Premiere of "100 Years of Cantonese Rhyme": The charm and echo of 100 years of Cantonese songs

On March 19, the Cantonese opera humanistic documentary "100 Years of Cantonese Rhyme" premiered on the Agricultural and Rural Channel of the Central Radio and Television Station (CCTV-17) and was broadcast live on CCTV. This is the first documentary to tell the world about the development of Cantonese opera in Pingzhou, Guicheng.

Cantonese opera has always been known as the "red bean of the southern country", and as early as October 2009, Cantonese opera has been included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Of Humanity. Through the singing and interpretation of generations of Cantonese opera people at home and abroad, Cantonese opera has evolved from a small range of local dramas to the global stage, and has blossomed around the world. As one of the traditional Chinese drama genres, Cantonese opera has a strong vitality due to its art form with local characteristics and its inclusive and open spirit.

The creative team of "100 Years of Cantonese Rhymes" lasted four years, from Pingzhou, Foshan, China, the hometown of Cantonese opera, to San Francisco in the United States, tracing the road traveled by generations of Cantonese opera people over the past hundred years to make this art flourish and continuously promote it.

Cantonese opera has a strong vitality due to its local art form and inclusive and open spirit. - Visual China

From Pingzhou

Foshan is the birthplace of Cantonese opera, since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the activity center of Guangdong opera was first formed in Foshan, which is also the hometown of many Cantonese opera celebrities later. As early as the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty (1465-1487), folk opera groups such as Kunban, Huiban, and Hunan Opera were prevalent. Many local children participated in the singing, and gradually changed the language from Zhongzhou rhyme to Cantonese, and Cantonese opera sprouted. The "nine voices and six tones" of Cantonese itself also adds more beautiful charm to Cantonese opera. During the Jiajing period (1522-1566), the earliest opera guild hall in the Cantonese opera industry, the Qionghua Guild Hall, was officially established, symbolizing the formal formation of Cantonese opera. The narrative of "One Hundred Years of Cantonese Rhyme" begins at the Qionghua Hall in Foshan and slowly unfolds.

In the following three hundred years, the development of Cantonese opera was relatively slow for various reasons and did not reach a scale. Until the sixth year of the Republic of China (1917), Chen Fusan (known as "Jin Shanhe" in cantonese opera circles) and two villagers in Nanhai Pingzhou formally established the Lingnan Opera "Le Qunying" boy class in an ancestral hall in Jiangbiao Village, recruiting local underage teenagers to systematically learn Cantonese opera, creating a historical precedent for the rural areas of the Pearl River Delta to open a child class. In the past, folk learning and art was generally passed down from family or from teacher, but the "Pingzhou Science Class" pioneered by Chen Fusan pioneered a centralized, systematic and comprehensive teaching model, ten years earlier than the "Drama Cultivation Institute" run by Guangdong Bahe Guild Hall. Because of this, for more than a hundred years since then, stories about Cantonese opera have always been unable to avoid this place in Pingzhou.

What Chen Fusan did not expect at that time was that the "Le Qunying" boy class had developed into a modern "cradle of Cantonese opera", cultivating Cantonese opera celebrities such as the famous Cantonese opera male Hua Dan Lin Chaoqun. Therefore, Chen Fusan is also known as the "father of pingzhou celebrities".

At the beginning of the 20th century, while the film industry was booming rapidly, Cantonese opera also completed the transformation from traditional to modern, from rural to urban. In the 1940s, the development of Cantonese opera and the flourishing development of the "Le Qun Ying" tong zi class were interrupted by war. Subsequently, some Cantonese opera masters began to promote Cantonese opera overseas.

To this day, there are still dozens of "private partnership bureaus" (that is, spontaneously formed folk Cantonese opera clubs) in the Pingzhou area, and local Cantonese opera lovers, in addition to singing traditional songs, also write and direct themselves, constantly exploring the skills and techniques of accompaniment and singing to enrich the performance content and programs of Cantonese opera (quyi). They took the streets and alleys as the stage, continued to grow and develop, and finally formed the Foshan Guicheng Quyi Association, which twisted the original large and small, independently operated private partnership bureaus into a force to promote the upward improvement of cantonese opera.

Make a name for yourself overseas

In the documentary, the performance screen of the 100th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the "Le Qunying" kindergarten is repeatedly interlaced with the historical picture of the beginning of the nursery class more than 100 years ago, and the Cantonese opera masters who participated in the celebration on the stage all have a deep relationship with the children's class a hundred years ago.

In 1965, the Cantonese song "Spring Dawn on the East Lake" that praised the new China quickly became popular in Guangdong and became a household name for a time. The singer of the song is lin xiaoqun, the eldest daughter of Lin Chaoqun, a famous male Hua Dan and one of the first students of the "Le Qunying" boy class in Pingzhou.

