The title of "Ancestor of a Hundred Operas" symbolizes the lofty status of Kunqu opera in the territory of Chinese opera with more than 300 drama genres. The formation of its position as "ally lord" can often be traced back to a unique cultural identity: Kunqu opera is almost the only one of all drama genres that has a Ya cultural tradition. The exquisite, delicate and subtle aesthetic positioning is naturally affirmed and respected by the literati doctors who dominate the cultural evaluation system. But behind this affirmation and admiration there is a strange phenomenon: the artists and celebrities engaged in the Kunqu profession have not improved the image of being ugly and insulted for thousands of years because of this admiration. As the true carrier of Kunqu culture, although they have not disappeared on the stage of reality, they are missing in the cultural symbol system.
There is a fatal flaw in the traditional opera culture system: performance culture has long been at the weakest and lowest end of the evaluation system. Many of the contents of performance culture, such as actors, theaters, audiences, and repertoire, are often the target of authoritarian attacks by political forces. But we will not only see this discriminatory and arrogant attitude, because a large number of historical sources prove to us that the attitude of successive rulers to the authenticity of the opera performance culture has often been contradictory—they have both suppressed and co-opted, feeling both vulgar and interesting. Especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties, this contradiction was particularly prominent because of the high development of opera performance culture. A large number of literati and scholars could not suppress their strong interest in this culture, but also tried their best to protect their identity. Why were literati strongly attracted to it while basically acknowledging its vulgarity? Since this is something that needs to be more or less risky, what kind of psychological compensation can be brought about by the experience? Obviously, this embodies the unique meaning of "acting" as a human act of performance. The recreational and social functions of "playing" are well known, and it also plays an important role in the history of the human spirit and personality, which is demonstrated by a large number of fieldwork materials in the research works of many anthropologists. As far as this article is concerned, different from the traditional poetry composition, talking about stories and playing life may have a special role in dissolving the minds of literati who have long been asking politics under the centralized system.
Having such a motivation does not mean that the contradiction is resolved. In fact, since the beginning of yuan miscellaneous opera, literati have been looking for a way to participate in opera culture that can be accepted by mainstream culture, but due to the loss of the integrity of the literati in the Yuan Dynasty and the Han culture caused by the special era, this search is not urgent. Entering the Ming Dynasty is different, on the one hand, it is a strong theoretical background and Confucian tradition, on the other hand, the integration of opera heritage between the north and the south and the high maturity of vocal cavity dramas, how the literati resolve the opposing factors in it, whether it is for collective positioning or individual life, it is of great significance.
The key to resolving this contradiction in cultural history is that the literati individually elevate the value of "music (including words and music)" from the opera as a whole, and elevate it above all other elements in the whole. This process can be called "the independence of the curve". It seems to announce to the world that the "independent" song has the identity of a successor to the traditional context (poetry, words, texts). "Qu" is no longer the flow of "drama", but has become the inheritance of "Wen". Therefore, those "scattered songs" that do not need to pay attention to playing, and "cappellas" that do not need professional performances have quickly become active, which can be widely consulted in the historical notes of the lives of the literati of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The literati's collection and their "Kun Singing" activities do have a unique place in the history of Kunqu opera. From the Ming and Qing dynasties to the Republic of China, the most vital component of kunqu history is undoubtedly the first to promote the qu society. Qushe has gradually become the "most classic way of existence" of Kunqu opera.
Dramatic art is a comprehensive art, it is often in the literature, art, music, dance and other art forms mature, integration and synthesis of development, so in the history of art, it matured later. Chinese opera began in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and it is generally believed that it reached its first mature heyday in the Yuan Dynasty. However, we have to admit that traditional culture has always maintained a kind of "separation" between "qu" and "drama", which not only objectively delays the process of the maturity of Chinese opera, but also even in the Yuan Dynasty, when the form of opera has entered a mature period, it is still difficult to eliminate, and as the drama ecology continues to evolve and grow.
