On the last day of 2021, the fuzhou xinguan at No. 51 Luomashi Street, Chunshu Street, Xicheng District, Beijing, is playing drums in unison, and a special play "Lin Zexu in Beijing" is being staged. The opera adopts the form of immersive performance, condensing the story of Lin Zexu's smoking ban in the change of scenery.
Fuzhou Guild Hall New Edition "Lin Zexu in Beijing"
The new museum in Fuzhou was the guild hall that Lin Zexu took the lead in setting an example and calling on fellow villagers to donate funds to build it. More than 200 years later, the audience stands under the bronze statue of Lin Zexu and relives the fierce ambition of him standing at the moment of national peril.
After the audition, the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, the Propaganda Department of the Xicheng District Party Committee, the Beijing Performing Arts Group and other representatives held a discussion in the new museum in Fuzhou to discuss the follow-up landing arrangements of "the hall has a play" - the issues to be considered not only involve how to integrate the performance content and the cultural connotation of the guild hall, but also whether the size of the venue is appropriate and whether the transportation is convenient.
Making cultural relics come alive has always been the goal of the competent departments to revitalize and utilize cultural relics. The relics of the guild hall are inherently qualified to come alive, because each guild hall has countless stories. The guild hall is like a "revolving door" connecting the dynasty and the opposition, the temple and the rivers and lakes, the beijing master and the original hometown, and those Ming and Qing intellectuals who embarked on their careers almost all had to pass through this door.
When new creative forms bring the guild hall back to life, the story inside and outside the door will also be rejuvenated.
Patriotic bloodline
At the age of 27, Lin Zexu entered the Shuchang hall of the Hanlin Temple as a Shu Jishi. In the eighteenth year of Jiaqing (1813), he began his life as an official eunuch in the capital. At that time, the main meeting place of Fujian compatriots was in the old fuzhou museum located in the courtyard of No. 7 Hufang Road in the current Xicheng District, and with the increase in the number of people from the hometown entering Beijing, it was urgent to open a new museum. Lin Zexu, who was 30 years old at the time, actively participated in it, and he personally donated penruns and issued a call to his fellow villagers, and finally opened up a new residence for his fellow villagers to enter the courtyard and benefit more Fujian compatriots.
At that time, Lin Zexu, as a young official who had just entered the Hanlin Academy, was undoubtedly the best among his peers, so he became a key figure in promoting the establishment of the new museum in Fuzhou.
Traditional Chinese society is a structure of "unity of home and country", and the training that a person undergoes in the family and the family becomes the basis for entering the state administrative system. However, in the process of entering the "temple" from the "family", there is a general lack of discipline in the transitional place of "society", and the guild hall plays such a role.
Kyoji Juzi, who had experience in the guild hall, not only underwent the baptism of the guild hall "worship of gods, pleasures, righteous deeds, and conventions", but also received the care of officials in the dprk, which benefited a lot. Lin Zexu's diary recorded that "the transfer of Wenchang Emperor Jun, Wu Sheng, and Tianhou Shenzuo to the Fuzhou New Museum" is to facilitate the villagers to hold activities to sacrifice gods in the guild hall to meet the spiritual sustenance of the wanderers.
The guild will also bring the customs of the hometown to the capital to comfort the homesickness of the wanderer's lonely journey. Lin Zexu's diary recorded that on the fifteenth day of the first month of the twenty-first year of Jiaqing (1816), he "went to the Fuzhou Guild Hall at night to watch fireworks."
On August 6, 2020, the new museum in Beijing and Fuzhou reopened
Generations of Beijing officials who have enjoyed the convenience provided by their predecessors are all proud to do their best to contribute to the prosperity of their hometowns in the Beijing Guild Hall, which explains the reason why various localities continue to expand new sites and scale in the Beijing Guild Hall. Liang Zhangju, a Fujian official who had served as the governor of Liangjiang and a friend of Lin Zexu, wrote a number of couplets for the guild hall, one of which was "Tongren Yumen, Qunxian Bizhi; Suitable Zi Guan, Ji Shi Youxiang", which aptly describes the style of the new fuzhou museum.
Fuzhou New Museum had a museum named "Banyan Yin Hall", which means that the shade cast by the banyan tree in Fujian's hometown can shade the sun and rain, and the ze has been passed down by future generations - the culture of the guild hall, and the good deeds and righteous deeds of the townspeople and the spiritual spirit of outstanding figures can also be passed on from generation to generation.
About 80 years after Lin Zexu opened the new museum, a 20-year-old young patriot moved into the guild hall in 1895 as a son, which was one of the "six gentlemen" who dedicated himself to the Penghu Reform Law - Lin Xu. Traveling back and forth between the guild hall and the imperial court, Lin Xu, as the youngest revolutionary to die generously, re-locked the public eye on the new fuzhou museum. In the past hundred years, the guild hall has contributed two outstanding figures, and patriotism has become a distinctive label of the new museum in Fuzhou.
The imperial examination system was abolished, the Republic of China government moved south, and the cost of repairing the guild hall was lost. Like many other guild halls, the new Fuzhou hall has gradually fallen silent and declined. After the founding of New China, according to the unified policy, the property rights of local guild halls were nationalized. The clan hall was inhabited by many residents, and the continuous construction of houses changed the original layout of the clan hall. With the acceleration of the renovation of the old city and the widening of Luomashi Street, the original first courtyard as a whole and the east and west wings of the second courtyard were demolished, the architectural pattern was damaged, the wall was seriously weathered and eroded, and the scorpion tails at both ends of the Qingshui Ridge had long been lost.
