Chang Baoting: Tianjin Xiangsheng teases you

Non-heritage business card

　　Xiangsheng originated in the Xianfeng and Tongzhi years of the Qing Dynasty, is a form of qu art performance with a deep mass foundation, drawing on the strengths of ventriloquism, storytelling and other arts, humorous and harmonious, showing truth, goodness and beauty with satirical jokes, actors wearing coats (or uniforms, suits, etc.), narrating stories or arguing with the four skills of speaking, learning, teasing and singing, from the content of the art of comedy, from the form of the art of dialogue. Crosstalk was born in Beijing and achieved in Tianjin. Tianjin Xiangsheng is a school of its own, known for its irony, fiery and enthusiastic, full of humor, especially Wenqiao Xiangsheng is unique, not only a collection of famous artists, but also a large number of outstanding actresses, cross-talk writers and theorists. In 2008, Xiangsheng was selected into the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

　　Heirs Story

　　In the Chinese cross-talk industry, the 84-year-old Chang Baoting is undoubtedly a landmark master. The achievement of this status depends not only on the fact that he is a descendant of his own "Chang clan xiangsheng" lineage, but also because of his all-round kung fu of creation and performance.

　　"Tianjin audiences know cross-talk the most" the world recognizes that Tianjin is a distribution center and experimental field for cross-talk art. Some scholars have divided Chinese cross-talk into four major genres: Zhang Pai's cross-talk performances represented by Zhang Shouchen are meticulous and subtle; The Changpai cross-talk represented by Chang Baokun (stage name Small Mushroom) is hot and lively; The humor and wisdom of the Hou Pai cross-talk represented by Hou Baolin; Ma Pai Cross-Talk, represented by Ma Sanli, portrays the small citizens in detail. These masters are all inextricably linked to Tianjin's cultural "big dock", and this thick heritage also makes Tianjin's "capital" status more stable in the Internet era.

　　Chang Baoting said: "I have been related to Xiangsheng for the next life since I can remember. My father Chang Lian'an and my eldest brother Chang Baokun rehearsed at home, which made me gradually like this unique performing art, first imitated, and then taught by my father and eldest brother, the skills grew day by day, officially debuted at the age of 9, performed at the Qiming Tea House opened by my father in Beijing's Xidan Mall at the age of 11, worshiped my uncle Guo Rongqi as a teacher at the age of 12, and worked with the famous artist of Beijing Tianqiao at the age of 14. Bai Quanfu, the son of Xiao Yun Li Fei, formed a pair, and I did not expect that our noisy and noisy combination of cooperation had reached half a century, and it was called 'lifelong partner'. ”

　　In Chang Baoting's view, due to the influence of family heirlooms, it was natural for him to enter the cross-talk industry. In his early years, his father walked the streets and alleys to make a living, often interspersed with various jokes to enliven the atmosphere of the scene, laying the language and stage foundation for him to later switch to crosstalk. His eldest brother Chang Baokun is a cross-talk genius, who performed in Zhangjiakou at the age of four or five, and was nicknamed "mushroom" (meaning "baby" in the local dialect) by the audience, and the stage name of the Chang brothers also came from this. Chang Baoting said: "The eldest brother debuted early, helped my father earn money to support the family, my life when I was a child was still quite passable, but there was no status, and I could not win real respect." My father was not highly educated, but his tutors were strict, and children were not allowed to smoke, drink, or play with money. When standing in front of the rehearsal and saying a large section of work, neither distracted nor unclear in the mouth. I was more proud that I didn't let my father be too anxious, nor did I get beaten for talking about crosstalk. But my father had a set of self-created 'family laws', which was a two-foot-long wooden plank tied to a rope hanging on the wall, who made the mistake of using it to beat the palm of his hand. We have been served by the 'family law' because we are naughty. ”

　　The platform that really greatly improved Chang Baoting's skills is the Qiming Tea Society Cross-Talk Conference. At that time, the performance did not sell tickets in different sessions, and the actors took turns on the stage to say that they would collect money for a period of time, which greatly exercised the adaptability of the actors. He said that the Qiming Tea House has made xiangsheng enter the hall of elegance from the "wind halved, rain is completely free" of "picking the ground" to sell art. Under the strong advocacy of his father, the Qiming Tea House absolutely did not allow meat cross-talk to appear on stage, and the unclean content of the old cross-talk was all eliminated and turned to the performance of civilized cross-talk, which was a "weighty thing" that many famous cross-talk artists were doing together suddenly improved the quality and artistry of cross-talk.

　　Tianjin gained the advantage of defending Gyeonggi, and the cross-talk that matured in Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty soon spread here. At this time, Chang Baoting had grown into an "independent" cross-talk actor, frequently appearing in theaters such as "Grand View Garden" in Tianjin. He said that the cross-talk performances of the often school are heavy and the range of movements is large. He believes that the difference between changpai cross-talk and other factions is that the role of teasing and praising is almost the same, avoiding the sinking situation of the previous hilarians just "um, ah, is", and the two actors are teasing each other, making the performance faster.

