Beijing Opera is the “national treasure” of China. In Beijing opera, the “Dan” role, or the female lead, is usually performed by a man, and the “Four Great Danes” selected by Beijing’s Shuntian Times during the Republican period, Mei Lanfang, Cheng Yanqiu, Xun Huisheng, and Shang Xiaoyun, represent the highest achievement in the art of the Dan line in Beijing opera, and they They created their own distinctive Dan art school.
At that Time, the “Tongtian Godfather” Wang Yaoqing had a sentence summarizing the four famous Dan: “Mei Lanfang’s style, Cheng Yanqiu’s singing, Shang Xiaoyun’s stick, Xun Huisheng’s wave.” In other words, Cheng’s singing, Shang’s martial arts, and Xun’s performance are their most prominent features, while Mei Lanfang’s “look” does not only refer to his costume and appearance, but to an overall Perception.
Mei Lanfang silences himself after 49 years, son Mei Baojiu is criticized
As the first of the Four Famous Danes, Mei Lanfang excelled in Qing Yi and also played the role of a sword and horse. He has a deep background in both arts and martial arts, a beautiful stage style and excellent costumes, a mellow voice and a charming singing voice. The representative works include “Drunken Concubine”, “Farewell My Concubine” and “Mu Guiying Hanging up the Marshal”.
Originally, the Dan role in Beijing Opera was not as “popular” as the Lao Sheng role. Dan actors usually can not sing the finale. But since the emergence of Mei Lanfang, Dan Dan opera can sing the finale. Many people came to the theater to see the opera, just for him. Mei Lanfang’s reputation surpassed that of his predecessors, and Tan Xinpei, the “King of Peking Opera” at the time, also said, “Nowadays, the beard (Lao Sheng with beard) can’t sing the role of a Dan!”
In 1930, Mei Lanfang and his troupe toured the United States for 72 days, and the performances were received with unprecedented popularity. His best seats were sold out 10 days before the performance, his schedule of events and welcome parties were in the press every day, his performance costumes were displayed in department stores, and a flower was named after him. The American media at the time were the first to report the great success of Mei Lanfang’s performance. One media outlet stated, “Mei Lanfang’s performances made buying tickets to the National Theatre a necessity of Life, and people no longer lacked talking points in any social setting.” Mei Lanfang was also awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Southern California and Pomona College in the United States.
Thereafter, Mei Lanfang was also invited to perform in Japan, France, Germany, England, Italy and other countries, which also became a sensation.
If Mei Lanfang’s artistic life was exciting in 1949, it was darker and blurrier after 1949, the year when the Chinese Communist Party was founded. Zhang Yihe, who has studied the opera world in depth, once said, “After 1949, in fact, Mei Lanfang’s era was over.”
This is because after 1949, the Chinese Communist Party proposed a reform of opera to ban and transform traditional Peking operas, which were mainly about “talented and beautiful people” and “emperors and generals,” and to create new historical dramas that were more “meaningful” in accordance with the requirements of the times. The Chinese government’s reform of Beijing opera was to ban and transform traditional Peking operas, which were based on “talented men and women” and “emperors and generals,” and to create new historical dramas that were more “meaningful” to the times. In response, Mei Lanfang, who was the director of the official Chinese Opera Academy and the director of the Peking Opera Theatre, disagreed, but the matter was a nail in his coffin and he was almost criticized by the Chinese Communist Party. At the time, he said at Home, “I dare say that after 49 years we still can’t speak freely.” He finally came to his senses in this first scoop of cold water.
From then on, Mei Lanfang never took a stand during the ten years of the “opera reform” campaign. But some political speeches, he had to speak in response to the situation. He became a symbol and had to appear.
In 1961, Mei Lanfang died of heart disease, and the capital was filled with people to see him off.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, everyone in the Peking Opera world was in danger, and many famous Peking Opera artists were criticized. Mei Baojiu, the son of Mei Lanfang, was also criticized by the rebels and was forced to cut his “gangster’s head” with another Peking Opera master, Zhang Junqiu. According to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule that “men should not play Dan and women should not play Sheng”, Mei Baojiu, who sang exclusively as a male Dan, and Mei Bao Yue, the daughter of Mei Lanfang, who sang exclusively as an old Sheng, were both forced to change their careers, with Mei Bao Yue singing as an old Dan and Mei Baojiu moving to the dance team to manage the sound.
