Upstaged

When it comes to cultural elements that people associate with China, perhaps nothing is more quintessential than xiqu, or traditional opera. Hundreds of types of regional opera, performed in unique dialects and aesthetics, used to form a rich cultural tapestry around China. Yet these thousand-year-old arts, seen as irrevocably outdated by the urban middle class, may be in terminal decline—the government estimates three forms of regional opera have been vanishing every two years on average since the reform period. Past government preservation efforts have tended to emphasize prestigious Peking opera, leaving troupes performing local operas struggling to get gigs and recruit new talent, while still change younger generations tune on the cultural and entertainment value of xiqu. Meanwhile in rural villages, surviving opera types still have a ceremonial and community function, as well as a role in preserving endangered dialects and local heritage.

中國戏曲曾遍地开花：数百余剧种承载着各地独特的风土人情、方言声腔和艺术审美。京剧还走上了国际舞台，成了中国的艺术文化名片。然而，近几十年，一些地方剧种面临资金短缺、演员和观众流失等多重困境，有的甚至已失传。政府部门和新老从业者们该如何应对？新时代的传统戏曲又将走向何方？

Stage Fright

How will China save its vanishing local operas?

Everyone used to know when Pei Guanshengs opera troupe came to town. In the late 1970s and early 80s, his 50 performers would tour across northwestern Chinas Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, sometimes performing up to three shows a day to rapt audiences who sat on stools from dawn to dusk.

Back then, opera was “the most widespread form of entertainment,” says Pei, whose troupe, which he managed until 1984, specialized in a form of opera called Qinqiang. “Everyone could hum a little bit from famous works.”

But today, Qinqiang, like other forms of traditional opera in China, is fighting for its life. “What the smartphone is doing now to television, is the same as what television did to opera,” says Pei. While the government has labeled traditional opera as “cultural heritage” and funneled funding into training new artists and supporting troupes, much of the money has gone toward Peking opera, called “Chinas national opera” by the State Council, the countrys cabinet. That has left hundreds of lesser-known regional and local varieties struggling to find audiences and new performers.

According to statistics published by Chinas Ministry of Culture in 2013, the most recent year with such data available, an average of three traditional Chinese operas have disappeared every two years since 1982. This means that 60 forms of opera have died out or become nearly extinct—that is, they only have a few remaining performers—since the 1980s, leaving behind just 348 different types of opera as of 2017.

Speaking to those who continue to make a living from opera, from university educated singers at Beijings biggest venues to grassroots warblers at village funerals, TWOC hears the common complaint that the art is no longer in vogue among younger Chinese people. “Nowadays, there are too many forms of art in society, as well as movies and TV networks,” says Feng Zixiang, a senior performer of northern Chinas Pingju opera at a state-run theater in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province.

Chinese opera, orxiqu(戲曲), is believed to have originated in ancient shamanistic ceremonies and the court dances of successive kingdoms and dynasties. It initially took the form of songs and dances performed outdoors in rural communities as part of religious rituals, from praying for a good harvest to ending an epidemic. Later, it evolved into forms of mass entertainment that drew crowds from across the local region.

The first written opera scripts appeared in the 13th century. Many regional operas recycle the same historical or legendary stories, but differ by dialect, musical style, and performance. For example, Yue opera from the Yangtze Delta only uses female performers; Sichuan opera features fire-breathing and lightning-fast mask changes; and southeastern Chinas Nuo opera is known for its uncanny masks. The Qinqiang style, which is from Shaanxi, is characterized by harsh singing that practitioners literally call “yelling.” “It means singing your heart out, as loudly as you can,” says Pei.

Operas grassroots popularity made it a key vehicle of propaganda for the party, which commissioned new works based on revolutionary tales and values—and excised superstition and sexual references from older scripts—after founding the modern Chinese state in 1949. Opera singers, traditionally an ostracized class, became part of the establishment: The Peking opera star Mei Lanfang was even given a place on the rostrum when Mao Zedong announced the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China.

In urban areas, the government set up “opera houses” where troupes could train new members and rehearse, and moved performances onto Western-style theater stages in lieu of ramshackle outdoor scaffolds. In each county, the state registered opera troupes and gave guaranteed, cradle-to-grave jobs to artists who produced or performed operas.

During Chinas market-oriented reforms of the 1970s and 80s, state funding was withdrawn from most troupes. The new urban middle class, who might have made up the market to support opera in the governments stead, had the option to spend their money instead on the Western music and other cultural imports now flowing into China.

