Gamble’s recently published social survey, twenty-two regular theaters
and eight mat-shed theaters; that is, portable buildings covered with
matting. Furthermore, there are some nine restaurants, provincial
halls, and temples where theatrical performances are regularly given.
It is customary to mark all big weddings, funerals, banquets, charity
events, and other festivities by theatricals for which the services of
professionals are engaged or in which the many eager amateurs are given
opportunities to appear in public. Most of the large buildings,—temples,
guildhalls, palaces, etc.—are equipped with the simple projecting stages,
either inside a large hall or out of doors in a courtyard. If you happen
to live near a restaurant or a temple you will be able to speak feelingly
of the love of the Chinese for theatricals!
The business organization of the Chinese theater is the same as that
which obtained in Elizabethan playhouses. Our theater owner-manager
of to-day who selects a play, determines the manner in which it is to
be staged and played, and then engages actors to do what he pays them
for—this enemy of real art and _bête noire_ of the theater uplifters can
be found neither in Elizabethan England nor in the Chinese theater. In
staging and acting the company of players has entire freedom in China,
just as it had in London. The theater-owner (quite like the “housekeeper”
of Shakespeare’s day) engages a troupe to play in his theater, but he
never dreams of interfering with the actor’s art. The Chinese call him
the “behind-the-curtain” while the actors are the “before-the-curtain.”
The former receives thirty per cent. of the income, while seventy per
cent, goes to the manager of the company, who then pays the salaries
of his actors. Some of these troupes or actors’ clubs are of a rather
democratic nature, because all the actors belong to their guild. The
actors’ guild has its special temple just outside the Hata Gate, for the
actors are religious folk—much as are the members of most guilds in China.
In this temple the actors worship three deities, or rather deified men.
The first of these is Kuan Yu (Yo Fei), the god of war, during his
lifetime a great fighter against the Chin Tartars in the course of the
twelfth century. There is a well-known play that sets forth the high
qualities of this hero. Though he had been dismissed by the emperor as
the result of a court intrigue, yet he refused to join the rebels, no
matter how tempting the offers they made him, but remained loyal to his
emperor. His mother was so pleased at this that she tattooed on his back:
“He repays the state with loyalty and integrity.” Later on the emperor
reinstated him in his high honors and placed his mother’s inscription on
the banner of the army.[22]
The second deity is the T’ang Dynasty emperor mentioned in the first
chapter as the traditional founder of the theater, T’ang Ming Huang. In
his “Pear Garden” school for actors he is said himself to have acted the
rôle of the clown. It is for this reason that the clown enjoys special
privileges; for example, he is the first one to receive the attention of
the make-up artist, while other actors must wait until the clown has had
his turn; and he may sit on any actor’s box in the greenroom. It is the
clown, furthermore, who burns the incense before the idols found in every
theater on the rear wall just opposite the stage and in the dressing
room. Such a little religious ceremony is carried out before and after
every performance to ward off bad luck. Another feature of the theater
that impresses us as being typically Chinese is found in the boards
placed at the rear of the stage and on the two supporting columns on
which are found inscriptions, generally in gilt characters, setting forth
the high moral purpose of the stage. In comparing these mottoes with what
is being presented on the stage one is often reminded of the saying of
the Reverend Arthur Smith, that no one _knows_ so well as the Chinese
what is fitting and proper.
The third deity is Lin Ming-ju, generally pictured as a little boy. This
noble youth was a pupil in the “Pear Garden”, and all who were friendly
to him made rapid progress in their art. Hence they realized gradually
that he was a god. Like other well-known gods he afterwards disappeared
in a sudden and miraculous manner. Because the second part of this god’s
name is the word for dream, actors never speak of their dreams in the
morning.
But religion does not mean to the actors merely the burning of incense or
the making of an annual pilgrimage to Miao Feng Shan, two days’ journey
from Peking. There is a definite tradition that an actor must show filial
piety. Whenever he undertakes something out of the ordinary, such as
perhaps accepting a contract to act in Shanghai, he must first ask his
mother’s permission. I asked repeatedly about this custom, and learned
not a reason for it, but simply the fact that if an actor did not ask his
mother’s permission he would be laughed at. Often it is the mother who
makes the contract and receives most of the money. Of a certain rising
actor it is said that his mother never allows him to act unless he is to
receive twenty dollars for each performance.
In the fairly democratic China of the imperial times the son of the
poorest man could rise to the position of viceroy of a province by virtue
of passing a brilliant literary examination—and if we are to believe
Chinese playwrights he often did. However, the actor, together with
the son of the prostitute, and one or two other despised classes, was
debarred from these examinations. Of course, with the discontinuance of
the examinations in 1907 and the establishment of the republic in 1912,
these disqualifications dropped away. Socially the position of the actor
is improving rapidly nowadays. For example, in July, 1922, the son of
a high official of Shantung Province married the actress Li Feng-yün.
