Pingjiang Opera

Ⅳ-160Traditional OperaFuan, FujianBatch 4 (2014)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

In Fuan city, Fujian, on the Fujian-Zhejiang border, the “underground shed” variety play once circulated; Song-Yuan nanxi came in and fused with the underground-shed variety play to form a native opera. The Ming Fuan County Gazette and Shouning Daizhi both record the flourishing of opera in the area. After the Qing, “itinerant troupes” flowed in, and Fuan artists absorbed their essence to gradually perfect pingjiang opera. In the late Qing Fuan had more than thirty troupes such as the New Yuchun troupe and the Liuyang troupe. In 1960 the Fuan county pingjiang troupe was founded and in 2012 converted into the Fuan city pingjiang opera art transmission centre.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Pingjiang opera is a traditional dramatic form circulating in the eastern Fujian dialect area under the jurisdiction of Ningde city, Fuan city and Fuzhou, and the surrounding areas, and is one of the forebears of Min opera. In the Guangxu reign of the Qing, Lin Juli of Fuan gathered famous pingjiang artists from the eight counties of eastern Fujian to found the professional famous troupe Xin Changxing. Its repertory has the “thirteen three”, “eighteen pairs”, “thirty-six gifts” and “seventy-two miscellaneous”, such as Three Generations of Glory, The Three Immortals' Furnace, The Twins' Meeting, Double Marquis and Giving the Golden Hairpin and Giving the Three Treasures, mostly drawn from ordinary people's daily life; it excels in modern plays with a rich flavour of life and easily stirs the audience's sympathies. It is sung in the eastern Fujian dialect and can also be performed in She language, its arias and rhymed speech like spoken language and easy on the tongue with no language barrier to local audiences, much using everyday language, easy to understand and close to life, witty and vivid. Its arias are eclectic, absorbing local folk ditties, She tunes and Daoist and Buddhist music and composed of nanxi survivals, folk ditties, luantan and douqiang, with notes of the Haiyan qiang and the soft, gentle nanxi accent and also the Yiyang qiang feature of “one man sings, the many respond”, dividing into pingjiang, jianghu, xiaodiao and mixed arias, its lyric rhymes standardised on the Anqiang Eight Sounds. Its band marks the beat with the “scabbard clapper” and drum and gong, adding such wind and string instruments as the maohu, shuangqing, flute and suona, with rich local colour. Its performance is rough and plain, witty and humorous, its costume, props and make-up fairly simple.