In the early 1950s, the World Peace Council (formerly known as the World Congress for the Defence of Peace), which advocated peace, successively selected a number of "world cultural celebrities". In China, Confucius, Li Shizhen, Qu Yuan, Guan Hanqing, Du Fu and Qi Baishi have been rated as "World Cultural Celebrities".
Among these "world cultural celebrities", most of them are more familiar with Confucius, Li Shizhen, Qu Yuan, Du Fu, and Qi Baishi, but they are more unfamiliar with Guan Hanqing. Therefore, I went to look for Guan Hanqing.
Drive along the Jingshi Expressway to Hebei Baoxiang to the south to Anguo County, and then to the south for more than ten miles, you will arrive at Wuren Village, the hometown of Guan Hanqing, a miscellaneous opera artist of the Yuan Dynasty. After walking through a dirt road, I saw a low earthen platform, which was Guan Hanqing's tomb.
Next to the tomb of Guan Hanqing, surrounded by several cypress trees, in front of the tomb stands the tombstone of "The Tomb of the Great Dramatist Guan Hanqing". It is said that during the Daping Tomb in 1958, Guan Hanqing's tomb was also removed, and the original tombstone was lost. In September of that year, Zhou Yang, Tian Han, deputy directors of the Central Propaganda Department, learned of the news and applied for state funding for restoration. Tian Han, Lao She, Ouyang Yuqian, and other well-known figures in the literary and art circles also came to cultivate soil for Guan Hanqing's tomb and commemorate the monument. In 1966, Guan Hanqing's tomb was destroyed again, and in 1986, the government again allocated funds to rebuild it, and was listed as a key cultural relics protection unit in Hebei Province.
Standing silently in front of the tomb of this sage, he pays tribute to this dramatist who has created brilliant achievements in the history of Chinese culture. I seem to feel that Guan Hanqing is still silently watching the vicissitudes of the world over the past seven hundred years in this breeze, as if he is still listening to the shallow chanting of historical inheritance.
Wuren Village next to the tomb was originally called Five People Village. Legend has it that when Liu Xiu and Wang Hao were fighting, they passed by here, and saw that there were 5 people gambling on the ground next to the village, Liu Xiu went to ask for directions, but these five people indulged in winning and losing and did not answer, Liu Xiu was angry, swung his sword and cut these people, so this place was named Wuren Village, and later renamed Wuren Village. Guan Hanqing was born in this village.
Guan Hanqing has been diligent and studious since childhood, good at poetry, and ranked first in the county examination. Later, he went to Zhongdu (present-day Zhangbei County, Hebei Province) to take the exam, but was not the first because of the examiner's obstruction. Since then, Guan Hanqing has been disheartened by Shitu and indulged in folk drama.
Soon, this talented man of Qi Prefecture (now Anguo, Baoding), who was skilled in the orchestra of silk and bamboo and familiar with the miscellaneous songs of the north and south, felt that it was difficult to display his talents in Qi Prefecture, so he resolutely went to Dadu to break in.
Most of them accepted this miscellaneous drama wizard with a generous heart, providing fertile ground for him to display his talents. In Dadu, Guan Hanqing lingered in the Goulan Tile House and had close contacts with many miscellaneous dramatists such as Wang Heqing, Yang Xianzhi, Fei Junxiang, Liang Jinzhi, etc., which also provided a broad basis for him to create more miscellaneous dramas. At this time, Guan Hanqing was like a fish in the water, and soon entered the peak of creation.
During this period, Guan Hanqing successively created sixty-three miscellaneous dramas, although only eighteen books such as "Dou E'e Grievance", "Saving the Wind and Dust", "Wangjiang Pavilion", "Baiyue Pavilion", "Single Knife Society", "Butterfly Dream", "Jade Mirror Platform", "Golden Thread Pond", "Xie Tianxiang", "Silk Dress Dream", "Wind Moon", "Western Shu Dream", "Mengliang Bone Robbery", "Lu Zailang", "Chen Mother's Godson", "Five Hou Feast", "Pei Du Also Belt", "Single Whip Snatching Hammer" and other eighteen books remain, but this book is wonderful, and this book is popular among the population. All of them are the pinnacle of yuanqu in the history of Chinese literature.
