Author: Elegant Beard (Wu Yonggang-Max)
On July 11th and 12th, two consecutive days of evening, the long-established Xinxing Park on Henan Street in Jilin City held the "Xiliancheng Grand Stage Peking Opera Performance" on the newly renovated traditional drama stage on the third floor of the store. Beautiful and passionate drum music and singing, for a time to fill the old streets empty summer heat and tiredness dissipated.
At 18:30, the curtain of the performance was slowly opened, and a traditional folk music played by the "Spring Song" resounded throughout the hall, causing the audience upstairs, downstairs and the elegant seat to focus on the stage.
After careful preparation, Xiliancheng Peking Opera Stage presented a total of six Peking Opera repertoire for this performance. Perhaps for the corresponding centenary celebration of the founding of the Communist Party of China, or perhaps more familiar to the public, the first shot of the performance chose the famous section of the modern Peking Opera "Wise Tiger Mountain" "We Are the Children and Soldiers of Workers and Peasants". This is the "two yellow" singing section in which Shao Jianbo led the troops into the deep mountains to mobilize the masses to suppress the bandits, and the lyrics have undergone thousands of hammers and hundreds of tempers in a special era, which are concise and concise, and there is no lack of sincerity and delicacy, that is, they have narrowed the distance with the masses of the people and expressed our party's determination to suppress the bandits. The performers sang in a lively voice, sonorous and powerful, never dragging mud and water, and the confident, firm and upright atmosphere was displayed at a glance:
We are the sons and daughters of workers and peasants who have come to the mountains
It is necessary to eliminate the reactionaries and change the land and change the heavens
For decades, there has been a revolutionary turn from north to south
Chairman Mao of the Communist Party guides us forward
A red star is worn on the head
The revolutionary red flag is hung on both sides
The red flag refers to the dark clouds scattered
The people of the Liberated Areas fell to the landlord and turned their bodies upside down
The people's army shares the people's hardships
I came here to sweep away the Weihu Mountain...
Photo by Zhang Haichuan
The other two modern Peking operas presented on the same stage, "Military and Civilian Fish Water Conditions" and "Wisdom Fighting", are selected from "Sha Jiabang". In the special era, Peking Opera repertoire such as "Wise Tiger Mountain", "Red Lantern Record", and "Shajiabang" has undergone rigorous deliberation and become a classic Peking Opera performance "model", and its influence among the people can be described as unprecedented. Although modern Peking Opera is a "fashion play" created by many Peking Opera masters after the liberation of the traditional Peking Opera reform, its themes, costumes, props, and accompaniments have changed a lot compared to tradition, but the singing voice of modern Peking Opera still maintains the traditional charm, and the modern definition does not fully negate tradition. The three pieces of traditional Peking Opera presented on the same stage, whether it is Ma Pai's "Huaihe Camp", or Mei Pai's "Guifei Drunk", or even "Su Sanqi Xie", even today, they also have unparalleled artistic appeal among the general public.
In the northeast region, traditional dramas such as Peking Opera, Commentary, and Duo Ren have always been competing with each other. Among them, the spread and popularization of Peking Opera in Jilin City is particularly leading, and Jilin City is also known as the "Second Hometown of Peking Opera". The origin of this praise is related to the giant merchant Niu Zihou in Jilin at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic. In 1904, Niu Zihou and Ye Chunshan founded the Peking Opera Xilian Cheng class in Beijing, which gradually formalized, systematized and scientificized the cultivation of Chinese Peking Opera artistic talents. This class has trained a large number of Peking Opera artistic talents, Mei Lanfang, Zhou Xinfang and a number of Peking Opera masters are from the "Xilian Chengshe", and these Peking Opera celebrities have always regarded Jilin City as an important performance place.
Speaking of Niu Zihou, the top rich man in the north, it is quite legendary in the history of Jilin City, and to this day, his influence in economic, cultural, philanthropic and other aspects should not be underestimated. Various anecdotes related to him have also been widely circulated among the people, among which a special friendship between Niu Zihou and Xinxingyuan turned out to be the reason why Xinxingyuan took the lead in ringing the gong and drum of folk Peking Opera performance in the summer of 2021 a hundred years later.
During the reign of the Qing Dynasty, a man named Dong Shichang came to the Songhua River in Jilin City. To make a living, he set up a small dumpling stall selling snacks. Don't look at the small profits, but Dong Shichang is a person with good intentions, and often does not take anything from the displaced people who come to eat. Over time, this small dumpling stall was famous for its unique dumpling flavor and unusual kindness, and sometimes dignitaries and dignitaries came to eat with the displaced people, becoming a scene on the shore of the mighty Songjiang River. Among the many diners, there is niu Zihou, who is called "the great benevolent man of cattle" by the people of Jilin Province.
After becoming more and more familiar, in the nineteenth year of Qing Guangxu (1893 AD), under the love of Niu Zihou, the small dumpling stall was renamed "Dongjia Restaurant" and opened in Henan Street, Jilin Province. Seeing that the business was booming, in 1905, NiuZi was satisfied, and gladly named the "Dongjia Restaurant" and personally inscribed a plaque "Xinxing Garden" - meaning "the revitalization of the round cage steamed dumpling technology, the rejuvenation of the new life, the appearance of the homeland". In the years since, despite the ups and downs, the operators of Xinxing Park have always been obsessed with the friendship of Niu Zihou who helped set up the store and named the plaque.
In recent years, feeling that the development of the times has made traditional culture increasingly marginalized, as the operator of Jilin Long-established Xinxing Park, he sometimes has a sense of responsibility and has been planning to do something for the revitalization of traditional culture in his hometown. Considering that the age structure of diners and the diversity of cultural levels in Xinxing Park are more conducive to the dissemination and popularization of traditional culture, combined with the special origin of Xinxing Garden and the historical figure Niu Zihou, after careful planning, the operators of Xinxing Park decided to change the third floor of the Main Store of Henan Street into a Peking Opera stage. With the support of like-minded friends from all walks of life, Jilin Xiliancheng Peking Opera Grand Stage was established, and in the summer of 2021, the gong and drum of the performance were sounded!
On the day of the first performance, in front of the long-established Xinxing Park Grand Stage, the upstairs, downstairs and private rooms were full. The melodious singing attracted waves of other floor diners, who stopped to stand and admire this beautiful spiritual food, but ignored the mouth-watering taste of the old dumplings and steamed dumplings. The singing and playing of the performers on the stage makes the climax of the drama plot continue, and the applause, applause, and clicks of the audience under the stage are also a wave of pressure...
In fact, in Jilin City, there are many people who are determined to promote traditional culture, and various attempts and efforts have long been surging in the folk undercurrent. Therefore, as a practitioner of the "cultural self-confidence" of the Party Central Committee, the Beijing opera gong and drum sounded by the operators of the century-old Xinxing Park on the streets of Henan Is not a round of war drums for the spontaneous revival of traditional culture in Jilin City! It is believed that in the near future, after the institutionalization of the stage performance of Xiliancheng Peking Opera, as a cultural aircraft carrier, it will definitely drive the comprehensive revival of traditional music and arts such as storytelling, drum books, and cross-talk in Jilin City, so that the people of Jilin City will have more opportunities to appreciate the endless charm of traditional music and art, so that those traditional music arts will regain their youth.
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In this article, Mr. Zhang Haichuan authorized the use of photographic works and refused to use them
Special thanks to Mr. Zhang Haichuan for his support and encouragement in writing this article!