Although Mei Lanfang died early, the stamp set in his honor was severely criticized because of his identity and was branded as a “revisionist poison ivy”. Not only were the stamps banned from circulation, but all the design materials, original designs and printing samples related to him were also destroyed.
The Cultural Revolution also delayed the succession of the Mei Family‘s descendants to the family business. The family’s children and nephews are no longer in the Peking Opera business, and although the Mei School has not yet been extinguished, the Mei family has no more descendants.
Cheng Yanqiu was banned from performing many of his plays
Cheng Yanqiu studied under Mei Lanfang, who created a singing voice with a sultry, undulating, intermittent and variable rhythm based on his own vocal characteristics, which is known as the “Cheng School”. Cheng Yanqiu specializes in tragedies, and his masterpieces include “The Tomb of the Mandarin Ducks”, “Yingtai Resists Marriage” and “Dou’e Injustice”.
After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, Cheng Yanqiu became the vice president of the Chinese Academy of Opera. Unlike Mei Lanfang’s self-imposed silence, Cheng Yanqiu was initially enthusiastic about the CPC’s proposed reform of opera, which he understood to be a thousand miles away from the CPC’s.
On February 9, 1950, Cheng Yanqiu wrote to Zhou Yang, the head of ideology, and the first sentence of his letter was, “To improve Chinese opera, according to my personal opinion, I always think that we should make a general and detailed survey of the operas in all parts of the country, record and organize them, and study them comprehensively. In this way …… can certainly also break the old view of stubbornness and a new trend”. He wrote three letters to Zhou Yang in succession, which talked about the theater. And the reform of opera that the CCP wanted was to conduct a censorship of opera and to redevelop it according to the CCP’s ideology.
Soon, many codes of the Four Great Masters were banned, and this included hundreds of Cheng Yanqiu’s plays. By 1953, of the 194 plays permitted to be performed, only four of the Cheng School plays, Wen Ji Returning to Han, The Tale of the Vermilion Scars, Dou E Grievances, and The Trial of the Head Stabbing Soup, were included, and even the newly rehearsed Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai was not included in the staging plan. The revised version of the play, which he had given to the Institute of Opera Studies, was also delayed. Cheng Yanqiu was extremely dissatisfied and said aggressively, “I have always supported the reform of opera!”
In the spring of 1957, at a general meeting of the Central Ministry of Culture, Cheng Yanqiu spoke and criticized that too many operas were banned, leaving the local troupes with almost no opera to perform, and he said angrily, “The Opera Reform Bureau might as well be changed to the Opera Zai Zai Bureau.” This made the high officials in charge of literature and arts of the Chinese Communist Party furious. And Cheng Yanqiu finally realized the true purpose of the so-called opera reform.
Zhang Yihe describes in “The Past of the Artist” that in March 1958, two days before Cheng Yanqiu’s illness and death, the secretary of the Party branch of the Chinese Academy of Opera visited him in his hospital room. The extremely weak Cheng Yanqiu again mentioned the masterpiece of the Cheng School, “The Locked Lin Pouch”, and in the face of his sick face and earnest heart, the Party Secretary was not at all polite and said categorically, “The play “The Locked Lin Pouch” can no longer be sung.” Such a condolence is tantamount to a call to arms.
In March 1958, Cheng Yanqiu died of a heart attack at the age of 55.
Shang Xiaoyun and Xun Huisheng’s tragic death during the Cultural Revolution
Of the other two famous dan, Shang Xiaoyun started out as a martial artist, but later changed to be a Zheng Dan and also played a sword and horse dan. He was known for his strong voice and strong singing voice, and was known as “Shang School”. His representative works include “The Second Palace”, “The Sacrificial Pagoda”, “Zhaogun Goes to the Cypress” and “Liang Hongyu”.
