Ouyang Yanqing

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Ouyang Yanqing, Female, Han, from Quanzhou, Fujian, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Gaojia Opera (Ⅳ-48). The tradition is documented in Quanzhou, Fujian. Within the regional tradition and school record of Gaojia Opera in Quanzhou, Fujian: Gaojia opera is one of the local drama genres of southern Fujian. It is also called yijia opera, jiujiao opera, daban or tuban, and it is current in the southern-Fujian dialect areas of Fujian Province, in Taiwan, and in the overseas-Chinese and Chinese settlements of the countries of Southeast Asia. In the mid-Qing period, Songjiang opera absorbed performance forms from other art categories and developed into the hexing play that combined civil and martial roles; in the late Qing it further absorbed artistic elements of Hui opera, Kunqu, Yiyang tune and Beijing opera, and so took shape as Gaojia opera, a local drama genre of southern Fujian with a style entirely its own.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Female, of Han ethnicity, born in November 1950 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. In 1960 she joined the Jinjiang County Gaojia Opera Troupe and studied under Hong Jinqi, a celebrated wudan (martial female) and wuxiaosheng (martial young male) performer of Gaojia opera. Specializing in huadan, xiaodan and wudan, she built solid fundamentals, comprehensively inherited Hong Jinqi's refined wudan technique and martial choreography, and preserved the exuberant, lively performing style of the Gaojia dan role types. In 1972 she moved to the Quanzhou Gaojia Opera Troupe, where she benefited from the guidance of the renowned dan teacher Cai Xiuying, systematically carrying on the performance idiom and plays of the Gaojia dan role types and bringing greater discipline and refinement to her body movement, singing and delivery. In recent years she has carefully collated the finest elements of the traditional art of the Gaojia dan role and devoted herself to teaching it, transmitting numerous traditional plays and newly written works and training several generations of Gaojia dan performers. Within the documented technical tradition of Gaojia Opera in Quanzhou, Fujian: Gaojia opera took shape in the late Ming and early Qing. At the beginning it consisted only of improvised costumed performance to the accompaniment of folk tunes; it later developed into professional troupes, whose repertoire was mainly stories of Song Jiang, and it was for that reason known as Songjiang opera. The repertoire of Gaojia opera falls into three main groups — daqi plays (grand-scale plays), xiufang plays (boudoir plays) and chou-dan plays (clown and dan-role plays) — and martial plays, chou-dan plays and gong'an plays (cases of officialdom) are the most numerous. It has more than six hundred traditional plays, among them Da Nao Hua Fu (The Great Uproar in the Flower Mansion), Kun Hedong (Besieged East of the River), Zhan Huangpao (Beheading at the Yellow Robe), Lin Wensheng Gao Yu Zhuang (Lin Wensheng Petitions the Throne), Guan Fu Song (Guan Fu's Escort), Xingyuan Si Chai (Xingyuan Longing for the Hairpin), Meng Jiangnu (The Lady Meng Jiang), Fanpo Nong (The Old Woman's Plottings), Tang Er Bie (Tang Er's Parting), as well as the serial stage plays Sanguo (Three Kingdoms) and Yue Zhuan (The Biography of Yue Fei) and others. The tune patterns of Gaojia opera music belong to the nanyin (southern music) system and come for the most part from nanyin and from puppet theatre, though their rhythm and melody are altered. Singers use their own natural voice; the melodic lines are sonorous and high, yet there is no lack of clear, gentle and delicate colour in the tones. The instruments used in Gaojia opera fall into two kinds, wen music and wu music. Wen music is led by the suona and supported by the pinxiao, dongxiao, erxian, sanxian, pipa and similar instruments; wu music includes the baigu, large and small drums, large and small gongs, large and small cymbals, the xiangzhan and the xiao jiao, displaying a strong local character. The role types of Gaojia opera originally comprised only three, sheng, dan and chou; later jing, tie, wai, mo, beijing (jing) and zha were added one after another. Of these role types, the chou is the most prominent. The chou role divides into male chou and female chou, and the male chou is