Far from being ashamed of her profession, she acted several plays on her
wedding day as part of the festivities of the occasion. However, she
abandoned her professional career on becoming the wife of this wealthy
man. The fact that she was the first wife was the remarkable thing to
the Chinese who spoke to me of the event; for that an actress becomes
the concubine of a rich official is almost an everyday occurrence in
Peking. Progress along such lines is not a unique or surprising thing in
China; to mention but one example, coeducation has come into being since
1919, almost overnight, so to speak, with surprisingly little opposition.
Actresses were forbidden on Chinese stages during the days of the Manchu
Dynasty, but since 1912 their number has increased rapidly so that
they are appearing now on eleven stages in Peking. Only in the foreign
concessions of such treaty ports as Tientsin and Shanghai do men and
women appear together on the stage, however; in Peking, Chinese prudery
still forbids this.
There is a current notion that Chinese plays last a week or a lunar
month, but as a matter of fact about a dozen plays, or separate acts
taken from different plays, are given in one performance. Toward the end
of the afternoon’s or evening’s entertainment the spectator may observe
that some long strips of red paper covered with Chinese characters in
black ink are removed from the two side railings of the balcony and
others substituted in their place. In this manner the program of the
following day is announced. The performances generally last from noon
to about six and from seven in the evening until midnight. The best
plays with the stars are reserved until the last, while dull, long plays
with inferior actors generally begin the program. These poor actors are
often retained merely for charity’s sake; often, too, famous actors give
benefits for their less fortunate colleagues. In Shanghai actors get
monthly contracts; but in Peking the minor actors are hired by the day,
and some of them must play in several theaters in one afternoon in order
to eke out a meager living at about twenty coppers a day.
Men of this type, of course, are hardly more than “supers.” Regular
actors on the average earn about one dollar a day, while some of a higher
grade receive five dollars to ten dollars. To receive twenty-five dollars
for a regular performance a man must be quite prominent in the theatrical
world. A few stars, like Mei Lan-fang and Yang Hsiao-lo, receive one
hundred dollars for each regular performance, and considerably more when
they act at banquets or on other special occasions.
The charges in the theaters depend on the type of theater and even more
on the actors. Theaters where women or boys appear as actors are lower in
price. There is no ticket or money demanded as one enters the theater,
but the price is collected by the usher when he seats the spectator.
In the ordinary theater one can sit at a comfortable table for forty
cents or in a box for a dollar and a half. There are two large theaters
in Peking built in Occidental style with receding stages, in which the
prices are somewhat higher: eighty cents for a first-class seat and nine
dollars for a box seating eight persons. When a star is playing, these
prices are augmented somewhat. The poorer classes can enjoy theatrical
performances for five coppers by going to the mat-shed theaters. The
average seating capacity of a Peking theater is about a thousand, and the
average attendance is very near this figure, if not above it.
The course of an actor’s training is an extremely hard one. For
seven years he is instructed in singing and acrobatics, and then he
begins to play in some of the boys’ theaters, institutions connected
with the training schools for actors. During the longest part of his
apprenticeship he receives no wages, he has long hours, menial tasks, and
severe taskmasters. Actresses are trained by special private teachers
and their courses have not yet become so uniform as have those for the
men. The police have very strict regulations to prevent actresses from
becoming prostitutes, but according to Mr. Gamble, in some theaters
women from the licensed quarter appear, make engagements after giving
their acts, and do some other soliciting. The connection between the
lower-grade theaters and the segregated district is rather close.
In order to give an idea of the different kinds of theaters one
encounters in Peking, I can do no better than to describe several typical
entertainments from my notes stretching over five years. There is in the
Southern City, for example, the Tung Lo Yuan, a fine specimen of the
old-style Chinese theater. No women are allowed to visit this theater—not
because of immoralities, but simply because the place is conservative.
The seats run at right angles to the stage, along tables, showing that
people come to hear the music rather than to observe the action on the
stage. I paid twenty-four coppers for my seat in the balcony; the usual
price in this theater is eighteen coppers, but because Han Hsi-ch’ang was
going to act, the price was raised on that particular day. After a series
of plays dealing with murders and robberies, in the course of which the
audience gloated over the shuddering and weeping of the victims, there
came the chief play of the day—a Yuan Dynasty drama revived in this
theater.
