Zeng Xiaomin, | asked: How can Chinese opera cross the cultural divide and show the "real China"?

Zeng Xiaomin: How does Chinese opera cross the cultural divide and show the "real China"?

China News Service, Guangzhou, April 9 Title: Zeng Xiaomin: How can Chinese opera cross the cultural divide and show the "real China"?

China News Service reporter Cheng Jingwei

Chinese opera is a local Chinese art and an important carrier of Chinese culture, condensing the spirit of Chinese aesthetics and being recognized as a typical representative of Recognizable Chinese culture and art.

How to make Chinese opera cross the cultural divide and let overseas audiences move from cultural curiosity to appreciation and recognition, so as to promote exchanges and enhance understanding? Zeng Xiaomin, a famous Cantonese opera performance artist, winner of the "Plum Blossom Award" and "Wenhua Performance Award" of Chinese drama, and president of Guangdong Cantonese Opera, said in an exclusive interview with China News Agency's "East and West Question" recently that by promoting the integration of Chinese opera and film and other media, strengthening the creation of repertoire with international vision and international expression, and building a new media platform for opera, the cross-cultural dissemination of Chinese opera can be realized, and the world can know and understand the real and lovely China from the small incision of art.

The interview transcript is summarized below:

China News Service: What role can Chinese opera play in cross-cultural exchange and dissemination?

Zeng Xiaomin: What is national is the world. Chinese opera is rooted in life, and it is higher than life in terms of form of expression. Its lyrics are beautiful and have strong resonance ability, and it is one of the communication carriers that can best represent Chinese aesthetics and cultural temperament.

Chinese opera can break through the limitations of time, space and language and move people with emotion. Because of its Chinese characteristics and oriental aesthetics, it is easy to attract foreign people, and then be accepted, liked, and respected, and tell the story of exporting China in a unique way.

History has also proved that Chinese opera is an effective carrier of cross-cultural communication and dissemination. As an important opera genre in China, Cantonese opera has a history of more than 400 years, and has traveled across the ocean to exotic regions for more than 100 years. In 1852, Cantonese opera went abroad and performed in San Francisco, usa, opening a window for the world to understand traditional Chinese culture and becoming one of the typical representatives of Chinese opera overseas.

In 1930, Mr. Mei Lanfang, a master of Peking Opera, visited the United States to perform, which once again aroused the world's attention to Chinese opera. In particular, Kunqu opera, Cantonese opera and Peking opera have been successively selected into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which further reflects the world value of Chinese culture and art with distinct national characteristics represented by opera.

Mei Lanfang, "Noble Concubine Drunk"

China News Service: With the changes of the times, Chinese opera is facing difficulties such as market shrinkage. Where is the direction for Cantonese opera to break through the development dilemma and expand its influence at home and abroad?

Zeng Xiaomin: The future of Chinese opera lies in Shouzheng innovation. In recent years, traditional Chinese opera has frequently integrated across borders to "go out of the circle", attracting the attention and support of more young people at home and even internationally. Taking Cantonese opera as an example, the Cantonese opera film "White Snake Legend and Love", which I starred in, with the characteristics of national style and oriental aesthetics, broke the box office record of Chinese opera films less than 20 days after its release, and was called a new milestone in Chinese opera films, won a number of domestic and foreign film awards, and won the favor of audiences at home and abroad.

The reason is that when "The Legend of the White Snake" was made into a movie, it used the means and styles of many of the latest Western film technologies, such as photography, art, props, music, special effects, etc., to present the most authentic traditional oriental aesthetics, and made useful explorations in the delicate balance between guarding the Cantonese opera tradition and highlighting the style of the times.

While "The Legend of the White Snake" has been widely affirmed in China, it has explored overseas communication channels along the way. At the 2019 China (Guangdong) Film Europe Screening Event, the main creative team took the works to Venice and Milan in Italy, Athens in Greece, and Madrid in Spain to meet the audience, and also redesigned the poster and translated the English subtitles according to the aesthetic habits of American audiences. The film has been highly praised by European and American film critics such as Forbes film critic Mark Hughes, American sound/visual technology master and musician and critic Scott Wilkinson.