Wang Jide of the Ming Dynasty wrote in his "Miscellaneous Treatises on QuLu":
The Yuanren dramas are all good for the music, while Bai is obscene and slangy, not like the kiss of the literati. Gai yu was taught by the musicians at that time to write a frame of confession, but ordered the lyricist to compose music, which is called "filling words". Written by the musicians, the scholars are ashamed to change, the stories are more paradoxical, and the words are more incomprehensible. ("The Fourth Integration of Chinese Classical Opera Treatises", China Drama Publishing House, 1959 edition)
It can be seen that the literati fill in the words according to the title of the song, the artists compose the music and the music, and the placement of Binbai and Kefan action designs, which is an important phenomenon in the creation of brilliant meta-miscellaneous dramas. It is precisely because of this alienation of creation that on the one hand, "in terms of articles, it is better enough to be a generation of literature" and "words are picked up and handsome" (Wang Guowei), on the other hand, "the clumsiness of Guan Mu", "the humbleness of thought", and "the contradiction of characters" (Wang Guowei), such a very prominent form of contradiction in meta-dramas.
Yuanren's achievements in composition are high, but the lyrics are not formally incorporated into the national ideology and mainstream discourse culture. The rulers of the Yuan Dynasty did not regard the emerging opera culture as an important tool for managing the literati clique. Soon, the rulers of the Ming and Qing dynasties discovered this problem. As the most successful emperors of the early Qing Dynasty, the most successful masters of the Huairou Han Dynasty, they all agreed with the desire of the literati to elevate the elegance of qu from opera culture. This shows that they are keenly aware of the close connection between the highly developed Qu culture and the literati, and they have helped to complete the new positioning of the people in Chinese the emerging entertainment culture of the Han nationality through the national power, and "Qu" has thus achieved a dominant position in the opera culture. The landmark event of this process was the two large-scale revisions of musical scores by the Kangqian Dynasty in the Qing Dynasty.
In the fifty-fourth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1715), Wang Yiqing and others were ordered to compile the twelve volumes of the "King Ding Qu Score", four volumes of the Northern Qu, and eight volumes of the Southern Qu. The north and south songs were combined into one volume, and a total of 811 song cards were collected. The Northern Qu part copied the Taihe Zhengyin Score, and the Southern Qu part copied Shen Jing's "Nanjiugong Thirteen-Tone Score". On this basis, in the eleventh year of Qianlong (1746), Zhou Xiangyu and others compiled the "Nine Palaces Dacheng North and South Word Palace Spectrum", the northern part is mainly based on the "Northern Word Guangzheng Spectrum", and the southern part is mainly based on the "Law of Southern Words". The score consists of 82 volumes, with an unprecedented 2,094 northern and southern music tablets and 4,466 pieces of music, making it the most complete composition of opera music since ancient times. The Nine Palaces Dacheng Score has better preserved the testaments of the Kunqu reformers Liang Bolong and Wei Liangfu, and has become the only method for the Duqu family. Since the advent of this score, no new score has been published in two hundred years.
The Kangqian era was a period when China's national political power was highly concentrated and cultural authority was highly asserted. Large-scale cultural activities such as the "King Ding Qu Score", the "Nine Palaces Dacheng Score", the "Kangxi Dictionary" and the "Siku Quanshu" are actually a kind of confirmation and speech of the state power on culture. It almost uses the image of state authority to confirm the independence and dominance of qu in the whole opera culture. While the rulers promoted the status of Consolidated Qu, they also co-opted and controlled this emerging cultural force in the lives of han literati.
It is worth noting that the two largest components of the opera as a whole have been treated completely unequally by the state system in this process, sometimes even completely opposite treatment: on the one hand, the "qu" is constantly being elegant, beautified, and literati; on the other hand, the content of the "drama" is further ugly, vulgarized, and attacked. There are two main manifestations of crackdown and vilification: one is the large-scale deletion and prohibition of drama by the state's authoritarian power; the other is the restriction and control of artists' activities.
Since the first time in the ninth year of Shunzhi explicitly banned trivial obscene words, the Qing Dynasty's official use of edicts, decrees and laws to prohibit trivial obscene words has been increasing. From the second year of Kangxi, the twenty-sixth year of Kangxi, the forty years of Kangxi, the fifty-third year of Kangxi, and the second year of Yongzheng, similar prohibitions were repeatedly re-issued,...... Although there are differences in the formulation of the object of the prohibition before and after the ban,...... Its main prohibition is the folk drama activities that are intertwined with the Obscene Society. This is because this kind of drama activity that accompanies the association of non-governmental organizations is unofficially recognized, unorthodox, or even cult. (Ding Shumei: Chronicle of historical materials on the Prohibition of The Destruction of Opera in the Qing Dynasty, Sichuan University Press, 2010 edition, 70 pp.)