The play deals with a poor woodcutter and his wife. The hero takes no
interest in his humble calling; in fact, he neglects it for the study of
literature. Since he does not support his wife, she deserts him for a
smith. Finally the husband goes to Peking for the literary examination
and passes with honors. When the wife learns that her first husband is
to become a mandarin she is filled with joy; she sits down at a table,
falls asleep, and has a wonderful dream. The dream is portrayed just as
it would be in our moving pictures; a conventional symbol, a short pause
in the action and the tapping of the drum, indicates to the audience
that there is going to be a dream, and then the dream action continues
in the same way in which the rest of the play had gone on. A number of
men—recalling the Wise Men of the East—enter, bringing all manner of
silk robes, headdresses, and other rich gifts for the lady. In her dream
the faithless wife sees all this; she tries on her robes, shows them off
to the neighbors, and glories in her riches. Then she returns to her
sleeping position at the table and awakens to find that all had been a
dream. In the fourth act the husband returns, dressed in embroidered
robes, a prosperous mandarin. He pours a cup of water on the ground,
saying that he will take his wife back provided she can gather up the
water again. From this play comes the proverbial expression, “Water once
spilled cannot be gathered up again”, which means, of course, that a wife
who has been unfaithful cannot be taken back by the husband.
According to the custom of Chinese theaters only one act was presented;
it was the third act, the dream, that I saw. The too-severe strain on
the chief actor who must sing very long arias is generally given as
the reason why plays are not presented in their entirety. Sometimes
when an entire play is presented—this is frequently done at guildhalls
and other private theatricals—three or four actors in turn play the
leading rôle. The actor portrayed exceedingly well the wife’s emotions
of joy, surprise, and pride. He wore a black dress, because this is
the conventional color for the poor, although it was made of fine silk
instead of the cotton which is actually worn by the masses. In the
old-style Chinese music (called _kuan-ch’ang_) the flute is the leading
instrument and the strains are melodious and sweet, not at all offensive
to the foreigner’s ear as is a great deal of the modern music.
One evening I was the guest of Mr. Chang Ziang-ling, the present Chinese
Consul-General in New York, at a performance by Mei Lan-fang in the
so-called First Theater, a large playhouse built in European style.
The usher took us to two good seats near the stage occupied by two
ragamuffins, and asked the latter to give up their seats to us. Mr. Chang
then paid him two dollars for two seventy-cent seats and explained that
it is a little graft on the part of the ushers to place vagabonds in good
seats until people who they know will tip them come to the theater.
The play again was a Yuan drama called “Snow in June”; a play discussed
in a previous chapter under the title, “The Sufferings of Tou-E.” Mei
Lan-fang is introducing many innovations into the manner of producing
plays, turning the stage into a veritable riot of colors selected
with exquisite taste. The rear of the stage is covered by a curtain
painted with plum blossoms and chrysanthemums in allusion to two of the
characters of his name. The executioners, dressed in rich red trousers
lined with white, come on the stage leading in their midst the victim
wearing a long robe of a delicate shade of light blue. Some of the
executioners have their faces painted in vivid reds and blacks; I find
that this adds a great deal to the spectacle, even though it is the
very opposite of realism. To illustrate the sort of gagging constantly
practiced by Chinese actors I might quote what the judge says to the
prisoner: “What! One so young as you is accused of having committed a
murder? For this you will be beheaded. Let that be a lesson to you not
to do it again.” Such a feeble joke in the face of the innocent young
victim is, of course, just as fitting as many calembours in Shakespeare’s
tragedies. After the execution snow falls; that is, bits of paper are
tossed down from above. All in all the staging of the play is most
agreeable and Mei Lan-fang’s acting is extremely good.
Quite a different performance can be observed in one of the “new”
theaters, a blight which has come to Peking via Shanghai. One evening I
went to the one in the “New World”, a four-story concrete building, an
amusement palace offering for the single admission fee of thirty cents,
old-style plays, “new” drama, story-tellers, singsong girls, moving
pictures, performances by acrobats, jugglers, and sword-swallowers,
restaurants both for foreign and Chinese food, tea room, billiard tables,
and bowling alleys, convex and concave mirrors, and penny slotmachines
showing pictures of various sorts. (“A number of these pictures were
of rather coarse nature,” observes Mr. Sidney Gamble in his “Peking, A
Social Survey”, “but none of them could be called immoral.”) My goal was
the “new” theater, namely plays staged in what the Chinese fondly believe
to be the manner of the Occidental theaters. Before a very crowded
auditorium a play was being performed by actors dressed in European
style, or perhaps better, the style of the mail-order-house type of
clothing. The play was in spoken Chinese, and no music accompanied the
action. Only in the intermissions between the rather short scenes the
band from the Boys’ Industrial School, sitting in a corner in the rear of
the hall, played “John Brown’s Body” and other appropriate dirges.