　　In 1950, Chang Baoting returned to Beijing and served as the deputy leader of the "Crosstalk Improvement Group" co-founded with Hou Baolin and others, specializing in the collation, adaptation and creation of new cross-talk paragraphs. The following year, he was invited to settle in Tianjin and join the "Hongfeng Qu Art Society", and at the end of that year, the Tianjin QuYi Work Group was established on this basis, and he also began the second spring of his artistic life.

　　Beginning in 1958, Chang Baoting picked up a pen to create cross-talk. He has always believed that Changpai cross-talk pays attention to the portrayal of characters, must be integrated into the modern connotation in traditional cross-talk, society is developing, cross-talk should also progress, no kind of art can be unchanged, many old programs have not adapted to the tastes of new audiences, if you do not create their own no programs to perform. Under this pressure, his debut work "I Love Sports" came out, and since then, more than 20 new passages with a strong sense of life have come into being, of which "Children's Paradise" and "Homecoming" were also published in Tianjin Daily. His in-depth life creation and performance of "The Waterwheel Problem" and "Digging for Treasure" are classics of the 1960s and 1970s.

　　Chang Baoting, who has been in a stormy life, has two unforgettable things: in 1958, he went to the Fujian front to perform for soldiers in the trenches; In 1962, at a party held after Premier Zhou Enlai received representatives of the All-China Youth Federation, he and Ma Ji performed a new cross-talk performance of "Liu Sanjie's Song", and the premier happily shook his hand and said: "Your name is Chang Baoting, you are the younger brother of the martyr Chang Baokun, and there are many cross-talk actors in your Chang family. ”

　　Chang Baoting's apprentice Wang Pei (Weibo) Yuan said of the master: "He is a very humble person, there is a mantra ' people must be reasonable, do things fairly'. He strives for excellence in art, and he loses sleep before and after creation. Many people commented on Master's performance as 'handsome', and I think this 'handsome' is not only in temperament and manners, but also because his artistic core is 'new', and he dares to break through the original performance mode. ”

　　The elderly Chang Baoting is physically tough and only watches sports channels every day. If the students and apprentices of the Qu School and the Qu Art Troupe have questions to ask, he will always emphasize that laying a solid foundation first and then running, cross-talk must have both laughter and life, and must be carried forward on the basis of inheritance, otherwise it is bound to outweigh the losses.

　　Expert reviews

　　Xue Baokun (Professor of Nankai University, famous theorist of qu art)

　　Xiangsheng is indeed "born in Beijing, long in Tianjin", and Hou Baolin believes that Beijing is its source and Tianjin is its gathering place; Ma Sanli believes that Beijing is its birthplace and Tianjin is its birthplace. It can be said that at that time, Beijing provided xiangsheng with more forms and skills of traditional humor culture, such as lantern riddles, liquor orders, couplets, comedies, funny words and other language and word games, while Tianjin provided cross-talk with a cultural spirit of resistance, ridicule and criticism in the face of real life in the process of the formation of a modern city and the awakening of citizens' consciousness, so that this form completed the transformation from "skill" to "art".

　　The traceable origin of crosstalk is long, but the history of proof is very short. As a simulation technique, as early as the Song Dynasty, there were "elephant sounds" that imitated the city voice and the rural tone, and the Ming and Qing dynasties also had the "elephant sound" that simulated the ventriloquism of human speech and bird language, but as an art with mature passages and genres, performance norms and patterns, it was only a product of modern times. Whether it is Ma Sanli's transformation of elegance into custom, Hou Baolin's transformation of ugliness into beauty, or the patriotic artist Chang Baokun risking his life to needle the shortcomings of the times and daring to touch the sharp problems of society, they are all ironic and humorous, inheriting the "poetic teaching" spirit of traditional culture of "gentleness and thickness", embodying the characteristics of "subculture" (folk culture) to "mainstream culture" (Ya culture) "gentle and ironic", thus forming a modern cross-talk "vulgar and elegant content, a style of ridicule but not abuse, a relationship between salty and light, like I am not my performance." artistic characteristics. "Custom" is the nature of cross-talk art, but it is not pseudo-custom, vulgarity, and vice, but beauty, true custom, and great custom, which covers all aspects of secular city life: "sex" produces material culture due to the need for food color, "emotion" forms behavioral culture due to interpersonal communication, "reason" consciously follows institutional culture because of reason, and "heart" promotes spiritual culture because of mentality. Tianjin Xiangsheng reflects the public's character of making pleasure in suffering, seeking pleasure in suffering, and obtaining happiness in suffering with its unique soft humor and self-deprecating spirit.