Pingju Opera
01 · Historical Records
It originated in the Tangshan area of Hebei and is popular in Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin and the rest of north China as well as the north-eastern provinces. On 12 November 1947 Shijiazhuang was liberated and a few days later, under the leadership of the military control commission, the Yihe troupe was reorganised and has performed ever since. Drawing on the Hebei volume of the Annals of Chinese Xiqu, Pingju grew out of the lianhualuo and bengbeng opera of the Tangshan area and was reformed into a mature genre in the early twentieth century by Cheng Zhaocai and others, afterwards spreading across north China and the north-east under names such as “Tangshan luozi” and “Fengtian luozi”, Shijiazhuang becoming an important performance centre in central and southern Hebei.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Pingju is one of the local genres that have grown fastest, spread widest and exerted the greatest influence in China over the past century. It is noted for its singing, its performance plain and articulate, its tunes fluent and natural; its acting is natural and unadorned, its movements healthy and its bearing graceful, with a strong flavour of life and a broad popular base. Its traditional repertory runs to about two hundred and thirty pieces, mostly drawn from folk story, current events and novels old and new. Its representative works include Hua Wei Mei, Da Jinzhi, Yutangchun, Dou E Yuan and Yang Sanjie Gao Zhuang. The Shijiazhuang Pingju Theatre No. 1 Troupe began as a private company and is one of the opera troupes founded earliest and most influential in the country.
Hua Wei Mei (The Flower as Matchmaker)
A representative work among Pingju's roughly two hundred and thirty traditional plays.
Da Jinzhi (Beating the Princess)
A representative work among Pingju's traditional plays.
Yutangchun
A representative work among Pingju's traditional plays.
Dou E Yuan (The Injustice to Dou E)
A representative work among Pingju's traditional plays.
Yang Sanjie Gao Zhuang (Yang Sanjie's Suit)
A representative work among Pingju's traditional plays, drawn from a contemporary legal case.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Pingju is widely distributed in Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin and the north-east with varying performance characters; the Shijiazhuang Pingju Theatre No. 1 Troupe is one of the troupes founded earliest and most influential in the country, its predecessor traceable to the Yihe troupe reorganised after the liberation of Shijiazhuang in 1947, and it has long performed in the towns and countryside of north China.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Pingju Opera · Pingju Opera · Pingju Opera · Pingju Opera · Pingju Opera · Pingju Opera · Pingju Opera.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Yuan Shumei (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): female, Han, born in April 1966 in Longhui county, Hunan. A national first-grade actor and an expert receiving a special government allowance from the State Council. Wide in range and accomplished in both civil and martial skills, she is handsome in appearance, graceful in bearing and sweet-voiced, able to play qingyi, huadan, daomadan, laodan and caidan alike and bringing both form and spirit to her characters. She is a representative inheritor of Pingju in the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects, won an outstanding performance award at the 1995 national modern-opera exchange and the fourteenth China Drama Plum Blossom Award in 1997, and is a National May First Labour Medal recipient. She founded the Jingying Yuan Shumei Art School, training a large number of young Pingju talents, and in 2013 received the Xinchuan Award for transmitters of Chinese intangible cultural heritage from the Chinese National Academy of Arts (China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Centre). Li Hongxia (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): female, Mongol, born in May 1940 in Zhangjiakou, Hebei. A national first-grade actor. From a theatre family, she learned Peking opera from her father at seven and at eleven took the veteran artist Zhao Xiaoliang as her master to learn Pingju; in 1952 she entered the Beijing Rongguan Pingju Troupe to study and perform, and in 1954 was chosen for the Xinjiang Military Region Pingju Troupe as leading actor. Her singing is rich in flavour, her articulation clear, her voice bright and her feeling true. Her representative works include Xiu Xie Ji, Kongque Dongnan Fei, Wu Shuang Zhuan, An Zhong An, Shuang Song Li, San Kan Hudie Meng, Qiankun Dai and Liu Qiao'er. She is a representative inheritor of Pingju in the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects and won the Peony Award at the 1995 national middle-aged and elderly opera festival. Pingju is noted for subjects close to real life and for singing plain as speech, making it an important object for studying modern Chinese opera reform and social change; the Shijiazhuang Pingju Theatre No. 1 Troupe sustains the genre through reviving traditional plays, staging new works and training young actors.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liu Xiurong 02-0558
- Hong Ying 02-0559
- Feng Yuping 02-0560
- Xiaojunting 02-0561
- Zhou Dan 03-1035
- Liu Ping 03-1036
- Gu Wenyue 03-1037
- Chen Peihua 03-1038
- Zhang Junling 04-1640
- Yuan Shumei 04-1641
- Lihongxia 04-1642
- Cengzhaojuan 05-2357
- Wang Guanli 05-2358
- Luo Huiqin 05-2359
- Wang Xiangyang 05-2360
- Ma Huimin
- Li Weiquan
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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