Huachao Opera

01 · Historical Records

Huachao opera originated in the "shenchao" sacrificial ritual of the villages of Zijin County, is sung in Hakka, and is popular throughout the Hakka areas of eastern Guangdong Province. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the "shenchao" music and dance of Zijin County has been deeply loved by the local villagers. Later on, in order to amuse the audience, shenchao performers would often sing anecdotes and lively incidents in short tunes after the ritual. This style of performance was humorous and colourful, forming a sharp contrast with the devout and solemn shenchao; people liked it far better and therefore called it "huachao". In the late Qing and early Republican period, the performer Ye Chunlin organised the Dingchangchun troupe to perform huachao exclusively, and huachao opera gradually took shape. At that time Zijin County also had Cantonese opera, tea-picking opera and Han-tune puppet opera performances; huachao performers drew on and absorbed the repertoire, tune patterns, small melodies and performance techniques of these genres, strengthening the artistic expressiveness of huachao opera. At its height, Zijin County had 19 opera troupes and more than a hundred performers; well-known troupes such as Dingchangchun, Zihuachun, Qingxiangchun and Dinghuaxi toured more than a dozen Hakka-speaking counties in eastern Guangdong. In the course of its development huachao opera accumulated more than a hundred traditional plays; representative works include Qiuli Caihua (Autumn Beauty Picking Flowers), Mai Zahuo (Selling Sundries), Sanguan Jinfang (The Three Officials Enter the Room) and Guodu (Crossing Over). Its vocal music consists mainly of the shenchao register and folk minor tunes, and sometimes uses Hakka mountain songs. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Zijin County Huachao Opera Troupe, as a professional performing organisation, collated and performed a number of traditional plays, created and staged modern plays such as Sudan (The Sultan), Ziyunying (Chinese Milk Vetch) and Hongshiling (Red Stone Ridge), and imported and adapted plays such as Liu Sanjie and Qiaoyinyuan (A Marriage Brought About by Skill). Actors dear to audiences such as Deng Guanyun, Liu Enfang, Chen Yexing and Chen Shujun were active on the stage; huachao opera was performed day after day in the Zijin mountain areas and in neighbouring small and medium-sized cities, creating considerable influence. The subjects of huachao opera's traditional plays are drawn mostly from folk legends, and most of them promote positive themes such as punishing evil and upholding good, loyalty and patriotism, and freedom of marriage. The Confucian ideals cherished by the Hakka people, together with such humanistic concepts as tilling and studying to perpetuate the family and esteeming literature and valuing education, are fully displayed in huachao opera. At present, although the professional huachao opera troupe performs in the countryside on schedule and also appears at major local festival celebrations and some folk activities, performances of huachao opera are seldom to be seen, audiences are dwindling day by day, and the problem is quite acute.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Its spoken lines are plain and easy to understand, and it frequently makes use of colloquialisms, xiehouyu (wisdom sayings) and puns. There are generally only three role types — xiaosheng (young male), xiaodan (young female) and xiaochou (clown) — and its distinctive techniques such as fan-hua (fan flowers), shoupa-hua (handkerchief flowers), longgoujiao (a stamping step) and chuanxinshou (the through-the-heart hand gesture) give it real character; the performance combines singing and dancing and is plain and fresh. The performance art of huachao opera has greatly improved: the division of labour among role types has become more finely differentiated, and techniques from other genres such as water sleeves (shuixiu) and body postures (shenduan) have also been absorbed. Its vocal music makes use not only of the linking of tune patterns but also of metrical variations.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Huachao opera originated in the "shenchao" sacrificial ritual of the villages of Zijin County, is sung in Hakka, and is popular in the Hakka areas of eastern Guangdong Province. In the late Qing and early Republican period the performer Ye Chunlin organised the Dingchangchun troupe to perform huachao exclusively; later came the Zihuachun, Qingxiangchun and Dinghuaxi troupes. At its height Zijin County had 19 opera troupes and more than a hundred performers, whose performances reached more than a dozen Hakka-speaking counties in eastern Guangdong. Today it has the Zijin County Huachao Opera Inheritance and Development Centre as its professional home, while also appearing at major local festival celebrations and folk events.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Therefore, huachao opera has considerable academic and research value in such fields as folk literature, folk music, folk custom and religious culture. Zhong Shijin (official archival record of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in October 1943, native of Zijin County, Guangdong Province. Third-grade director of huachao opera. His performance technique is comprehensive and his foundation is deep; his singing and recitation are accurate, and he is especially good at playing middle-aged and elderly characters; his directorial method is mature and he is rich in experience. He is keen on taking apprentices and passing on his art, contributing actively to the inheritance of huachao opera. Representative inheritor of huachao opera in the third national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage. He has won provincial- and municipal-level outstanding actor awards many times; the play he directed, Mai Zahuo (Selling Sundries), took part in the "Number One Troupe under Heaven" showcase performance organised by the Ministry of Culture and won the play award.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

• Zhong Shijin 03-1069

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Huachao Opera (Zijin, Guangdong) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Zhong Shijin · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