社戏 (Village Opera)

In the twenty years I count backward, I have seen Chinese opera only twice. During the first decade I never went at all, having neither the inclination nor the opportunity. Both occasions fell in the last ten years, yet on each I walked away without having seen anything worthwhile.

The first time was in the first year of the Republic, soon after I arrived in Beijing. A friend said to me, "Beijing opera is superb. Why not go and see a bit of the world?" It occurred to me that watching opera might be interesting, especially in Beijing. And so we set off eagerly to some theater or other. The performance had already begun. Even from outside we could hear the insistent boom of drums and gongs. We edged our way in through the entrance, and a blur of bright colors flashed before my eyes; then I saw that the space in front of the stage was packed with heads. When I collected myself and looked carefully around, however, I spotted a few empty seats in the middle. As we pushed over to sit down, someone addressed me. My ears were ringing so badly from the cacophony that I had to concentrate hard to catch his words: "These seats are taken! You can't sit here!"

We withdrew to the back, where a man with a very sleek queue led us to one side and pointed out a place. This so-called place turned out to be a long bench. Its seat, however, was three-quarters narrower than my thighs, and its legs were two-thirds longer than my shins. At first I lacked the courage to climb onto it; then I found myself thinking of the instruments of torture used in private interrogations, and left with an involuntary shudder.

After walking some distance, I suddenly heard my friend's voice: "What on earth is the matter?" Turning my head, I saw that he had followed me out. He said in surprise, "Why did you keep walking without answering?" I replied, "My apologies, old fellow. My ears were filled with nothing but that booming and clanging. I didn't hear a word you said."

Ever since, I have thought this episode very strange. It was as if that opera had been exceptionally bad-or else I myself had lately become unfit for existence under an opera stage.

I cannot recall which year the second occasion was, only that it was during a fundraising campaign for flood relief in Hubei, and the famous actor Tan Xinpei was still alive. The method was to buy a theater ticket for two yuan, which entitled the holder to see a performance at the First Theater. Most of the players were well-known performers, one of whom was Xiao Jiaotian. I bought a ticket just to quiet the fundraisers' pestering, but some busybody seemed to have taken the opportunity to impress upon me the cardinal doctrine that Tan Xinpei was absolutely not to be missed. And so I forgot the earlier disaster of booming and clanging and actually went to the First Theater. This was partly, I suppose, because having paid a high price for this precious ticket, I felt I ought to use it. I had heard that Tan Xinpei made his entrance very late, and since the First Theater was a new-style building where there was no need to fight for seats, I felt reassured and put off leaving until nine o'clock. To my surprise, the usual custom prevailed: the place was packed, and it was hard to find even standing room. I had to squeeze into the crowd at the back to watch a laodan, an elderly female role, singing on the stage. The laodan had two paper spills, alight at the tips, inserted at the corners of her mouth. A demon soldier stood beside her. After much pondering, I wondered if she might be Mulian's mother, for later a monk came out. But I still did not know who the famous actor was, and so I asked a fat gentleman squeezed in next to me on my left. He shot me a contemptuous sidelong glance and said, "Gong Yunfu!" Ashamed of my ignorance and tactlessness, I flushed with embarrassment. There and then I resolved never to ask questions again. And so I watched the xiaodan, the young female role, sing; I watched the huadan, the flowery female role, sing; I watched the laosheng, the elderly male role, sing; I watched some indeterminate role sing; I watched a whole crowd brawl; I watched two or three individuals fight... From a little after nine till ten, from ten till eleven, from eleven till eleven-thirty, from eleven-thirty till midnight-but Tan Xinpei still did not appear.

Never before had I waited for anything so patiently. What was more, the wheezing breath of the fat gentleman beside me, the booming and clanging on the stage, the dizzying swirl of red and green, compounded by the lateness of the hour-all this suddenly made me realize that I was not fit for such an environment. Mechanically, I twisted my body around and pushed with all my might toward the exit. I could feel the space behind me close up instantly; no doubt that elastic fat gentleman had already expanded his right side into the vacancy I left. With no retreat possible, I had no choice but to keep pushing, and finally I emerged through the main gate. The street was almost empty apart from a few carriages waiting for the audience. A dozen or so people still stood at the entrance, craning their necks to read the playbill; another group lingered without looking at anything. I supposed they must be waiting to catch a glimpse of the women when the show ended. But Tan Xinpei had still not come…

The night air, however, was delightfully fresh, truly "refreshing to the very heart and soul." It was as if I were breathing such good air for the first time since coming to Beijing.

