On December 22, the Gaojia opera "Weitou Bride", created by the Gaojia Opera Heritage Center of Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, was brilliantly unveiled at the Fuzhou Strait Culture and Arts Center as a performance of the 8th Fujian Arts Festival. The play was selected into the 2021 National Arts Fund to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China large-scale stage drama and work theme creation funding project (general project), Fujian Provincial Stage Art Quality Project Key Repertoire.
Taking the love between Hong Feiyan, a son of southern Fujian, and Tang Yue, a young man from Taiwan, as a clue, the drama tells the legendary story of when the smoke of the "Ten Thousand Cannons Shook the Golden Gate" was gone, the cross-strait marriage and love fever that stirred in the weitou was stirred, and the people on both sides of the strait joined hands to build a homeland. Time spans the lives of three generations and a heavy history; the Golden Gate with water continues the national affection between the two sides of the strait.
When Wu Ying's granddaughter Hong Feiyan went to sea with her father when she was sixteen years old, she inquired about the news of her grandfather who was stranded in Kinmen to do small business when the two sides of the strait were suddenly separated on the eve of liberation, and became acquainted with Tang Yue, a young man from Taiwan. Ten years later, Tang Yue sailed across the sea to find his father's grave and was unexpectedly reunited with Fei Yan. The two had feelings for each other, and Fei Yan braved many difficulties to marry Taiwan. At this time, the government introduced a cross-strait small-scale trade policy, and history has changed. Feiyan brought back the construction experience of Kinmen, and the village secretary Zhou Yongping led the weitou with each passing day. This is the main plot of "The Bride with the Head".
Chen Juanjuan, the lead actor who played the role of Wu Ying in "The Bride of the Head", focused on her understanding of the role of Wu Ying in an exclusive interview with Cultural Tourism China. Chen Juanjuan believes that the key to understanding wu Ying's character lies in how she changes between sobriety and confusion — "she is also sober when she is confused." "What Wu Ying pursues is a kind of blending of cross-strait family affection and a yearning for a better life." But at the same time, she was inevitably limited by the historical background at that time, so she presented a contradictory situation between confusion and sobriety. This is also the typical meaning of the role of Wu Ying. In the process of creating and rehearsing "The Bride of the Head", Chen Juanjuan and the main creators of the whole group went to the countryside to collect style and go deep into the lives of local people. Through communicating and living with the local people in Weitou, we can experience their daily life. Combined with our own experiences and memories, we will be most familiar with the rise of daily life into life in works of art.
Wu Ying's family is the epitome of cross-strait relations in the past twenty-three years: from being separated from her husband due to the separation of the two sides of the strait, to her granddaughter marrying far away from Kinmen, truly realizing the transformation of "the wronged family into a relative". Fusing the personal legend story and the grand historical narrative into one furnace, by shaping the characters to perfectly internalize the entire era, politics, and folk value significance of the theme event, the whole play has both strong emotional expression and profound ideological nature.
When talking about the help of the National Arts Fund, the lead actor Chen Juanjuan believes that this is an affirmation and inspiration for the whole troupe. It not only affirms the unique artistic value of Gaojia opera as a performance method with local characteristics to perform modern drama, but also encourages the creation of all the main creative staff, and moves step by step towards the ultimate realm.
As one of the five major local drama genres in Fujian Province, Gaojia Opera is the largest opera genre in southern Fujian, popular in Quanzhou, Xiamen, Sanming and other southern Fujian regions, Taiwan Province and Chinese settlements in Southeast Asian countries, and was first included in the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2006. Formed in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, it evolved from an amateur drama class specializing in song jiang stories. In the process of its development, it also integrated the essence of Peking Opera, Kunqu Opera, Puppet Opera and other dramas, gradually formed its own style, moved towards a professional organizational form, and staged a series of plays. Its singing voice is mainly from the southern tone and German minor key, lively and rough coexist, the performance style has a strong local color and a strong atmosphere of life.
In 2020, the play was declared and selected into the National Arts Fund to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, large-scale stage drama and work theme creation funding project, the selected 15 plays were fiercely selected from the projects recommended by the cultural and tourism administrative departments of various provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, showing the century-old struggle of the Communist Party of China to practice its original mission, lay the foundation for the road blue wisps, and create a brilliant future through stage art forms.
In order to vividly tell the story of struggle in the glorious course of the centenary of the founding of the party, to write history for the party with heart and soul, to cast the soul for the nation, and to establish a biography for the people, the National Arts Fund joined hands with Cultural Tourism China to carry out a series of reports on the theme of celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the party, conduct unified propaganda for each fine work with pattern and weight, and present a gift to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.
(Stills provided by Quanzhou Gaojia Opera Heritage Center)
Interview: Pastoral
Text: Xinyu Wu (Intern)
Photography: Zhang Ruijie, Chen Chen
Editors: Li Xin, Zhang Ruijie
Editor-in-charge: Li Yang