Miscellaneous opera is a collection of various types of scattered music, and the prosperity of scattered music has promoted the rich development of miscellaneous opera. Because the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty relied on "fighting the world on horseback" and paid great attention to culture, Chinese culture stagnated for a while. However, due to the fact that a large number of literati devoted themselves to the creation of folk dramas, they used colloquial folklore street dramas to make a large number of illiterate people understand and understand, which in turn promoted the wide spread of Chinese culture in a unique new way. The prosperity of most of the miscellaneous opera culture lies not only in its innovation, but also in its popularity. As the leader of the "Yujing Book Club and Yan Zhao Cairen", Guan Hanqing led the trend and contributed to it. People even called him ma zhiyuan, Bai Pu, and Zheng Guangzu as the "four masters of yuanqu".
Guan Hanqing was born in a chaotic world, and on the surface he was a gentleman, but his inner world was full of coldness and sorrow, and his evil was like a vendetta. He confessed in "Nanlu YizhiHua Disobeying the Old": "I am a steamed, uncooked, hammered, fried, and ringing as a copper pea; everyone who teaches you to drill into him is constantly hoeing, can't be cut, can't be untangled, can't be taken off, and slowly steamed thousand-layer brocade set." I was drinking Liang Yuanyue, drinking Tokyo wine, enjoying Luoyang flowers, and climbing Zhangtai willow. I can also play Go, I can stomp, I can play, I can gag, I can sing and dance, I can blow bombs, I can compose, I can chant poetry, I can play double land. You have lost my teeth, crooked my mouth, lame my legs, broken my hands, and given me all these kinds of evil symptoms, and you still refuse to rest. Then except for the king of Yama himself, the gods and ghosts come to hook, the three souls return to the earthly palace, the seven ghosts are lost, oh my God, then they do not go to the fireworks road. "You say, this Guan Hanqing is enough to be affectionate!"
Among Guan Hanqing's works, "Dou E'e Grievance" has the highest achievement. The tragic fate of the heroine in "Dou E'e Grievance" is the most shocking and typical.
In the play, Dou E is a daughter of a fallen Confucian, she lost her mother at the age of three, and at the age of seven, she was sold to Cai as a child bride because her father owed twenty-two silver usurious loans. At the age of 17, shortly after Dou'e's marriage, her husband died of illness. It is such a hard life, and there is no peace. The rogue Zhang Donkey forced her to marry, but she sternly refused. Zhang Donkey'er harbored a grudge in his heart, took advantage of Cai's illness, secretly poisoned, intending to kill Cai and force Dou'e to remarry; but in the wrong yin and yang, Zhang Donkey'er's father accidentally drank poisonous soup and fell to the ground to die; Zhang Donkey'er saw the situation, so he married Dou'e and falsely accused Dou'e of poisoning to the government. Dou E was self-righteous, and originally thought that the official government could enforce the law impartially, but she expected that the prefecture was too defensive but it was not distinguished, and she listened to and believed, and tortured Dou E to extract a confession. Guan Hanqing described in the play: "Ah! Whoever sang and raised the disease, I was not distracted by my soul, just stopped, only to wake up, and then unconscious. Thousands of tortures, ten thousand kinds of coercion, under a staff, a blood, a layer of skin. "My flesh is flying, bloodied, and who knows if I have been wronged in my belly!" Then where does my little woman's poison come from? Oh my God, how the raspberry doesn't shine in the sun! Dou'e was forced to resent dou in order not to let her mother-in-law Cai Shi also be tortured, and she originally thought that the official government would "re-investigate", who expected that the corrupt government would actually try the case in the first instance and execute Dou E.
The dark reality forced Dou E's anger, and she angrily turned to heaven and earth: "There is the sun and the moon hanging in the twilight, and there are ghosts and gods who hold the right of life and death." Heaven and earth can only distinguish between the clear and the turbid, but how to be confused is the thief Yan Yuan: the poverty for the good is shorter, and the evil one enjoys wealth and longevity. Heaven and earth are also afraid of being hard and bullying soft, but Yuan Lai is also pushing the boat along the water like this. Earth also, you do not distinguish between good and evil and what is the earth. Heavens also, you are wrong to be foolish and foolish to do heaven! Oh, only two tears. He also issued three strange vows: "It is not that I Dou'e punished such a headless wish, and the grievances of the commission are not shallow; if there are no spirits and monsters and the world," it may not be brilliant and clear." "She wants the heavens to prove her innocence, and she wants to appeal her innocence through unusual changes." She sang bitterly, "... Now it is the Three-Volt Heavenly Dao, if Dou E is wronged, after her death, three feet of ruixue descend from heaven to cover Dou E's corpse... I dou'e died unjustly, and from now on, this Chu prefecture has been in drought for three years. This thick tragic atmosphere pushed Dou E's feelings of grievance and indignation to the limit.