In the twenty-ninth year of Qianlong (1764), the "five-city night drama" was prohibited, in the forty-fifth year (1780) the "opening of the opera garden in the inner and outer cities of the Beijing Division" was prohibited, and in the fifty years (1785) the "qin cavity was prohibited". In the fourth year of Jiaqing (1799), "forbidden inner city theater garden", Daoguang 3rd year (1823) "forbidden beijing division club", etc., for more than 100 years, many such decrees were promulgated. (Li Desheng: "Forbidden Drama", Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House, 2009 edition, 4 pages)
The frequent issuance of control decrees by the state power also makes us pay attention to the other side of the problem: the "dramas" in Kunqu opera, which are mainly performed, are more and more prohibited and developed, and even a phenomenon of "popularization" has emerged. This is mainly manifested in two aspects: first, the rise of various local dramas (flower departments) at the same time a large number of learning, borrowing, transplanting Kunqu opera and its repertoire, performance methods, stage concepts, resulting in Kunqu in a system of various types of drama universally revered as a teacher, to achieve the authentic status of the drama world; on the other hand, Kunqu in the face of a strong performance competition environment, leaving its place of southern Jiangsu, through the integration of culture and language with various places, the formation of new tributaries - in the history of opera, The Kunqu operas circulating in Suzhou, the birthplace of Kunqu opera, are often referred to as "Zhengkun", and those "tributaries" are called "Caokun" with contempt, such as Yongkun (Yongjia Kunqu), Jinkun (Jinhua Kunqu), Yongkun (Ningbo Kunqu), Xiangkun (Guiyang Kunqu), Diankun (Yunnan Kunqu), Chuankun, as well as Kunyi with northern characteristics, Jinkun (Shanxi Kunqu), and those Anhui Kunqu and Jiangxi Gankun that have not been passed down. "Kun spread all over the country and was enshrined as such a symbol of sincerity by actors from various local plays, not only absorbing its nutrition, but also accepting its repertoire and performance style." (Fu Jin: "The Cultural Identity of Kunqu Opera", Fujian Art, No. 3, 2011)
The great spread of Kunqu opera in the folk mainly occurred in the eighteenth century. An important phenomenon that accompanied the popularization of Kunqu opera in the eighteenth century was that Chinese opera basically completed its stylized system.
In 1687, Hong Sheng completed the Hall of Eternal Life, and in 1699 Kong Shangren's "Peach Blossom Fan" was finalized, which is considered to be the twin peaks of classical Chinese drama creation, and seems to mark the end of the golden age of Kunqu legendary creation. The creativity of the opera basically stopped, and Kunqu opera entered a "century of performance"—the origami opera flourished at the right time (origami opera did not exist in the eighteenth century). As early as the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, there were folding zi opera collections. But by the eighteenth century, its prosperity had reached a new climax. The new issue of "White Qiu", compiled by Qian Decang, contains 430 folding plays that were popular at that time, which is a reliable source for us to understand the performances that were in the turbulent theater world at that time). Kunqu opera has been three or four hundred years since its birth to development and evolution, and a large number of performance practices since the Ming Dynasty, especially the aesthetics of opera performance represented by Kunqu opera, have truly entered a period of great summary.
In 1819, a very important work summarizing the art of opera appeared in the history of opera, that is, Huang Qi's "Liyuan Yuan", which is almost the first ancient book to comprehensively and systematically summarize the theory of opera performance, and it is in this opera performance work written in the early nineteenth century that we see a relatively complete summary and elaboration of stylized aesthetics - its theoretical source and research object are the results accumulated for the eighteenth century Kunqu performance. The book makes a meticulous classification of the body segments, listing the "eight points of the body", including "distinguishing the eight shapes" and "dividing the four shapes". "Discerning the eight forms" is to divide the role into eight types, namely "noble, rich, poor, untouchable, demented, crazy, sick, drunk". The "four states" refer to the four conditions of "joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness". Whether it is "eight shapes" or "four shapes", Huang Qi has written down specific stylized expression methods in detail, even as detailed as body movements, facial expressions and sound processing. The summary of the aesthetics of the "four skills and five methods" opera program of the "hands, eyes, body, law, and step" of the descendants is obviously in line with Huang's theory--the development of the standardization of opera performance has gone beyond the rough stages of the "section" and "introduction" of the miscellaneous opera and southern opera eras, and has entered a systematic stylized construction. It is in this sense that we can roughly judge that the aesthetics of Chinese opera have thus embarked on a different path different from the development of Western drama.