Unlike, say, the teaching of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world, younger people in China received little education about opera as a serious form of cultural heritage, leading to extreme “cultural alienation,” says Haili Ma, an associate professor of performance and creative economy at Leeds University and a former Yue opera performer who has researched the state of the tradition in China today. Part of this research includes an interview with a performer who witnessed bored students at Tongji University crawling en masse through a hole in the roof to escape an opera performance in the late 1990s to continue studying for their exams.

“Theater opera is in decline. This is an indisputable fact,” says Feng, the Shenyang-based performer. “I say that if Mei Lanfang was alive today, even he wouldnt necessarily attract much of an audience.”

“Young people nowadays dont sing Qinqiang,” Wu Hui (pseudonym), a performer and troupe manager in a small city in southeastern Shaanxi, who later asked to remove her real name from this story, booms in a voice appropriately strong for her profession. Wu, a woman in her 50s who calls herself “a real peasant,” took up opera training at 19 years old and was taught at a small local training school in the early 1980s. Her troupe is motivated by passion for the art rather than by money, she says.

That is perhaps just as well. Wus troupe only receives intermittent funding from the local culture and tourism bureau, and she makes up the difference from membership fees and her own private funds. But it still isnt enough. “I dont have money to pay the artists. Recently, I performed for the local government. It has been three months and I havent got the 8,000 yuan (1,238 USD) I spent [in overhead costs] back,” she complains. “If you dont know people [in the local government], no matter how good your troupe is, its hard to get support.”

Following the Ministry of Cultures report on vanishing operas, the State Council issued a notice in 2015 urging local governments to use subsidies to protect and revitalize Peking opera, Kunqu, and other local operas. The move entitled small troupes, troupes in poorer areas, and state-run troupes below the county level to state funding, tax exemptions, and money to buy equipment. Students majoring in opera at secondary vocational schools could also receive free tuition.

Despite the ostensible support for all forms of opera, the policies often favored the Peking variety that the party has used since the mid-1950s to promote a unified national culture, thanks in part to the international renown of Mei—the performer who shared a podium with Mao—and to the fact that it is sung in the Beijing dialect, similar to the form of Mandarin that the government pushed as a national language.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Peking opera troupes received an average of 68 million RMB per year in total subsidies between 2008 and 2012, the latest year for which data is publicly available. Over the same period, the total subsidies given to every other type of “opera, dance-drama, and song-and-dance” troupe only slightly exceeded that amount, with 76 million yuan per year.

Opera troupes lean on the government not only for funds, but to get audiences for their shows. When the Pingju troupe Feng is part of performs in Beijing, the municipal government buys up tickets and gives them away for free in suburban villages, he says. The troupe performs both well-known titles and newer operas designed to instill social morals. “My troupes original productions basically all have to do with transmitting positive energy,” Feng says, using a Party buzzword.

One show in the repertoire,Yueqing, premiered in 2014 and tells the modern-day story of a man who commits suicide by causing a car accident. Years later, his wife finds out the truth and reconciles with the other driver, who had been working hard to repay his debt to her family all this time.

The amount and form of state aid varies from region to region. Since Wu, the Shaanxi-based opera singer, registered her troupe around five years ago, she has had to put on performances to celebrate the Party and support major policies like poverty alleviation. “We have to do these performances, even though we arent paid to,” she says.

Thanks to the subsidies, Wu can now buy props, costumes, and sound systems. The government also provides her company with paid gigs. The budget doesnt stretch to travel expenses, meaning her performers must pay out of their own pockets if they want to travel outside their city.

The subsidies also do not solve other entrenched problems like recruiting younger performers and minting young opera fans. Although Wu is teaching three children to perform, her troupe of around 50 people is “basically between 45 and 70 years old,” she says.

Part of the problem is that opera training is lengthy, grueling and results in low-paid work. Despite his long years of experience, Fengs monthly salary is only around 4,500 RMB, after taxes and social security payments, slightly over half the average salary in his city.

“Around 30 youngsters recently completed their training with our troupe,” says Feng. He reckons they still need three to four more years of doing non-singing background roles before they “no longer get nervous on stage and can open their mouths,” then up to seven years of singing minor parts before they are ready for the main roles. “If we can get four or five [first-class performers] out of 30 [apprentices], thats already very good,” he says.

In recent years, many opera troupes, including Fengs, have tried to attract younger audiences by putting on performances for children, livestreaming shows on short-video apps like Kuaishou and Douyin—Chinas TikTok twin. Feng himself can get up to 2,000 views per stream, but only 100 regular fans. The hugely popular video gameHonor of Kingshas also introduced opera-themed player avatars.

