Caicha Opera
01 · Historical Records
It derives from the “tea-picking mountain songs and ditties” popular in Fujian and Jiangxi before the Ming and Qing. After 1949 Yuebei caicha opera developed fairly quickly, with professional caicha opera troupes founded in a number of counties and cities and a number of fine traditional plays collated and restored. Drawing on local opera annals, Yuebei caicha opera derives from the tea-picking mountain songs and ditties of Fujian and Jiangxi before the Ming and Qing, and after 1949 professional troupes were founded in Shaoguan and its counties, collating and restoring a group of traditional plays.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Yuebei caicha opera (sanjiao opera) is a local folk short-play genre circulating in northern Guangdong. In the course of transmission it steadily absorbed the lantern and huagu song-and-dance forms of southern Jiangxi and southern Hunan, gradually becoming a distinctive local genre of northern Guangdong. It is found across the vast Hakka areas of eastern Guangdong, southern Jiangxi, southern Hunan and eastern Guangxi. It has a large number of traditional plays, such as Mo Doufu and Shuang Shuang Pei celebrating freedom of marriage, Mai Zahuo and Da Gou Quan Fu upholding good and punishing evil and promoting family ethics, and A San Kan Jie and Ye Dao Han Yi lashing and satirising social ugliness. Some traditional plays, through years of performance, have taken on new artistic life by absorbing and drawing on the strengths of other fine genres. A song-and-dance genre centred on the dan, chou and sheng roles, its singing builds on tea-picking tunes while absorbing the lantern and huagu song-and-dance of southern Jiangxi and southern Hunan, its language the Hakka dialect and its performance lively and humorous.
Mo Doufu (Grinding Tofu)
A traditional play celebrating freedom of marriage.
Shuang Shuang Pei (A Double Match)
A traditional play celebrating freedom of marriage.
Mai Zahuo (Selling Sundries)
A traditional play upholding good and punishing evil.
Da Gou Quan Fu (Beating the Dog to Admonish the Husband)
A traditional play on family ethics.
A San Kan Jie (A San Visits His Sister)
A traditional play lashing and satirising social ugliness.
Ye Dao Han Yi (Stealing Winter Clothes by Night)
A traditional play lashing and satirising social ugliness.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Yuebei caicha opera circulates in the Hakka areas around Shaoguan in northern Guangdong and across the Hakka mountain areas of eastern Guangdong, southern Jiangxi, southern Hunan and eastern Guangxi; the various lines formed on the basis of lantern and huagu song-and-dance, with the Shaoguan Yuebei Caicha Opera Conservation and Transmission Centre as the professional transmission body.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Caicha Opera · Caicha Opera · Caicha Opera · Caicha Opera · Caicha Opera · Caicha Opera.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present Yuebei caicha opera still has more than three hundred newly created and newly written pieces, including costume plays and modern plays. Using such plays as Mo Doufu, Shuang Shuang Pei and Da Gou Quan Fu to reflect freedom of marriage and family ethics, it has value for social edification and folklore research; the Shaoguan authorities, relying on the Yuebei Caicha Opera Conservation and Transmission Centre, sustain the genre through reviving plays and training talent. Wu Yancheng (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): female, Han, born in September 1949 in Shaoguan, Guangdong. Absorbing and drawing on the performance forms of other genres and fusing them with the traditional features of caicha opera, she has gradually formed her own distinctive style. She excels in huadan and qingyi performance and in choreographing tea-picking dance and has a thorough command of caicha opera's performance conventions; besides deeply understanding a character's inner feelings she makes skilled use of the genre's song-and-dance performance, creating such roles as Liu Qiaozhen in Ren Sheng Lu and Zhou Xiulian in Qing Shan Shui Dong Liu, and has taken part in provincial festivals and won awards many times. She is a representative inheritor of caicha opera (Yuebei caicha opera) in the fourth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Chen Shengqiang 02-0595
- Li Jiagao 03-1057
- Chen Binmao 04-1647
- Wan Anan 04-1648
- Wu Yancheng 04-1649
- Peng Jinhua 05-2376
- Wu Lan
- Chu Fengrong
- Fei Lijun
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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