Of course, the great development of the stylization of opera in the eighteenth century has a huge social motive, and the social background of the stylized road in the field of art is the standardization and "eight strands" trend in the ideological field and the social field.
Regarding the relationship between the Eight Strands of Literature and the Opera Program, Hu Shi said it more directly and fiercely in his preface to the republishment of "White Qiu": "Xu Wenchang, a great scholar of the Ming Dynasty, once criticized Shao Wenming's "Sachet Record", saying that he was 'taking Shiwen as the southern song'. In fact, this sentence can be used to criticize all legends. The legends of the Ming and Qing dynasties were all made by the eight-strand literati with the eight-strand style. The end of each part begins with a song to summarize the whole story, which is 'breaking the problem'. The second play is the following, and the characters in the play are drawn out one by one, which is 'undertaking the title'. The following drama begins, which is 'starting to speak'. From then on, a man and a woman, a loyal and a servant, all the faces are taken care of, the red is in, the green is out, that is the eight strands of the main text, the final reunion, that is the 'big knot'. (Hu Shi: "Preface to The White Qiu", in Qian Decang, ed., "White Qiu", Zhonghua Bookstore 2005 edition) Although Hu Shi's summary of the Ming and Qing legends is slightly simple and crude, it does touch the core of the problem, and his unique vision is thought-provoking.
Kunqu opera, as the largest and most important opera vocal cavity drama in the entire opera territory since the sixteenth century, should of course be mainly taken from the practice of Kunqu opera. It should be noted that stylization is not only the "fruit" of the "drama" of Kunqu opera in the eighteenth century, but also the "cause" of kunqu opera to be able to quickly "popularize" cross-regional and cross-sound cavities throughout the country. In fact, stylization means, to some extent, "replicability". Norms not only attract imitation, but also provide imitators with reference samples, which greatly enhances the "operability" of imitations - in the classical era of lack of preservation technology, stylization actually "preserved" performances that could not be visualized, and its merits were so great that cultural history could not be ignored. Therefore, the rapid popularization of Kunqu opera in the folk is not because of the fashion guidance of Qing court performances, nor can it be because the literati formulated the aesthetic ideals represented by it, and the artists and audiences "gladly" accepted it, the key lies in the standardized system established by Kunqu opera in the "era of performance", so that it has formed a unified "imitation and replicable" whole in performance.
Stylization is of greater significance to the development of Kunqu opera itself. Judging from the status of contemporary Kunqu as a "masterpiece of human oral and intangible cultural heritage", we should be thankful that it made the opera performance of the 17th and 18th centuries with Kunqu opera as the main body an art that can be copied and inherited. From role positioning to performance design, from the use of sound cavity to the image of the costume, corresponding provisions are made, so that each generation of inheritors have evidence to follow, laws to follow, and traces to find. When Qi Rushan commented on the art of Peking Opera later, he said: "No matter which play or which foot in the play, there are quasi-steps, quasi-sizes, and quasi-places on the scene, and the layman looks as if he walks around randomly, in fact, there are almost not many steps, or one step less, and the most important rules in this drama can also be said to be the most beautiful rules." (Qi Rushan: The Transformation of Peking Opera, Liaoning Education Publishing House, 2008 edition, p. 103) There is even a record that with this program, even blind people can perform accurately on stage. From the stylization process of Kunqu opera in the eighteenth century to the rise of the Peking Opera genre art at the end of the nineteenth century, the stylization of opera has reached its peak.
The independence of qu and the popularization of opera were the most important developments of Kunqu in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it laid many paradigms for the aesthetic system of later Chinese opera. However, the defects in the internal development of Kunqu opera that it reflects should arouse people's deep thinking. The core of the defect is that the separation trend of music and drama is constantly expanding, and it is becoming more and more difficult to integrate between the respective carriers, that is, between literati and artists. In fact, Qu's literary achievements and the procedural aesthetics of the drama are the fruits of development at the expense of losing their inner vitality, which also laid the groundwork for the plight of Kunqu opera in the second half of the nineteenth century.