As an ordinary city commoner, Guan Hanqing was powerless to oppose the black and corrupt society, but he had a clear understanding of the decaying society at that time, and in order to maintain the dignity of the personality, he worked hard to write a book, hoping to awaken the conscience of the world through Dou E's grievances and arouse the indignation of the world for the unfair world. Therefore, the defiance shown in "Dou E'e Grievance" is the strongest voice of the times.
Many of Guan Hanqing's works have profoundly exposed the darkness and corruption of society, deliberately shaped the image of women at the bottom of society, described their tragic experiences, portrayed their upright, kind, and intelligent characters, and praised their strong will to resist and dared to fight against the dark forces and their heroic acts of indomitable death. It can be said that the whole passage touched the heavens and the earth, and the red dust flowed throughout, which played a key role in the development and prosperity of meta-miscellaneous opera and later opera.
For example, in the miscellaneous drama "Wangjiang Pavilion", Tan Ji'er, who is both talented and beautiful, marries Bai Shizhong. The magnate Yang Yanei took a fancy to the beautiful Tan Ji'er and wanted to marry her as a concubine, but only hindered Tan Ji'er's husband Bai Shizhong. Therefore, Yang Yanei asked the emperor to say that Bai Shizhong was "greedy for flowers and wine, and ignored public affairs." The emperor then gave Yang Ya the sword and gold medal and went to Tanzhou to capture Bai Shizhong. When Bai Shizhong got the news, he was horrified and frowned. The clever Tan Ji'er came up with a brilliant plan.
During the Mid-Autumn Festival, Tan Ji'er disguised herself as a fisherwoman to sell fish, drunk Yang Yannei and his entourage on the Wangjiang Pavilion, and stole the gold medal. After Yang Yan woke up drunk, he wanted to capture Bai Shizhong, but there was no credential. Bai Shizhong, however, showed the golden medal of the sword, saying that a fisherwoman had sued Yang Ya for insulting her. At this time, Li Bingzhong, the capital of Hunan Province, investigated the matter and played it in the imperial court, and Yang Yanei was finally punished.
"Wangjiang Pavilion" is actually a reflection of Guan Hanqing's civic thoughts. In the society at that time, a commoner could not confront the barbaric government, so Guan Hanqing let the people in the play defeat evil with wisdom and make the evildoers obedient in the conversation and laughter, so that they exploded a hot spark of life in the suffocating living space, radiated their potential to defend themselves and save the weak, praised the extraordinary of the ordinary, and publicized the confidence and strength of the weak to defeat the evil forces.
Yuan miscellaneous drama "Wangjiang Pavilion" stamps
In "Butterfly Dream", Guan Hanqing wrote that the imperial relative Ge Biao killed Wang Laohan for no reason, and the Wang brothers Jin He, Tie He, and Shi He killed Ge Biao in order to avenge their father, so they were arrested and imprisoned. When Bao Zheng retried the case, the three sons competed to confess their sins and were willing to die. Knowing that the three brothers had been wronged, Bao Zheng only wanted one person to make up for it. But when he wanted to convict Jin He and Tie He, Wang Laohan's wife Wang's wife let his young son Shi He take the blame. Bao Zheng suspected that Shi was not his own and was very angry. During the trial of the case, Bao Zheng fell into a dream, and in the dream, he saw three butterflies falling into the cobwebs, and another large butterfly flew to rescue the second butterfly but ignored the young butterflies. After Bao Zheng woke up, after investigation, it was found that Jin He and Tie He were born to Wang Laohan's ex-wife, and in order to protect these two children, Wang's wife endured the pain of sacrificing her own son Shi He. Bao Zheng was greatly moved, and secretly used another death row prisoner to pay for his life and release all three sons. This artistic technique of contrasting dreams with real life enriches the plot and adds to the taste of watching, so these plays are still popular.
Meta-drama "Butterfly Dream" stamp
In the Yuan Dynasty in which Guan Hanqing lived, political corruption, social unrest, class contradictions and ethnic contradictions were prominent, and the people struggled in the depths of the water. His plays profoundly reproduce the social reality, full of a strong atmosphere of the times, both a ruthless exposure of the darkness of the officialdom and a passionate praise of the people's resistance struggle.
Guan Hanqing returned to his hometown in his later years and began to devote himself to writing "The Tale of the West Chamber". "The Tale of the West Chamber" depicts the story of Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying, a pair of lovers who eventually became dependents. Zhang and Cui fell in love at first sight, passed on the affection from the eyebrows, played the piano and delivered books, and then quickly developed into a moonlit night meeting with the help of the Red Lady, privately engaged for life, and then the East Window Incident occurred, twists and turns, and finally a happy ending. This story celebrates love and freedom, but also love and color.
