Yueju (Cantonese Opera)

Ⅳ-36Traditional OperaNanning, GuangxiBatch 4 (2014)Extension ItemFeatured

01 · Historical Records

Yueju (Cantonese opera) is a local traditional drama performed in the Cantonese dialect of Guangdong Province. It began at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Qing, is popular throughout the two Guangs (Guangdong and Guangxi), in Hong Kong and Macao and in Southeast Asia, and is commonly called “Guangban xi”, or “Hongchuan ban” (the Red Boat troupe), or “Guangfu daxi”. From the late Qing to the 1940s, Yueju performance flourished in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Its martial fighting derives from the routines of southern boxing, is practical and concise, and stresses hard bridge and solid horse; many of its movements, stylisations and hand attacks come from the folk dances, martial skills and stylisations loved in common by the Zhuang and Han peoples of south-western Guangxi. Its martial feats and special skills include face-changing, baring the teeth, leaping onto the platform and scooping the chair, hanging the braid, crossing the mountain, spitting blood, the three hangings, stamping the stilts and flinging the hair.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The plays performed, the vocal styles, the qupai and the gong-and-drum instruments are basically the same in every locality, but the performance conventions, the staged displays and the martial techniques each have their own character: the Upper Six Prefectures excel in the civil stage of singing and acting, while the Lower Four Prefectures are skilled in martial combat. In the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty, opera troupes were already performing in Wuzhou City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The main wharves along the Xijiang River became important venues for Yueju performance. Guangxi Yueju has an ancient, plain and robust performance style: at once fiery and passionate, lingering and sentimentally charged, yet also full-throated in high song and low, gentle singing. Guangxi Yueju divides its roles into ten types — mo, jing, sheng, dan, chou, wai, xiao, tie, fu and za — of which wenwusheng, huadan and chousheng are the most commonly seen. Its music belongs to the pihuang system, but in the early period it was influenced by Kunqiang and by Ge yang qiang (Yiyang qiang), and it also preserves a number of labelled plays of the gaoqiang type; its vocal styles are strongly lyrical, melodious and ornate, which makes it a major genre rich in qupai and beautiful in its singing. The accompaniment stresses the large gong, the large cymbals and the suona, with a sound that is high, resonant and stirring. Its stage art is plain and simple, with a flavour of minority style. The plays and staged displays commonly performed include Xihe Huiqi (Reuniting the Wife at the West River), Mulian Rescues His Mother, Qizhuang Zhi (The Seven Written Petitions), Luhua He (The Reed-Flower River), Yang Bajie Moves Troops, Lan Ma Passes the Barrier, Lihuai Maijian (Li Huai Selling Arrows), Da Bimen (Striking the Closed Door), Da Guoshan (Crossing the Great Mountain) and The Five Terraces Meeting of Brothers.

Xihe Huiqi (Reuniting the Wife at the West River)

The plays and staged displays commonly performed include Xihe Huiqi (Reuniting the Wife at the West River), Mulian Rescues His Mother, Qizhuang Zhi (The Seven Written Petitions), Luhua He (The Reed-Flower River), Yang Bajie Moves Troops, Lan Ma Passes the Barrier, Lihuai Maijian (Li Huai Selling Arrows), Da Bimen (Striking the Closed Door), Da Guoshan (Crossing the Great Mountain) and The Five Terraces Meeting of Brothers.

Mulian Rescues His Mother

Qizhuang Zhi (The Seven Written Petitions)

Luhua He (The Reed-Flower River)

Yang Bajie Moves Troops

Lan Ma Passes the Barrier

Lihuai Maijian (Li Huai Selling Arrows)

Da Bimen (Striking the Closed Door)

Da Guoshan (Crossing the Great Mountain)

The Five Terraces Meeting of Brothers

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

By region it is further divided into the Upper Six Prefectures and the Lower Four Prefectures. In the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Yueju circulates in 40 Yue-speaking prefectures, counties and cities, including Nanning City; it is a cultural treasure nurtured jointly by Lingnan culture and Bagui culture, and its stage performance and subject matter have a marked local character. Because the area in which it is popular is geographically close to the ancient Lower Four Prefectures, it is also called “Lower Four Prefectures Yueju” or “southern-school Yueju”. The Yue dialect used in the two Guangs is the basic element that distinguishes Yueju from the other operatic genres. Yueju as it circulates in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is the crystallisation of the collective wisdom and creativity of the ethnic groups of the locality, and it has played an important part in promoting ethnic unity and cultural exchange.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Yueju (Cantonese Opera) · Yueju (Cantonese Opera) · Yueju (Cantonese Opera) · Yueju (Cantonese Opera) · Yueju (Cantonese Opera) · Yueju (Cantonese Opera).

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Feng Xingyuan (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of Zhuang ethnicity, born in August 1945, a native of Long'an County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. As a child he followed the troupe to which his father belonged on tour, and at primary school he organised a children's troupe to perform; in 1959 he became a trainee of the Yong opera troupe of Nanning City, where he learned the basic techniques of Yueju and Peking opera performance. In 1962 he became a disciple of the famous performers who worked in both Yong opera and Yueju, Huang Shaojin and Li Mingyang. He specialised in the small martial (xiaowu) role and mastered with ease the southern-school Yueju performance techniques of chanting the platform, jumping the chair, the hand bridge and weapon work. He has directed in turn nearly a hundred plays, including Yue Dao Zhong Qiu (Moon at Mid-Autumn), Zijin Chui (The Purple Gold Hammer) and Longxiangta Qiyuan (The Destiny of the Dragon and Elephant Pagoda). He valued tradition and has collated a body of traditional Yueju plays such as Xihe Huiqi (Reuniting the Wife at the West River) and Luhua He (The Reed-Flower River); he has preserved a body of written, pictorial, audio and video materials relating to Yueju and to his own career and teaching, and has contributed strength to the transmission and development of southern-school Yueju art. Representative inheritor of Yueju in the fifth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage projects.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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