In the seventh year of Daoguang (1827), in order to welcome the Southern Tour of Qianlong, the "First Class in the World" Jixiu Class, composed of the essence of the Kunban class of "Hundreds of Counties in Suzhou, Hangzhou and Yang", was dissolved. The Kunban forces in Suzhou began to have a big slippery slope, so that in suzhou, where the opera class had been counted in thousands, in about twenty years, there were only four kunbans (Hongfu, Daya, Dazhang, and Quanfu). By the 1860s, the center of gravity of Kunqu opera had shifted to Shanghai, and there had been no regular performances in Suzhou for a long time. However, Sanyayuan, which specializes in Kunqu opera in Shanghai, also completely ended Kunqu opera performances in the 1990s. A large number of Kunqu artists were scattered everywhere and collapsed into classes, and the original four major Kunqu classes also existed in name only.
Why did Kunqu Opera, which has a history of hundreds of years and is enthusiastically respected by mainstream culture, decline so quickly? There are many reasons, of course. For example, the destruction of the socio-economic culture of the Jiangnan region by the peasant wars in modern times; the reduction of the performance of kunqu opera by the upper nobility, especially the Qing royal family; the reduction of the performance of kunqu opera in the court and the interest in the performance of leather springs; the rapid rise of various local drama genres, that is, the flower department, occupied the original kunqu opera performance market, and they were also more popular with the peasants; the disintegration of the traditional education system, the change of the intellectual structure of the literati class, and so on. It should be said that these reasons have affected the development of Kunqu opera in a certain period and stage, but the real crux of Kunqu's fate should be examined from within. Especially when we notice that the first thirty years of the twentieth century were the golden age of Chinese opera as a whole, the cultural and entertainment industry was unprecedentedly developed, the major drama genres rose rapidly and occupied their respective territories, and Peking Opera was already a new hegemon in the entire opera map of the new era. The problem is that in such a period of high opera culture, Kunqu not only has not restored its status a hundred years ago, but also cannot occupy a place like ordinary small dramas, and it cannot get a share of the drink in the prosperous performance market, and it is difficult to maintain basic survival, which is really confusing.
In 1921, jointly initiated by Zhang Zidong, Pei Jinmei, Xu Jingqing and a group of Quyou literati from Suzhou, the Kunqu Opera Transmission Institute, was the first school in modern times to cultivate new kunqu opera talents. They have recruited seventy students successively, and forty-four students who have completed their studies after being panning for sand and gold have been collectively called "Chuanzi Generation". Later, it was taken over by Mu Rongchu, a major industrialist in the Shanghai textile industry who loved Kunqu opera, and was more financially enriched, and Mu's own never considered any return by funding the training. From the first time in 1924, when the students of the Institute first performed on the Shanghai Laughing Stage, to the end of November 1925, when they toured the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, although M Moser himself lost his business and turned to politics, he was no longer able to support the Institute, but there were still enthusiastic people such as Yu Zhenfei and Yan Huiyu to form the "Weikun Company" to operate and manage, and realized the transformation of the Institute into a formal self-financing professional theater troupe. However, their cooperation with the Laughing Stage lasted less than a year before the box was sealed. At the end of the 1920s, it was regrouped several times, during which it still received the support of a large number of ququ friends, literati, businessmen, theater owners and even new Peking opera forces like Mei Lanfang, but it still could not really stand on the shanghai beach with a variety of plays.
In fact, Kunqu opera is not really without "vitality". Just around the "sand" of the Kunqu Opera Transmission and Learning Society, there are Kunqu Opera Society activities full of "endless" greenery in Jiangnan.