Some people will wonder, "The Tale of the West Chamber" was not written by Wang Shifu? How could it be Guan Hanqing? In fact, the drama "The Tale of the West Chamber" has always had a dispute between "Wang Zuo Guan Continuation" or "Guan Zuo Wang Continuation", which is still unclear. Tracing back to the roots, as early as the Tang Dynasty, the poet Yuan Shu had written the "Biography of Yingying" (also known as "Huizhen Ji") and circulated it to the world, with far-reaching influence. In the Jin Dynasty, Dong Xieyuan wrote the "Tune of the Palaces of the West Chamber"; in the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Shifu wrote the "Cui Yingying Waiting for the Moon in the West Chamber".
Guan Hanqing had received a copy of "Strings and Strings and West Chambers" in his early years, and if he had obtained the most precious treasure, he was determined to rewrite the "Records of the West Chamber". After Guan Hanqing returned to his hometown of Wuren Village, he had no distractions and buried his head in rewriting "West Chamber". In writing, he imagined and conceived wholeheartedly, so that he forgot to sleep and eat, his body gradually declined, and finally, the blood that coughed out sprayed all over the walls.
It is said that when Guan Hanqing wrote a sad lyric "Mandarin Duck Fire" in one breath: "The willow silk is long and affectionate, the sound of the water is like a person whimpering, the oblique moon is a residual lamp, and the half-light is not extinguished." Mo Dao is the old hatred of the thread, the new melancholy knot. Don't hate and leave the sorrow, it is difficult to vent from the heart. In addition to the pen and paper substitute mouthpiece, a thousand kinds of acacia to whom to say. Then he suddenly spewed blood from his mouth and went west.
In the following hundreds of years, due to feudal orthodoxy, the literary status of the art of miscellaneous opera was rejected, resulting in Guan Hanqing's glory almost buried. In fact, the continuation of the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation, the role of writing books is very large, but for the vast majority of ordinary people who are illiterate or illiterate, the drama of the Yuan Dynasty plays the greatest role in carrying forward the past and the future. For hundreds of years, the moral concepts of countless people, the historical common sense of many people, and the humanistic ideas of many people have almost all been derived from drama.
Unfortunately, it was not until after the founding of New China that Guan Hanqing, the first Chinese drama master, regained his rightful position, and some people once compared him to Shakespeare in China. In 1958, the World Peace Congress also listed him as a "world cultural celebrity".
Although Guan Hanqing is a folk dramatist, his cultural accomplishment is extremely profound, and he has created many high-quality works. In my spare time, I love to read Guan Hanqing's small orders and scattered songs, and I feel that the words are pearls, the sentences are wonderful, and their wonderful background is no less than the poetry of the Tang and Song Dynasties. For example, Guan Hanqing wrote in "Double Tone: Intoxicating the East Wind": "The sky is only in the south and the north, and the moon lacks flowers and flies in a flash." Holding the cup in his hand, his eyes closed with tears. Just take care of the sound, the pain is so that people are reluctant to go, and the future of the good one is long. For example, he wrote in "Nanlu Four Pieces of Jade": "Act appropriately, sit in peace, drink and sing when you are hungry, and lie down to Sha Yin when you are sleepy." The sun and the moon are long, the heavens and the earth are wide, and the leisure is happy! ”
"Old wine thrown, new drunk, old tile basin side laughing hehe, gongshan monks and monks idle chanting and." He's out with a pair of chickens, I'm out with a goose, idle! ”
"Yi Ma closes, the heart ape locks, jumps out of the red dust evil storm, who is shocked by the noon dream of huaiyin? Leave the Lee Fame Field, drill into the comfort nest, and be idle! ”
"South acre farming, east mountain lying down, the world has a lot of human experience, idle will think about the past." He is the wise, and I am the fool, what is the struggle? In just a few dozen words, it tells the secluded leisure and life perception, which is almost to the extreme, and can best represent the yuanqu style.
However, I always feel that our concern for Guan Hanqing is still a little indifferent. There are many memorial sites for cultural celebrities in Beijing, but there is no "world cultural celebrity" Guan Hanqing. To carry forward Chinese culture, we must not miss Guan Hanqing. The Yuandadu culture is an important deposition of Beijing's history and culture, and its dazzling brilliance is the glory created by Guan Hanqing. Such a thick cultural deposit, where is the reason not to dig deeper, and how can it be snubbed?
Facing this lonely Tomb of Guan Hanqing, I have mixed feelings.