Educational base
With the society's emphasis on historical architecture, Fuzhou New Museum has successively obtained the identity of Lin Xu's former residence, Lin Zexu's former residence, and Xicheng District's cultural relics protection unit.
June 3, 2019 marks the 180th anniversary of the sale of cigarettes in Humen. It was also in this year that the Fujian New Museum ushered in the opportunity to debut with a new look. In 2019, Beijing Municipality listed the Fuzhou New Museum as the Lin Zexu Anti-Drug Education Base, and the listing unit was the Beijing Municipal Anti-Narcotics Commission, which was 203 years after the establishment of the fuzhou New Museum.
This is the product of the first attempt to revitalize and utilize cultural relics buildings in Xicheng District, Beijing, and there are innovations in the operation mechanism. After the renovation of the building by the Xicheng District Cultural and Tourism Bureau, the anti-drug brigade of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau is responsible for the specific exhibition arrangement, and the People's Cultural Expo (Beijing) Operation Management Co., Ltd. undertakes the daily operation work as the entrusted operator.
Curated by the Anti-Narcotics Committee of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the professionalism of the exhibition content is ensured. The exhibition is divided into two parts: history and reality: it shows lin Zexu's life deeds and praises Lin Zexu's great anti-drug and patriotic spirit; it reviews the anti-drug process in modern China, and sorts out the remarkable achievements of the anti-drug cause in new China, especially the innovative practice of anti-drug work in the capital in recent years.
The exhibition interprets the harm of drugs in the form of popular science and disseminates knowledge on drug prevention. In the past two years, the anti-drug education base has actively carried out various forms and different scales of anti-drug publicity and education activities, and has carried out more than 1,300 public welfare lectures, received more than 900 visits to the museum by social groups and organizations, and organized more than 210 online and offline publicity and lecture activities.
Find an effective scene for the docking of ancient and modern for public welfare communication, making the fuzhou new museum the most distinctive of many Lin Zexu memorial venues in the country. The implantation of new functions has given new life to ancient heritage buildings.
In addition to opening up to the public in the form of fixed exhibitions, the anti-drug base also focuses on publicity for students in school, expanding its influence and enhancing the communication effect through "going out + bringing in" and "online + offline". For example, teachers and students from Beijing No. 43 Middle School and Central Academy of Fine Arts carried out anti-drug extracurricular practical activities at the Lin Zexu Anti-Drug Education Base, and jointly carried out online anti-drug publicity activities with Beijing No. 15 Middle School.
After training, the student volunteers used the weekend time to go to the museum to give lectures to the visitors, bringing them closer to the audience.
In view of the good effect of fuzhou new museum in anti-drug publicity, with the approval of the National Narcotics Control Commission, the National Narcotics Control Office decided to name the Beijing Linzexu Anti-Drug Education Base as the "National Anti-Drug Publicity and Education Base", and officially held a medal awarding ceremony at the end of December 2021, which is of great significance.
Travel through time
Lin Zexu entered the Hanlin Academy in 1813, and these seven years of career in Beijing were the starting point of his career. After being released as a local official for many years, Lin Zexu went to Beijing to discuss the anti-smoking issue with the Daoguang Emperor many times before the outbreak of the Opium War, ushering in the highlight of his life.
In 2020, the annual drama "Lin Zexu in Beijing" rehearsed by the Beijing Opera Troupe was officially performed, showing the true historical story of his time in Beijing before he went to Humen, Guangdong Province, in 1839 to sell cigarettes, and the whole performance lasted about two hours. In order to cooperate with the "Hall with Drama" activity launched by Beijing Municipality, the Beijing Qu Opera Troupe innovated and launched the Fuzhou Xinguan version of the opera "Lin Zexu in Beijing" based on the whole book, compressing the story into about 40 minutes, and the main characters are Lin Zexu and his wife, son and friend Gong Zizhen.
The innovation of the "Guild Hall Edition" is that the museum is used as the core scene of the story unfolding, using the transformation of the existing architectural space for immersive performances - from lin Zexu's travel experience recorded in the diary of the Hanlin Temple in that year, it can be seen that foreign officials often use the museum as a temporary residence when they enter Beijing.
The whole drama takes Lin Zexu's servant Lin Yi as the character that runs through the plot, guiding the audience to move to three different scenes outside the guild hall, the parlor to the inner house, and complete the plot transition by changing the scenery step by step. The audience and the actors are in a relatively closed space, completely unable to feel the existence of distance, as if they are thinking, acting, and making choices together with the people in the play.
Especially in the second scene, the stage background of Lin Zexu and Gong Zizhen discussing national events is the tall statue of Lin Zexu and the huge couplet of "Profiting the life and death of the country, avoiding the trend because of misfortune and happiness", which constitutes an emotional field with great appeal.
In the courtyard of the inner mansion where Lin Zexu stayed, Lin Zexu clashed with his wife and son under the theme of home and country righteousness in the play - this scene can be described as a wonderful combination of family style inheritance and integrity education.
The fuzhou new museum has just been upgraded to a national anti-drug publicity and education base, and the performance of "Lin Zexu in Beijing" in this space is opportune. Its anti-drug content and immersive performance form are skillfully combined, so that the charm of Beijing opera and the space of Fuzhou New Pavilion complement each other and complement each other. After watching the play, I looked at the contents of the exhibition hall again, whether it was text or pictures, it became particularly vivid.
Text/Zhang Baiming (Associate Professor, Institute of Cultural Innovation and Communication, Beijing Normal University)
Source/Xinhua news agency client
Editor/Ying Qiao