That night marked my farewell to Chinese opera. I never gave it another thought. Even when I later happened to pass by a theater, it meant nothing to me, for in spirit we had long been as far apart as the poles.

But a few days ago, I chanced upon a Japanese book on Chinese opera. I am sorry to say I have forgotten both the title and the author. One of the essays in it roughly stated that Chinese opera is so full of gongs and cymbals, shouting and jumping, that it bewilders the audience and is quite unsuitable for performance in a theater. If, however, it is performed in the open country and watched from a distance, it has a charm all its own. The words, it seemed to me, expressed just what I had felt without ever being able to articulate. For I distinctly remember seeing a truly splendid opera in the countryside. It may well be that my two visits to theaters in Beijing, after moving there, were still under the influence of that earlier experience. Sadly, I cannot remember how I came to forget the book's title.

As for when I saw that good opera, it is indeed "a long, long time ago," when I was probably no more than eleven or twelve. In Luzhen, where I grew up, it was the custom that if a married daughter was not yet in charge of her own household, she would generally return to her mother's home for the summer to escape the heat. At that time, although my grandmother was still hale and hearty, my mother had taken on some share of the domestic duties, and so she could not make extended summer visits home. She could only snatch a few days after the grave-sweeping festival. And so, each year, I would accompany my mother to stay at my maternal grandmother's home. That place was called Pingqiao Village, a small, remote, riverside hamlet, not far from the sea, with less than thirty households. All of them farmed or fished, and there was only one tiny grocery shop. But to me it was a paradise: for here I was not only treated with kindness but was also spared the recitation of lines like "The stream gurgles, the southern mountains are deep."

My playmates were many village children. Because a visitor from afar had arrived, they were given permission by their parents to work less, so that they could play games with me. In a small village, the guest of one family is practically the guest of all. Though we were all about the same age, in terms of seniority some were at least my uncles, and a few were my grandfathers, since the whole village shared the same surname and belonged to a single clan. But we were good friends, and even if we sometimes fell to quarreling and fighting, and I happened to strike a grandfather, not one of the villagers, young or old, would ever dream of invoking the term "insubordination." Besides, ninety-nine percent of them were illiterate.

Our daily routine consisted mainly of digging for earthworms, putting them on small hooks made of copper wire, and lying in wait on the riverbank to catch prawns. Prawns are the fools of the aquatic world; they will readily use their own pincers to push the point of the hook into their mouths, so that in less than half a day we could catch a big bowlful. These prawns were customarily reserved for me to eat. The second thing we did was to herd the buffaloes together. But perhaps because they are higher animals, both the yellow buffalo and the water buffalo seemed to sense that I was a stranger and dared to bully me. Consequently, I never ventured too close, but merely followed or stood at a distance. At such times, my young friends, far from making allowances for my ability to recite "The stream gurgles...", would all start jeering at me.

But what I looked forward to most of all was going to Zhaozhuang to see the opera. Zhaozhuang was a relatively large village five li from Pingqiao. Pingqiao itself was too small to stage its own operas, so every year it contributed a certain sum of money to Zhaozhuang for a joint performance. At the time I never wondered why they performed every year. Now I suppose it must have been for the spring festival, and the performance was what we call "village opera."

The year when I was eleven or twelve, this longed-for date drew near. But as luck would have it, there was no boat to be hired that morning. Pingqiao Village had only one ferry-boat, which made regular trips morning and evening; it was out of the question to reserve it for the day. All the other boats were unsuitable small craft. We asked people to make inquiries in the neighboring villages, but there were no boats there either-they had all been hired in advance. My grandmother was very cross, blaming the family for not booking earlier. She started to complain. My mother tried to console her by saying that the operas in our native Luzhen were much better than those in the small villages, and that we could see several a year; we could let this one pass. I alone was nearly in tears from frustration; but Mother impressively urged me not to make a scene, for fear of upsetting Grandmother again, and said I must on no account go with the others, as that would make Grandmother worried.

In short, it was hopeless. In the afternoon, when all my friends had left and the opera had begun, I imagined I could hear the sound of gongs and drums, and knew they were buying soybean milk in front of the stage.

