Nuo Opera · Chinese Craft Stories

01 · Historical Records

Nuo opera has its origins in remote antiquity; already in the pre-Qin period there were shamanic songs and nuo dances that pleased both the gods and the people. Dejiang County lies in the north-east of Guizhou Province and in antiquity was territory of the Southern Man. In the Warring States period it belonged to Ba and Chu; after the Yuan dynasty the Shuitejiang and Shuidejiang native officials’ offices were set up there, and in the thirty-third year of the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty (1605) the area was reorganised as Anhua County, belonging to Sinan Prefecture and adjoining its prefectural seat. In the second year of the Republic of China (1913), Anhua County was renamed Dejiang County. Dejiang has since ancient times been a place where the Tujia and other ethnic minorities live in compact settlement; its special geographical position and historical evolution mean that Dejiang nuotang opera is not only of great antiquity but also extremely primitive and complete in its preservation, and scholars and experts have honoured it as a “living fossil of Chinese drama”. It originates in the nuo rites of antiquity and is one variety of the ancient nuo. After the Han dynasty it gradually developed into a ritual sacrificial ceremony with a strong flavour of entertainment for the living.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Nuo opera, also known as nuotang opera or duangong opera, is a theatrical form created by absorbing folk opera into the basis of folk sacrificial ritual; it is widely performed in Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Shaanxi, Hebei and other provinces. In the late Ming and early Qing, the various local operatic genres flourished; the nuo dance took on operatic forms and grew into nuotang opera and duangong opera. The nuotang opera of Hunan and Hubei drew on the performance art of huagu (flower drum) opera, the nuo opera of Sichuan and Guizhou absorbed elements of huadeng (flower lantern) song-and-dance, and the nuo opera of Jiangxi and Anhui drew nourishment from huiju (Anhui opera) and Mulian opera. The nuo repertoire performed includes Meng Jiangnu (The Lady Meng Jiang), Lady Pang (Mrs Pang), The Dragon King’s Daughter, The God of Taoyuan Cave and The Earth God of Liangshan, as well as plays taken from the stories of The Story of Mulian, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West. The scripts carry far more song than speech, and excel at setting out the events, opening up the conflict and shaping the characters through long stretches of narrative aria. Save in a few places such as Yuanling in Hunan, where a suona punctuates the ends of lines, most nuo opera uses percussion alone — gong, drum and cymbals. The roles of nuo opera are divided into sheng (male), dan (female), jing (painted face) and chou (clown), and most of them are performed in masks. Masks are carved and colour-painted from timbers that do not split easily, such as camphor, lilac and poplar; by form they are of two kinds, the full face, which carves the hat worn by the character together with the whole face, and the half face, which is carved only from the nose upward, with neither mouth nor chin. The basic step patterns of performance are zhengbu (measured step) and gangbu (gang step) for male roles, and suibu (short quick steps) and yunbu (flowing step) for female roles. Since nuo opera is performed in masks, its movements are broad in amplitude and its style plain, ancient and rugged. Dixi, or earth opera, is a form of nuo opera performed by the tunbao people — the descendants of the soldiers who, in the early Ming under the order to “transfer troops from the north to campaign in the south” (tiaobei zhengnan), were left behind in Yunnan and Guizhou to farm and garrison the frontier — in order to worship their ancestors. It has no plays of ordinary folk life and none of gifted scholars and fair maidens; all that is performed is martial drama reflecting historical events. Yangxi, or sun opera, is just the opposite. Performed by the duangong ritual master for the living once the rites are done, it consists mainly of short plays that reflect ordinary folk life, and the tunes sung are largely absorbed from folk minor opera such as huagu and huadeng. In the eighth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty (1882), the seat of Anhua County was moved to Dabao, the site of today’s Dejiang county town. Dejiang nuotang opera is also called nuo opera or nuotan opera; the Tujia name it gangshen. It is a religious sacrificial drama performed in masks, and at the same time an ancient activity of ethnic folk custom culture. Nuo opera forms the main component of nuotang opera; it is divided into formal plays and interludes, more than eighty items in all, of which sixteen are formal plays. Besides the nuo plays, nuo skills — what the Tujia call jiéhuó, or stunt skills — are normally performed as well, the items being agreed between the host family and the altar troupe. Before a nuo rite is held, the Tujia ritual master carefully sets up a nuo altar (nuotang), which is why nuotang opera is also called nuotan opera. The nuo altar is finely arranged, integrating the arts of weaving and binding, paper cutting, dyeing and printing, painting, calligraphy and architecture.