Xun Huisheng, on the other hand, mostly plays the roles of flower girl and sword and horse girl. He is known as “Xun School” because of his profound skills and his ability to draw on the strengths of the art of the Dan character in Bangzi opera and blend the performance of the Flower Dan in Beijing opera. He excelled in playing innocent, lively and gentle roles of women, and was famous for his performances in plays such as “Jin Yu Nu”, “Hong Lou Er You”, “Hairpin Head Phoenix” and “Xun Gou Niang”.
After the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party, Xun Huisheng became the director of the Beijing Opera Research Institute and the director of the Hebei Bangzi Theatre, while Shang Xiaoyun became the director of the Shaanxi Provincial Peking Theatre.
Compared to Mei Lanfang and Cheng Yanqiu, two famous actors who did not suffer from the Cultural Revolution, Xun Huisheng and Shang Xiaoyun’s fate was much more miserable.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the Peking Opera “Hai Rui Strike” was the first to be criticized, and the two actors who played Hai Rui, Zhou Xinfang and Ma Lianliang, were the first to be rectified, and both eventually died. Even Mei Lanfang’s commemorative stamps were branded as “revisionist poison ivy” and were severely criticized.
At this time, Peking Opera had long since shifted to a stage form that expressed the image of workers, peasants and soldiers, and only eight plays were left for the 800 million people, the so-called “eight model plays”.
Since traditional Peking Opera was seen as a monument to the emperors, generals, and talented people, traditional Peking Opera was criticized, and the famous Peking Opera singers naturally could not escape this fate. The two most famous Peking Opera artists were tortured to death.
On August 23, 1966, students from the Beijing Opera School piled up a mountain of costumes and props from the Peking Opera Theatre, such as dragon robes and costumes, phoenix crowns, jade belts, and dynastic boots, in the Confucius Temple compound. Xun Huisheng was escorted to the Confucius Temple in Beijing, where he was punished along with writers such as Lao She and Xiao Jun by burning his costumes on his knees and being beaten severely with belts and sticks by the Red Guards.
When he was released, his back was bloodstained and his shirt was so torn and tattered that it stuck to the blood scabs and was very difficult to remove. At this time, for him, seizures and beatings were commonplace. Afterwards, he was transferred to Shahe Farm in the suburbs of Beijing, where he was engaged in heavy physical labor.
One day in late December 1968, Xun Huisheng could not support himself any longer and fell down in the snow and ice, unattended for four hours, and died on December 26 at the age of 68.
Compared with Xun Huisheng, Shang Xiaoyun’s fate was no better. After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, he was repeatedly beaten up and branded as a “bourgeois reactionary art authority”. According to “Shang Xiaoyun and the Rongchun Society”, “Once he was grabbed by four people and thrown onto a big truck like an object for public display. When he came back, he was kicked off the truck again. He alone had to use a cart to remove garbage from eight buildings every day.”
During this period, the Shang family was seized and only brought out dishes for three people and received a total of 36 RMB per month, which was like living a life. And it was common to be beaten up. It is said that when he was beaten, the rebels knew that he was good at kung fu and made him stand on three tables with a big, heavy placard on his chest.
In 1974, he returned to Beijing for treatment of his eye disease and had to stay with relatives. Afterwards, Shang Xiaoyun lost his eyesight and died of a heart attack on April 19, 1976 at the age of 76. Only his family and a secretary who had followed him for many years saw him through his last journey, which can be described as “walking alone, stepping into the road, walking a thousand times in vain.
Conclusion
The Peking Opera masters and famous actors who died during the Cultural Revolution were not only the second most famous Dan and the four most famous Shusheng, but also Xu Biyun, Huang Yulin, Yan Huizhu, Yang Wanong, Qiusheng Rong, Gai Yutian, Bai Yu Kun, Yang Baozhong, and so on. They were once glorious in the Republic of China, but after the establishment of the Chinese Communist regime, not only did their artistic lives end, but some even paid the price with their lives.
Sadly, so far we have seen very few confessions from the persecutors who persecuted these masters and famous actors to death. It is also true that the Chinese Communist Party, as the initiator, does not want to face this history at all, so how can those who were held hostage repent from their hearts? But what is certain is that when the day comes when there is no CCP, all the people of the country will have to reflect deeply on the history they once had.
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