But their efforts have only had a limited impact. Ma, the associate professor, says one of her doctoral candidates found that dozens of gamers felt the avatars bore little cultural relevance to their lives. The student recently surveyed around 100 players who did not use the opera-themed avatars to find out why. “Some of the answers were ‘They scream like Peking opera, scream like ghosts; I dont like it, it has no cultural relevance to us,” says Ma.

The industrys inherent conservatism is another problem, Ma says. “Unfortunately, the traditionalists, the people who do have the voice to tell the government what to do, who hold the important positions like heads of opera schools and colleges…these people dont want to change.”

Additionally, younger people are often put off by the themes of older operas, Wu says, citingThe Seedling Vendor, an opera in her troupes repertoire that urges women to obey their in-laws. While some older audience members in the villages enjoy the work, “some daughters-in-law [today] just dont like this kind of content,” she admits.

Ma says it remains to be seen whether the governments policies are rekindling the popularity of traditional opera in different regions. “Shanghais different from Beijing, and Shanxi is different from Shanghai. You have to really break them down into very complicated socioeconomic platforms.”

While a lack of attendance records makes it difficult to pinpoint the level of interest in opera in the countryside, Mas research suggests that some local forms continue to thrive in rural communities.

For instance, operas continue to serve important roles as rituals to appease the gods in rural areas near the city of Quanzhou in southeastern Chinas Fujian province. Compared to the citys state-run opera house, which struggles to find audiences, opera performances crowdfunded by local families are still part of important ritual celebrations in some rural communities.

A makeshift theater Ma visited in 2016, around 30 minutes drive from Quanzhou, was built in celebration of a new ancestral hall for a wealthy local family. The performance began with actors dressed as the Eight Daoist Immortals offering incense to the family deities, and later featured military reenactments and clowns uttering obscenities to spark laughter in the audience.

Funding for both performances came not from the government, but from family members working overseas. “In central parts of China, because the ancestral lineage link is weaker, they have to rely quite closely on the government,” Ma says, “whereas toward the eastern coast there continues to be a strong global [diaspora] network [with] more independence and therefore more diverse ritual opera activities.”

Similarly, in Shaanxi, rural families have paid Wus Qinqiang troupe to sing at weddings and funerals, both for ceremony and entertainment. She says rural families still find it important to put on a show during major life events to display their filial piety and family bond before the whole community.

“Are the middle class, after all these years of nurturing, interested in plain Chinese opera? The answer is no,” says Ma, adding that separating opera from its community roots and placing it in hushed urban theaters is contributing to its decline.

But she points to the findings of her student, which indicate that some urban Chinese are now consuming opera-themed products, meaning that Chinese opera retains its cultural value if not its form in Chinese society. “It does give [Chinese people] a sense of identity,” Ma says. “Over the past decade, the government has been trying to educate students about [the value of] Chinese culture…so it is now beginning to pay off.”

– Alex Colville, Additional reporting by Jenna Lu and Anita He  (賀文文)

Counterclockwise from top: Qinqiang, Anshun opera, and Sichuan opera

A Qinqiang singer performingWang Gui and Li Xiangxiang, an adaption of a 1946 poem praising the love and revolutionary spirit of a young rural couple

Children watch a Qinqiang troupe perform in a small town in Huining county, Gansu, as part of the local Spring Festival celebration

Two masked characters from a Nuo opera performance in Hebei province during the Lantern Festival

Opera performers sometimes bring their children on tour

A traveling opera troupe getting ready for a performance at a rural theater

Children at the front row of a village opera performance

Illustration Design and Painting by Xi Dahe and FengzhengYisheng

Photographs by VCG and Fotoe

Photographs by VCG and Huang Ruide

Dying Notes

A former Kunqu opera performer describes working in a disappearing art

From the age of 12, Huang Yanan usually started her mornings in tears. Every day at 6:30 a.m., she would report to the rehearsal rooms at the Shanghai Theater and Drama College for 60 to 90 minutes of mandatory morning exercise that typically consisted of overextended, painful leg stretches.

The rest of the day would be just as grueling. After breakfast, there were 90 minutes of practicing “blanket kung fu,” a martial arts technique involving flopping backward on stage like a blanket, requiring the performer to practice standing on two tables—a move that, if performed incorrectly, can cause ankle injuries.

Then there was weapons training, orbazi gong(靶子功), in which Huang and other actors practiced mock-fights with wooden spears. After lunch, the students took singing lessons, with some practicing on their own in the evening before lights-out at 9:30 p.m. “The staff would forcibly turn off the electricity meter to make sure [we went to sleep],” Huang, formerly an actor with the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe, tells TWOC.