That day I caught no prawns and ate very little. Mother was very upset but could think of no solution. By suppertime Grandmother had finally noticed that something was wrong and said I must be unhappy, and that they had been neglectful-this was no way to treat a guest. After the meal, the youngsters who had been to the opera gathered round and gleefully described it to us. Only I remained silent. They all sighed sympathetically.

All of a sudden, one of the brightest, Shuangxi, had an inspiration and proposed, "A big boat? Hasn't Eighth Uncle's ferry-boat come back?" A dozen other boys caught on immediately and started agitating, saying we could all go with me on this boat. I was overjoyed. But Grandmother was nervous about a boatload of children being unreliable; and Mother said that asking grown-ups to accompany us, when they had to work all day, and making them stay up late, was not right. In the midst of this hesitation, Shuangxi went to the heart of the matter and declared loudly, "I'll guarantee it's safe! The boat is big. Brother Xun never runs around wildly. And we can all swim!"

Indeed, not one of these dozen boys could fail to swim, and two or three of them were first-rate divers.

Grandmother and Mother, convinced, raised no further objections and smiled. We immediately rushed out in a group.

My heavy heart suddenly grew light, and I felt as if my body had unfolded and expanded to an indescribable extent. As soon as we left the house, we saw the ferry-boat with its white awning moored at the bridge in the moonlight. We all jumped aboard. Shuangxi seized the forward pole and Ah Fa the stern pole. The younger boys sat with me in the middle of the boat, while the older ones grouped themselves at the stern. By the time Mother came out to call after us, "Be careful!" we had already pushed off. We bumped against the stone bridge, then moved back a few feet, before going forward under the bridge. Two oars were set up, each worked by two boys in rotation every li. Amid the talking and laughter we could hear the splash of water against the bow. And so our boat flew forward through the green fields of beans and wheat on both banks, straight toward Zhaozhuang.

The scent of beans, wheat, and river weeds wafted toward us through the mist, and the moonlight seemed shrouded in this haze. The faint, dark outline of the distant hills, which looked like leaping iron beasts, raced toward the stern of our boat; yet I still felt our boat was slow. After the rowers had changed places four times, we began to make out the vague shape of Zhaozhuang and seemed to hear the strains of songs and music. There were several lights too, which we guessed must be on the opera stage-or perhaps they were fishermen's lights.

The music was probably a flute, so melodious and haunting that it calmed my heart, and yet made me lose myself, as if I were about to dissolve into the night air, heavy with the fragrance of beans, wheat, and river weeds.

The lights drew nearer-they were indeed fishermen's lights. I realized then that what I had seen earlier was not Zhaozhuang. It was a pine wood directly ahead of the boat, where I had played the previous year and seen a broken stone horse lying on the ground and a stone goat crouching in the grass. Once past the wood, the boat rounded a bend into a tributary, and Zhaozhuang was really before us.

Dominating the scene was an opera stage standing in a plot of empty ground by the river outside the village, hazily outlined in the distant moonlight, almost merging with its surroundings. I wondered if a fairyland such as one sees in paintings had materialized here. Our boat was moving faster now, and soon we could make out figures on the stage and the garish reds and greens of their costumes. The river near the stage was black with the boat awnings of the opera-goers.

"There's no room near the stage. Let's watch from a distance," suggested Ah Fa.

The boat had slowed now, and we soon arrived. Sure enough, it was impossible to get close to the stage. We could only punt to a stop even farther away than the temporary shrine directly opposite the stage. Actually, we were not keen to moor next to those black-awned boats, especially since there was no room anyway…

While we were hastily mooring, there appeared on the stage a man with a long black beard and four pennants fixed to his back. He was brandishing a spear and fighting a whole group of bare-armed men. Shuangxi told us this was a famous acrobat who could turn eighty-four somersaults one after the other. He had counted them himself, one day!

We all crowded forward in the bow to watch the fighting. But the acrobat did not turn any somersaults. Only a few of the bare-armed men turned over and over upon the stage, then trooped off. Next, a xiaodan came out and sang in a shrill falsetto. Shuangxi remarked, "There aren't many in the audience tonight, and the acrobat's just going through the motions. Who'd want to show off his skill to an empty house?" I believed him, for by then there were indeed not many spectators. The country folk, having work to do the next day, could not stay up late, and had all gone to bed. The only people left were a scattered few idlers from Zhaozhuang and the villages around. Though some wealthy patrons and their families were still there in the black-awned boats, they were not really interested in the opera. Most of them had come to the stage only to eat cakes, fruit, or melon seeds. So it could really be considered an empty house.