further divided into wen chou (civil clown) and wu chou (martial clown). Wen chou comprises the longshan chou (long-gown clown) and the duanshan chou (short-jacket clown), while wu chou comprises the shayi chou (secretary clown) and the kunshen chou (bound-body clown). Female chou includes dozens of types, such as the furen chou (madam clown), the meiren chou (matchmaker clown), the laopo chou (old-woman clown) and the bi chou (maid clown). The performing art of the chou role is rich and varied. Artists draw material out of everyday life and have created types such as the gongzi chou (young-master clown), the poshan chou (tattered-clown) and the kuilei chou (puppet clown), taking as their means of expressing a character's temperament either the simulated rendering of the typical behaviour of different figures or the imitation of puppet-theatre and animal movements. It is light-hearted and humorous, full of lively wit, exaggerated yet never untrue to life, and it carries a strong flavour of everyday existence. The martial fighting in Gaojia opera has taken in the skills of string-puppetry and of the folk lion dance, producing movements of its own such as leng jian pan (cold sizzling plate), da peng chang (great collision) and feng bai wei (the phoenix swaying its tail). Standing quite apart within the tradition of Chinese theatre, Gaojia opera is a typical representative of southern Fujian local culture and exercises great influence at home and abroad. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Da Nao Hua Fu (The Great Uproar in the Flower Mansion)": Gaojia opera has more than six hundred traditional plays, among them Da Nao Hua Fu (The Great Uproar in the Flower Mansion), Kun Hedong (Besieged East of the River), Zhan Huangpao (Beheading at the Yellow Robe), Lin Wensheng Gao Yu Zhuang (Lin Wensheng Petitions the Throne), Guan Fu Song (Guan Fu's Escort), Xingyuan Si Chai (Xingyuan Longing for the Hairpin), Meng Jiangnu (The Lady Meng Jiang), Fanpo Nong (The Old Woman's Plottings), Tang Er Bie (Tang Er's Parting), as well as the serial stage plays Sanguo (Three Kingdoms) and Yue Zhuan (The Biography of Yue Fei) and others. "Kun Hedong (Besieged East of the River)": Gaojia opera has more than six hundred traditional plays, among them Da Nao Hua Fu (The Great Uproar in the Flower Mansion), Kun Hedong (Besieged East of the River), Zhan Huangpao (Beheading at the Yellow Robe), Lin Wensheng Gao Yu Zhuang (Lin Wensheng Petitions the Throne), Guan Fu Song (Guan Fu's Escort), Xingyuan Si Chai (Xingyuan Longing for the Hairpin), Meng Jiangnu (The Lady Meng Jiang), Fanpo Nong (The Old Woman's Plottings), Tang Er Bie (Tang Er's Parting), as well as the serial stage plays Sanguo (Three Kingdoms) and Yue Zhuan (The Biography of Yue Fei) and others. "Zhan Huangpao (Beheading at the Yellow Robe)": Gaojia opera has more than six hundred traditional plays, among them Da Nao Hua Fu (The Great Uproar in the Flower Mansion), Kun Hedong (Besieged East of the River), Zhan Huangpao (Beheading at the Yellow Robe), Lin Wensheng Gao Yu Zhuang (Lin Wensheng Petitions the Throne), Guan Fu Song (Guan Fu's Escort), Xingyuan Si Chai (Xingyuan Longing for the Hairpin), Meng Jiangnu (The Lady Meng Jiang), Fanpo Nong (The Old Woman's Plottings), Tang Er Bie (Tang Er's Parting), as well as the serial stage plays Sanguo (Three Kingdoms) and Yue Zhuan (The Biography of Yue Fei) and others. "Lin Wensheng Gao Yu Zhuang (Lin Wensheng Petitions the Throne)": Gaojia opera has more than six hundred traditional plays, among them Da Nao Hua Fu (The Great Uproar in the Flower Mansion), Kun Hedong (Besieged East of the River), Zhan Huangpao (Beheading at the Yellow Robe), Lin Wensheng Gao Yu Zhuang (Lin Wensheng Petitions the Throne), Guan Fu Song (Guan Fu's Escort), Xingyuan Si Chai (Xingyuan Longing for the Hairpin), Meng Jiangnu (The Lady Meng Jiang), Fanpo Nong (The Old Woman's Plottings), Tang Er Bie (Tang Er's Parting), as well as the serial stage plays Sanguo (Three Kingdoms) and Yue Zhuan (The Biography of Yue Fei) and others.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

A national representative bearer of Gaojia Opera, a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. She received a first prize at the Fujian Provincial Young Actors Competition.

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. Ouyang Yanqing · National Representative Bearer Archive