As a Chinese saying goes, “One minute on the stage takes 10 years of hard work off it.” Opera performers usually start training before puberty, so their bodies can better adapt to the basic positions and vocal exercises. In the past, the skills would often be passed down through the family.

In ancient China, opera performers were also part of the lowest social castes, preventing some of them from marrying into other groups. Even today, kids who train for opera often come from families that lack money to spend on helping their children excel in Chinas exam-focused public education system, or want their children to learn a trade to support themselves and their relatives.

Huang did not choose opera for financial reasons: Instead, she became a performer almost by accident. At 5 years old, her family sent her to a performing arts school in her hometown of Guiyang, the capital of southwestern Chinas Guizhou province, because she liked dancing. When she failed to get into the dance class, she says, a tearful Huang was approached by a Peking opera teacher and “tricked” into taking her class on the basis that it would be no different from singing and dancing.

In 2003, Huang, then 11 years old, was nominated by her teachers to attend a 10-year, government-sponsored program at a prestigious Shanghai training school for future performers of Kunqu, a local opera style. The school accepted just 60 trainees out of more than 20,000 applicants, but Huang made the cut. Around 20 students left the program after the first year, unable to stand the rigorous training schedule. But Huang stuck around, having imbibed “a sense of mission to promote opera,” she tells TWOC.

After her graduation in 2014, Huang was accepted into the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe as an apprentice. The competition was fierce, and only half of her class passed the 30-minute entrance exam. Those who failed left the opera world entirely, disappearing back into normal life—finding jobs, starting businesses and families—as if the sacrifices of the last decade had never taken place.

Life as a performer

When they finally got to perform on a professional stage, Huang and her former classmates felt devastated by how few people were in the audience. At 18, Huang had spent nearly three quarters of her life perfecting a 600-year-old craft, only to play shows to as few as seven people. “Some of them only came because they had free tickets, and one ticket was sold for just 10 yuan [around 1.50 USD],” she recalls.

Huang says Kunqu is facing an inevitable decline. “Opera has a threshold for appreciation,” she says. Many scripts include lines of ancient poetry, and performances can last more than three hours as audiences try to untangle the intricacies of the plot. As a result, she says, Kunqu struggles to compete with more modern forms of entertainment, or even humorous traditional crafts like cross-talk.

Eventually, Huangs patience wore thin. After her yearlong apprenticeship came to an end, the troupe offered her a position as an actor, promising a job for life. Instead, she quit. “I could almost see my life in 20 years, and it was dull—a life of practice, performance, and more practice,” she says.

Since then, Huang has taught opera and performed on TV shows. Additionally, she has opened an opera-themed teahouse in Shanghais ritzy Xuhui district, offering visitors a chance to learn basic poses, vocal skills, and facial makeup. She continues to promote her old troupes performances on social media, and claims to have doubled their attendance numbers, especially among young people.

To Huang, opera must adapt to survive. She urges fellow performers to think outside the box by using newly popular technologies like livestreaming, by combining opera with increasingly widespread entertainments like street dance, and by viewing the art as a lifestyle aesthetic instead of a dusty, out-of-date tradition.

Nevertheless, Huang says, certain aspects of the craft must remain true to their roots, such as the librettos and melodies, orqupai(曲牌), which have been around for hundreds of years. “If we change its basic forms, the opera will not be opera anymore,” she explains.

Overall, Huang is pessimistic about the future of Kunqu. The current crop of teachers are aging and growing less able to train the next generation of performers. At the same time, operas diminishing material and cultural rewards are failing to entice young learners and their families to invest in the years of rigorous training.

“Young people are enjoying better livelihoods, and arent attracted by free tuition anymore,” she says. “There are lots of career options for them to choose from.”

–  YANG Tingting (楊婷婷)

Photographs by Huang Yanan

Nuo Opera 傩戏

Region: Popular in Anhui, Hebei, Hunan, and Guizhou provinces

Conservation status:According to People.cn, there were over 200 actors as of 2018 in Dejiang, Guizhou province, Nuo operas supposed “home county.” Unclear in other regions.

Language:Local dialect of the performance region

Ferocious-looking masks made of rough willow wood are a signature of Nuo opera, indicating its esoteric origins. Nuo opera evolved from an ancient sacrificial ritual called “Nuo sacrifice (傩祭),” which was part of folk totem-worship found in many parts of ancient China. It was usually performed in spring and autumn to expel evils and diseases, avert disasters, and bring luck and a good harvest by praying to gods and ancestors. The performers acted as mediums connecting gods, evil spirits, and common people. Over time, Nuo became a form of entertainment aiming to attract spectators.