In the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, when Kunban was basically extinct in Suzhou, where Kunqu opera occurred, in a fairly wide area centered on Suzhou and Shanghai, there were still many kunqu fans, and these kunqu fans often organized qu clubs of different sizes, and the song festivals of several festivals every year were quite outstanding. (Fu Jin: "Historical Experience of Suzhou Kunqu Opera Institute", in Literary and Art Studies, No. 5, 2011)
According to statistics, from the light years of the Qing Dynasty to the liberation of the whole country in 1949, the total number of more famous qu societies in Shanghai was no less than fifty. Some qu clubs have more than 100 members. The activities of the qu society can be held all year round, and the routine is held more than 200 times during the same period, such as the pingsheng song club. In addition, Qu friends from Jiangsu and Zhejiang also often went to Shanghai to carry out conference and string activities, and from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, they set off a wave of qu society activities. Even some famous theaters invite people from the music club to perform in concerts. Its grandeur is also involved in treatises on the history of the development of Shanghai opera in modern times (such as "Shanghai Opera Chronicle", "Maritime Opera Garden Changes" by Shu Shisheng on the Sea, zhu Lin's "Kunqu Opera and Jiangnan Society", etc.). This can't help but make people more and more confused: why can't the prosperous music society support the prosperity of the Kunqu opera market? With such a huge series of performances and such a vast opera garden centered around Shanghai, why can't the Chuanxi Society, which is considered to be the representative of "Zhengkun", take a smooth road in it?
The prosperity of the qu society and the withering of the drama club formed the most bizarre scene in the history of Kunqu opera.
"Qu" and "Drama", they are originally the same origin, but they cannot breathe and share the same destiny, and everything began as a historical separation within the Kunqu opera in the eighteenth century. Although they are still within a cultural system in the broader sense of the word, their respective tendencies have led to their fate of "parallel development". Under the cover of their respective development achievements, it has caused the overall decline of Kunqu's cause. In the face of the great prosperity of Peking Opera in the Republic of China era, and the full integration of literati and artists behind the prosperity of Peking Opera, and consciously opening up the genre art climax of the new era with artists as the main body, the prosperity of Kunqu "Qu" is not at all worthy of congratulations or luck. The sense of crisis of the Qushe literati is right, they are not complacent about the joy of the "Qu" Society, but they will do everything possible to discuss how to save the fate of the "drama" that has long been ignored and watched by them. The Kunqu Opera Transmission Institute was originally jointly painted by the two qu societies of Suzhou, Daohe and Zenji! Later, he continued to receive help and praise from Xu Lingyun, the initiator of many music clubs in Shanghai. Obviously, these famous literati and composers who have left their names in the history of Youth have all seen the reasons for the strange landscape in the current situation of Kunqu opera, and the future of Kunqu opera needs to rebuild the life of "drama".
But these celebrities who bear a sense of crisis and take Kunqu opera as their responsibility only think of using "qu" to save "drama" - in their entire activities, we see more of "Qu" as the teacher of "drama", and "Qu" mainly plays the image of the savior of "drama". Wu Mei taught songwriting in Beijing and Nanjing, and took in a generation of famous people Han Shichang and Bai Yunsheng as apprentices, and then taught them songs and rehearsals; President Cai Yuanpei and the professors of Peking University sat in the box with beautiful scenery to watch the performance of the Rongqing Society, and spoke out the famous saying of "Ning Pukun, Don't Hold Kun", some of which were criticisms of the old-fashioned behavior of "playing with flowers and appreciating flowers", some of which were reminders of the equality of the profession of the linglings, and perhaps some of them were condescending to the attitude of "taking me as the mainstay".
Kunqu opera as a way of existence as a drama can only be the performance of artists, but artists and their performances are difficult to obtain their due status in the minds of literati, this accumulation of habits to take care of those historical figures, no wonder some scholars sighed: "When today's Kunqu circle Xian believes that the generation of artists cultivated by Suzhou Kunqu Opera Practice represents the highest level of modern Kunqu opera, it is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that in that era, the literati class that represented the most important carrier of Kunqu opera did not necessarily agree with such a judgment." (Fu Jin: "The Cultural Identity of Kunqu Opera", in Fujian Art, No. 3, 2011) The difference in the cultural status of literati and artists in traditional Chinese society has made the unequal mentality between them accumulate for a hundred years and a thousand years, which is not completely resolved by one generation or two generations, the historical inertia of this phenomenon has transcended specific individual behaviors, and is an important reference for macroscopic examination of Kunqu culture.
In the new century, Chinese Kunqu opera was selected by UNESCO as one of the first masterpieces of oral and intangible cultural heritage of mankind in 2001, does this mean that the return of Kunqu as a complete theatrical form has begun? In the new Kunqu culture with "drama" as the main body and "qu" as the characteristics, artists and literati are no longer traditional identities, can new identities and new cooperation construct a new kunqu culture? History has not given us much optimistic capital.