The play dealt with a woman who had lured men into her house in order to
have them robbed there by her accomplices. This woman was dressed in a
red silk waist and a lavender skirt; she no doubt seemed very Western to
the audience, because she wore a corset and allowed the contour of her
body to show instead of being bound so as to look flat-chested like the
Chinese women. The part, however, was acted by a man who spoke in a high
falsetto. There was a great deal of love-making of a kind unknown to the
Chinese stage—the men kissed the woman’s hand and even put their arms
about her. At times the vampire left the stage for a short time with
one of the victims, in a significant manner. Most applause was accorded
the actor who played the ruffian, when he strode “toughly” across the
stage with his coat collar turned up and his cap pulled down over his
eyes. By way of giving a good imitation of the manners of Europeans the
actors, when speaking to the lady, consistently took off their coats,
held them on their arms, and displayed brand-new red suspenders! The
scenery was changed with every act and showed crude imitations of our
painted interiors or street scenes with lamp posts. The play was endless
and the action extremely slow. This heart-breaking imitation of our worst
melodramas is, I am glad to say, not making the rapid progress it has
made in India, where it has driven out completely the native drama, at
least in Calcutta and Bombay.
As I have stated above, the Chinese stage lacks scenery almost
altogether. Practically the only ornate—and to a certain extent the
most realistic—part of the Chinese theater is found in the costumes. In
regard to the dress of the actors, historical truth, as has been stated,
is observed to a certain extent. The magistrates, the courtiers, the
yamen-runners, the merchants, the doctors, the students, the priests,
the monks and nuns, the matchmakers, and similar characters appear in
appropriate costumes, but usually much more elaborate than they would
be in real life. In the troupe of Mei Lan-fang, Peking’s most famous
actor, the men carrying banners in processions are dressed in silk of
the same color as the cotton gowns which these ragamuffins wear in the
streets of Chinese cities. Honorable personages appear in silk robes in
solid colors: purple, yellow, orange, or red. In the dress of common
soldiers the spectator finds the styles of the various periods followed
with historical accuracy, but the dress of great warriors is fanciful and
highly ornamented. These peacocks of the Chinese stage with their feather
headdress, their painted faces, and their richly embroidered gowns
studded with little mirrors, are the most colorful sights in the theater.
Such warriors wear shoes with thick soles, thus adding about three or
four inches to their natural height, a touch recalling the _soccus_ of
the classical theater. The peculiarly slit-eyed expression of the warrior
is achieved by binding a strip of silk tightly about the head, pulling up
the eyebrows.
A conception of the immense popularity on the Chinese stage of the
warrior performing acrobatics signifying tremendous battles can be gained
from the Chinese classification of plays. One of the two main divisions
is the _wu-hsi_ or fighting play, involving very little plot and almost
continuous acrobatics or “fighting.” The other main division is the
_wen-hsi_ or civil play, which is practically the same thing we mean
by the term drama. In general, the two kinds of plays alternate in the
course of the performances so that each division makes up about fifty per
cent. of the plays presented. Westerners are frequently surprised that
the Chinese do not make the division into comedy and tragedy, but it may
be well to recall that even with us this differentiation is a floating
conception. Practically all the divisions mentioned in “Hamlet” could be
matched on the Chinese stage; historical, comical, tragical, pastoral,
and so on. The Chinese have farces called _nao-hsi_ (noise plays) and
_fen-hsi_ (painted, make-up plays), both full of comical and burlesque
elements. The only difference between them is, an old Peking resident has
observed, that the latter excel the former in obscenity.[23]
[Illustration: ORCHESTRAL INSTRUMENTS
1—_Shou._ 2—_Ti-tze._ 3—_Peng-ku._ 4—_Hu-ch’in._ 5—_Ch’a._ 6—_La-pa._]
A cross division of the above classification is found in the distinction
drawn between plays according to the style of music employed;
_kuan-ch’ü_, _er-huang_, _hsi-p’i_, and _pan-tzu_. Among them only the
first mentioned has an appeal to literary men, while the other three
are considered fit for the mob only. The _kuan-ch’ü_ music is a real
Chinese product descended from the classical plays of the Yuan Dynasty.
It flourished during the Ming Dynasty, but during the Ch’ing rule it
fell into desuetude until at the time of the late Dowager Empress it
had entirely passed out of fashion. In the last decades there have been
made fairly successful efforts to revive it, especially on the part of
Mei Lan-fang. The chief instrument in this style of music is the flute.
_Er-huang_ and _hsi-p’i_ are very similar. Both styles came to Peking
from the province of Hupeh at the beginning of the Ch’ing Dynasty,
and in both the _hu-ch’in_, a string instrument with a sounding-box
played by a bow, gives the characteristic touch to the music. These two
styles, together with the _pan-tzu_, are considered rather vulgar music,
especially the _pan-tzu_. This latter style came to Peking from the
province of Shansi, where the barbarian Mongol blood predominates in the
population over the purer Chinese strain. The _hu-ch’in_ is also played
in _pan-tzu_; but the instrument that gives the name as well as the
character to this style is a wooden board held in one hand by a member of
the orchestra and beaten with the other to indicate the rhythm. As can be
gathered from this fact, the music is very simple and primitive.