Representative works:Seizing the Yellow Devil(《捉黄鬼》),The Child-Giving Immortal(《仙姑送子》)

Zijin Huachao Opera 紫金花朝戏

Region:Eastern Guangdong province

Conservation status:Only one professional troupe in Zijin county, Guangdong province, which calls itself “the only troupe in the world (天下一团)”

Language:Hakka dialect

The use of fans and handkerchiefs in Huachao opera gives it the nickname of “Guangdongs errenzhuan” after the well-known vaudeville performance of northeastern China. The humorous and grassroots opera evolved from religious rituals in Zijin county in the Ming (1368 – 1644) and Qing (1616 – 1911) dynasties to expel disease, before changing to focus on folk stories that appeal to a broader audience. Common themes in Huachao opera are kindness, loyalty, and matrimonial freedom.

Representative works:Qiuli Picking Flowers(《秋丽采花》),Selling General Goods(《卖杂货》)

Tibetan Opera 藏戏

Region: Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai province

Conservation status:With central government funding, the number of actors of Tibetan opera increased from around 50 troupes in 2009 to 140 troupes and more than 3,000 actors by 2015, according to Chinanews.com.

Language:Tibetan

With 600 years of history, Tibetan opera performs fantastical tales found in Buddhist sutras. The performances begin with dancing to worship the gods and conclude with a blessing ceremony. Unlike other operas, where performers wear heavy makeup, Tibetan opera actors only wear traditional masks. Different colors on the masks represent different meanings—for instance, blue symbolizes justice and bravery. Tibetan opera performances typically take place in open squares or Buddhist temples, rather than on stage. Performances can last up to three days.

Representative works: Princess Wencheng(《文成公主》),King of Nuosang(《诺桑法王》)

Taishan Shadow Puppetry泰山皮影戲

Region:Taian, Shandong province

Conservation status:According to Chinas Ministry of Culture, the last living performer is 75-year-old Fan Zhengan from Taian.

Language:Taian dialect

Taishan Shadow Puppetry, born around 600 years ago near the eponymous mountain in Shandong, features a single performer responsible for the singing, lighting, music, and puppeteering. Fan Zhengan, the last living puppeteer, can play 10 instruments at once—including the gongs, drums, cymbals, and wooden fish—with a foot-pedaled machine called theshibuxian(十不闲). The puppets are created out of traditional paper-cutting, and there are no written scripts, so the performer relies on memory. The tales are based on local legends like the “Brave Stone (石敢当)” and other heroes who warded off evil spirits and were committed to justice and bravery.

Representative works: Taishan Brave Stone Fights Against Evils to Protect the Peace(《泰山石敢当为民除害保平安》)

Sai Opera 赛戏

Region: Shanxi, Hebei, and Shaanxi provinces, and Inner Mongolia autonomous region

Conservation status:Unclear; many troupes disbanded or began performing other operas from the late Qing dynasty to the early Republican era.

Language:Local dialect of the performance region

Primitive and rustic, Sai opera blends religious rituals and theater. Without any written scripts, the performances always focus on historical tales of military expeditions, emphasizing the theme of loyalty and filial piety. The opera originated in and was named after harvest rituals in northern Shanxi province in northern China. Sai opera troupes were family-run, and performing families were known as yuehu (乐户). They were viewed as part of the lowest caste in ancient China, and the daughters of yuehu were not allowed to marry people from

other castes.

Representative works: Mobilizing the Ghosts(《调鬼》),Beheading the Drought-Causing Demon(《斩旱魃》)

Shanghai Farce 上海滑稽戏

Region: Shanghai city, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces

Conservation status:More than 40 professional troupes in Shanghai alone by the 1940s, but less than 100 actors left today

Language: Shanghai dialect

Shanghai Farce is a relative newcomer on the folk opera scene, originating in the 1920s. Mainly covering social and cultural issues in urban life, Shanghai Farce combines both talking and singing, with jokes and scripts inspired by both historical incidents and current news. It originated from Shanghai monodrama (comedic storytelling performed by one person), and absorbed many influences from the cross-cultural atmosphere of 1930s and 40s Shanghai including Western vaudeville and operas from the Yangtze Delta region.

Representative works:Sanmao Learns to Do Business(《三毛學生意》),The Households of Seventy-Two Tenants(《七十二家房客》)

Illustrations by Xi Dahe