Cantonese opera movie "White Snake Romance"

In addition, Guangdong Cantonese Theatre has launched a Cantonese opera "Red Turban" in recent years, whose performance not only combines the traditional singing style and body of traditional Cantonese opera, but also integrates different artistic elements such as modern dance and rock rap, so that audiences at home and abroad have a more modern and diversified sensory experience while enjoying the traditional art performance of Cantonese opera.

Since the 1920s, more than 60,000 women from Sanshui, Guangdong Province, have drifted away to participate in the construction of Singapore, and most of them will wear red turbans to work on construction sites, hence the name "red turbans". The Singapore government established a museum for them, issued stamps and wrote them into textbooks to pay tribute and recognition to them at all levels of national level.

Therefore, the Cantonese opera "Red Turban", which was created by this group, not only shows the regional group of Lingnan women struggling overseas, nor is it only the representative of the cultural group that Chinese overseas development, but also a typical event of the Chinese nation being internationally respected for national virtues in the era of poverty and weakness and humiliation, and a rare attempt to show China's image, Chinese voice and Chinese spirit in historical reality and world vision. This is not only a repertoire that represents the spirit of the Chinese nation but also can be integrated into the world stage, and it is precisely the cultural business card of opera art that goes abroad.

Cantonese opera "Red Turban". Photo by Xu Jianmei, China News Service

China News Service: To promote Chinese opera to better tell the story of "real China", what aspects can we start from at present?

Zeng Xiaomin: At present, under the circumstance of economic strength growth and a complex international public opinion and cultural environment, we should further support outstanding Chinese opera to go abroad and go to the world, tell Chinese stories well, build cultural self-confidence in the new era, and establish an overseas image of "cultural China".

Tsang (right) collaborates with Hong Kong singer Zhang Weijian. Photo by Xue Caihuan, China News Service

Moreover, in the context of economic integration and global epidemics, people around the world are more eager to understand each other's lives and look forward to eliminating misunderstandings. Chinese opera, including Cantonese opera, can play a greater role in communication and communication. I believe that efforts can be made in three areas:

First of all, promote the establishment of a digital library of Chinese drama creation, encourage more screenwriters to extract themes and extract themes from the needs of the times, the changes in China, and the people's calls, and establish a script library for key theater groups to create and rehearse; support experts and scholars with script creation capabilities, stage creativity realization capabilities, and international vision transformation capabilities to provide stable cooperation for professional theater groups; and form the compilation and summary of contemporary opera dramas with the help of digital media and digital technology.

Secondly, the establishment of a special fund for the creation and dissemination of Chinese opera works, the "creation, performance, promotion" of key opera works for a one-stop support policy, the establishment of expert groups to follow up the guidance, according to local conditions to develop packaging, publicity, domestic and foreign promotion and other operational programs, especially to promote the continuous promotion and dissemination of Chinese opera overseas; according to the development path of film, there have been such precedents in various countries, that is, some themes of the film at first in the country is not known, but it shines internationally.

In addition, we will jointly build new media opera channels, promote the seamless link between traditional mainstream media opera channels and new media resources, promote new media communication platforms to increase cooperation with the opera community, accelerate the progress of cooperation, and focus on the traffic diversion of key opera projects to enhance the attention of domestic and foreign audiences. (End)

Respondent Profiles:

Cantonese opera name Dan Zeng Xiaomin. Correspondent Xue Caihuan photographed Zeng Xiaomin, a national first-class actor, the winner of the Wenhua Performance Award, the Chinese Drama Plum Blossom Award, the Shanghai Magnolia Drama Performing Arts Award "Protagonist Award", and the inheritor of the representative project of intangible cultural heritage in Guangdong Province. He is currently the Secretary of the Party Committee and President of Guangdong Cantonese Theatre, a representative of the 13th National People's Congress, the Vice Chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Women's Federation, and the Vice Chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Drama Association. Won the titles of 2019 Cultural Master and "Four Batches" Talents of the Central Propaganda Department, and "Model Worker of Guangdong Province" in 2020.