plays such as An Tang Xiang Hui (Meeting at the Convent Hall), Yang Naiwu and Little White Cabbage, The Pearl Tower, Meng Lijun and The Twin Pearl Phoenixes, as well as newly written plays on modern subjects such as Qiu Haitang (Autumn Begonia), Family, Thunderstorm and Luohan Qian (Arhat Coin). "The Pearl Tower": Huju opera has a rich repertory, including traditional plays such as An Tang Xiang Hui (Meeting at the Convent Hall), Yang Naiwu and Little White Cabbage, The Pearl Tower, Meng Lijun and The Twin Pearl Phoenixes, as well as newly written plays on modern subjects such as Qiu Haitang (Autumn Begonia), Family, Thunderstorm and Luohan Qian (Arhat Coin). "Meng Lijun": Huju opera has a rich repertory, including traditional plays such as An Tang Xiang Hui (Meeting at the Convent Hall), Yang Naiwu and Little White Cabbage, The Pearl Tower, Meng Lijun and The Twin Pearl Phoenixes, as well as newly written plays on modern subjects such as Qiu Haitang (Autumn Begonia), Family, Thunderstorm and Luohan Qian (Arhat Coin).

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

Representative bearer of Huju Opera, a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Shen Renwei · National Representative Bearer Archive