Lin Xiaoqun has loved Cantonese opera since childhood, entered the industry at the age of 13, and began to serve as the zhengyin Dan of the big theater troupe in 1958, and his representative works include "Liu Yi Biography", "Peony Pavilion", "Daiyu Guitian", "Jade Hairpin", etc., and has several generations of fans in the Cantonese crowd at home and abroad. Lin Xiaoqun's husband, Bai Chaohong, was also born into a Cantonese opera family, and his father was Chen Fusan, who founded the "Le Qunying" boy class in Pingzhou. Bai Chaohong, formerly known as Chen Yongxi, entered the industry at the age of 16 and took the stage name "Bai Chaohong", and then followed his master to tour around, and has been famous since the 1950s, starring in "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", "Peach Blossom Fan", "Lü Bu and the Sable Cicada", "Baolian Lantern" and so on. Even at the age of 96, Bai Chaohong is still active on the stage, the sword is not old, and the style is still there.

Lin Xiaoqun and Bai Chaohong are known as the "immortal lovers" in the opera industry, and the two love, know and keep each other because of Cantonese opera. After 80 years of artistic life, they are not only witnesses of the changes of Cantonese opera over the past century, but also witnesses. The documentary takes the two people's practice in their youth, taking the stage, becoming popular, crossing the ocean, and teaching in a foreign country as the main line, and connects the development process of Pingzhou Cantonese opera in the past hundred years.

In the 1990s, the couple settled with their son in San Francisco. As the documentary says, "Where there is seawater, there are Chinese, and where there are Chinese, there is Cantonese opera." "Whether in Southeast Asia, Oceania, Europe or the Americas, Cantonese opera has become the nostalgia of generations of overseas Chinese in the last century. Lin Xiaoqun and Bai Chaohong never shelved their love for Cantonese opera even when they arrived in San Francisco on the other side of the ocean, and the two set up a Cantonese opera class in their own home, gathering a group of Cantonese opera lovers in San Francisco and having countless apprentices. A mirror in the garage, a carpet, for them, is a stage.

The documentary "100 Years of Cantonese Rhymes" starts from Pingzhou, the "hometown of Cantonese opera", as far as San Francisco, and through the perspective of Lin Xiaoqun, Bai Chaohong and other Famous Cantonese opera masters, it presents a magnificent historical picture of Cantonese opera, allowing us to glimpse the inheritance, development and dissemination of Cantonese opera at home and abroad today. Bai Chaohong proudly said to the camera, "Later, all the people in San Francisco who can perform and sing at the beginning are our students." ”

Cantonese opera heritage

More than 100 years ago, the Cantonese opera seeds sown by the Pingzhou "Le Qunying" tongzi class have now blossomed and flourished at home and abroad, and the former art children have fled from Pingzhou and have grown and multiplied into a family of opera that has been passed down for generations, and the descendants of the tongzi class have footprints all over the world, and have also profoundly affected the descendants of their hometown Of Pingzhou. In 2016, after living in the United States for thirty years, Lin Xiaoqun and Bai Chaohong decided to take overseas disciples back to their hometown of Pingzhou to find their roots. For decades, although Lin Xiaoqun has mainly carried out behind-the-scenes teaching work overseas, the students she has taught have been active in various large and small Cantonese opera stages at home and abroad in recent decades. To this end, "One Hundred Years of Cantonese Rhyme" also interviewed a group of new generation interpreters and inheritors of Pingzhou Cantonese opera who regard Lin Xiaoqun and Bai Chaohong as idols, born and raised in Si, and many of them also followed the footsteps of Lin and Bai, took over the mantle of their predecessors, and became educators and disseminators of Cantonese opera in the new era.

In recent years, Guicheng, Foshan, where Pingzhou is located, has vigorously promoted "Cantonese opera into the campus" to popularize and educate young people about Cantonese opera, so that they can enhance their cultural self-confidence and pride. In the documentary, we can see that Guicheng actively carries out the activities of opera into the grassroots, Cantonese opera art festivals, and folk Cantonese opera private partnership bureaus, promoting the inheritance and dissemination of Cantonese opera art, benefiting the people, and integrating Cantonese opera into the driving force of urban development with innovative means, so that traditional culture can truly rejuvenate and vitality in the new era.

On the occasion of the centenary of the opening of the Pingzhou "Le Qunying" kindergarten class, the Guicheng Cantonese Opera Arts Festival drama opened again. Old and new faces are intertwined on and off the stage, as if they were recreated yesterday. Lin Xiaoqun, Bai Chaohong and other old artists sat under the stage, their affectionate eyes looked at the stage, and they did not know whether they also saw what they and even their parents looked like when they were young.