Siping Opera

01 · Historical Records

Siping Opera is also written sìpíngxì or sìpéngxì, the same name appearing in several variant characters. It evolved from Yiyang qiang, one of the four major vocal systems that were in vogue in the middle of the Ming dynasty. It flourished in the Huizhou area (She County, Anhui Province) during the Jiajing era of the Ming, and at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing it was carried into Zhenghe, deep in the mountains of northeastern Fujian; in Yangyuan Township of Zhenghe County and Longtan Township of Pingnan County it has continued down to the present with its historical appearance intact. Siping Opera preserves the vocal art forms of the Ming dynasty rather well, and historians of the theatre have called it a “living fossil of Chinese theatre”.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The traditional repertoire of Siping Opera includes several dozen plays, among them The Hairpin of Jing (Jingchai ji), The White Rabbit (Baitu ji), The Moon Pavilion (Baiyue ting ji), The Killing of the Dog (Shagou ji), The Lute (Pipa ji), Su Qin, The Meeting of Heroes (Yingxiong hui), The Nine-Dragon Pavilion (Jiulong ge), Chen Shimei, The Meeting in the Reed Grove (Lulin hui) and The Eight Trigrams Diagram (Bagua tu). Its vocal styles belong to the gaoqiang (high-tune) system; they are plain and unadorned, fresh and pleasing to the ear, elegant and moving, and the chorus that joins in at the end of a line is sung with drawn-out notes. The Siping Opera scripts that survive mark only strong and weak notes and never the notes of the vocal lines: they are without notation for the melodies but with notation for the modes, and the vocal styles are handed down entirely by word of mouth from one generation to the next. Its role types were already fairly complete by the Yongzheng reign of the Qing dynasty. In performance the sheng (male) roles stress literary refinement, the dan (female) roles call for delicacy, the jing (painted-face) roles emphasise breadth and boldness, and the chou (clown) roles work for the comic, together forming the distinctive performance style of Siping Opera. The physical actions of the roles include leaps (teng), shifts (nuo), rolls (gun) and strikes (da); the actors advance and retreat in step with the slower or quicker beat of the drum, and the hand and foot movements of each role type have their own prescribed verbal formulas. In performance the accompaniment keeps the form in which percussion instruments such as the drum, the cymbals and the ban-gu (the small high-pitched drum used in opera) support the singing while the drum stays in the lead, inheriting the ancient Yiyang qiang tradition that “one voice sounds alone and the multitude answers in harmony”. Because it lies deep in the mountains where conditions are backward, its survival has been exceedingly hard.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Spoken lines are delivered in a form of “tuguanhua” — a speech variety standing between Putonghua and the local dialect — colloquially called “jiang zhengzi” (speaking the standard words).

Other submitting regions for the same item: Siping Opera.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Under the impact of the economic boom, the transmission of this ancient opera genre has run into serious problems, and rescue measures must be taken as soon as possible. Chen Xiuyu (per the official records of associated inheritors): female, of Han ethnicity, born in 1945, native of Pingnan, Fujian. Over many years of artistic practice she has successfully created a great many xiaosheng (young male) and wusheng (martial male) character images, and has also successfully directed a number of widely acclaimed and much-loved plays. Her representative works include The Picture of the Son of Heaven (Tianzi tu) and The Meeting by the Well (Jingbian hui). Representative inheritor of the second national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item Siping Opera; deputy head of the amateur Siping Opera troupe of Longtan Village, Pingnan County, Fujian Province. Chen Dabing (per the official records of associated inheritors): male, of Han ethnicity, born in 1949, native of Pingnan, Fujian. Chen Dabing became a pupil of Chen Yuguang to study the suona in 1971, of Chen Xiaojin to study guban (drum-and-clapper accompaniment) in 1978, and began to learn the Siping Opera leading drummer (sigu) role in 1979, serving as the principal percussionist. The plays in which he has served as principal percussionist for Siping Opera include The Cave Broken by Shenxiang (Chenxiang podong), The White Rabbit (Baitu ji), The Picture of the Son of Heaven (Tianzi tu), The Triple First (Zhong sanyuan) and others. Representative inheritor of the second national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item Siping Opera; deputy head and principal percussionist of the amateur Siping Opera troupe of Longtan Village, Pingnan County, Fujian Province.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Chen Xiuyu 02-0444
• Chen Dabing 02-0445
• Zhang Xiaoyou 02-0446
• Li Shiqing 02-0447

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Siping Opera (Pingnan, Fujian) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Chen Xiuyu · National Representative Bearer Archive
3. Chen Dabing · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