社戏 (Village Opera)

Looking back over the past twenty years, I've only seen Chinese opera twice. In the first decade, I never went, lacking both the inclination and the opportunity. Both viewings were in the latter ten years, and each time I left without having seen anything to speak of.

The first time was in the first year of the Republic, soon after I arrived in Beijing. A friend told me then that Beijing opera was the finest, asking if I wouldn't like to go and broaden my horizons. I thought opera might be interesting, especially in Beijing. So off we went eagerly to some theater or other. The performance had already begun, and from outside we could early on hear the thumping of drums. We squeezed through the entrance, and a blur of reds and greens flashed before my eyes. Then I saw the area below the stage was packed with heads. When I collected myself to look around, I noticed there were still a few empty seats in the middle. As we pushed forward to sit, someone spoke to me. My ears were already ringing with the cacophony, so I had to concentrate to hear him say, "These are taken!"

We retreated, and a man with a very glossy queue led us to the side and pointed out a place. This so-called place turned out to be a long bench. Yet its seat was a good three-quarters narrower than my thighs, and its legs were over two-thirds longer than my lower legs. At first, I lacked the courage to climb onto it. Then it reminded me of some instrument of torture used in secret trials, and I couldn't help but walk out with a shudder.

After walking a good distance, I suddenly heard my friend's voice asking, "What on earth is the matter?" I turned and saw that he had followed me out. He said in surprise, "Why do you keep walking without answering?" I replied, "My apologies, old fellow. My ears were so full of that booming and clanging, I didn't hear you."

Later, whenever I thought of it, I found it very strange. It seemed the opera was particularly bad-or else I had recently become unfit for survival under an opera stage.

I've forgotten which year the second time was, but it was during a fundraiser for the Hubei flood relief, when the famous actor Tan Xinpei was still alive. The method was to buy a theater ticket for two dollars, granting entry to the First Stage. Most of the performers were famous actors, one of whom was Tan Xinpei's son. I bought a ticket merely as a perfunctory gesture to the solicitors, but then some enthusiast seized the chance to impress upon me the absolute necessity of seeing the elder Tan perform. Thus, forgetting the earlier auditory disaster, I actually went to the First Stage. Partly, it was because the expensive ticket, bought at considerable cost, ought to be used to feel satisfied. I had heard that Tan Xinpei made his entrance late, and since the First Stage was of modern construction with no need to scramble for seats, I felt at ease and delayed until nine o'clock before setting out. Who would have thought it would be, as usual, packed to the rafters, making it hard even to find standing room? I had to squeeze into the distant crowd to watch an elderly female singer on stage. She had two lit paper spills inserted at the corners of her mouth, with a demon soldier beside her. After much pondering, I suspected she might be Mulian's mother, for later a monk came out. Still, I didn't know who the famous actor was, so I asked a portly gentleman crammed to my left. He shot me a sidelong glance full of disdain and said, "Gong Yunpu!" Ashamed of my ignorance and carelessness, I flushed hotly, and at once my mind resolved never to ask again. So I watched the young female singer, the coquettish female singer, the older male singer, some unknown role sing, a large troupe fight in chaos, two or three people battle each other-from just past nine to ten, from ten to eleven, from eleven to half-past, from half-past to midnight-yet Tan Xinpei still hadn't come.

I had never waited for anything with such patience before, let alone amid the wheezing breath of the portly gentleman beside me, the booming clamor on stage, the dizzying swirl of reds and greens, compounded by the midnight hour, which suddenly made me realize I was unfit for survival here. Mechanically, I twisted my body and pushed outward with force. I felt the space behind me was already full-likely the elastic gentleman had expanded into my vacant spot. With no retreat, I naturally pushed and squeezed until I finally emerged through the main door. The street was almost deserted except for a few carriages waiting for patrons. By the entrance, a dozen or so people still craned their necks at the playbill, while another cluster stood idly. I thought they were probably waiting to see the women who would emerge after the show... but Tan Xinpei had still not arrived.

Yet the night air was refreshing, truly what one calls "bracing." In Beijing, encountering such good air felt like the first time.

That night marked my farewell to Chinese opera. Afterward, I never gave it another thought. Even when occasionally passing a theater, it held no connection for me; our spirits had long been as far apart as the poles.

But a few days ago, I happened upon a Japanese book by chance. Unfortunately, I've forgotten the title and author, but it was about Chinese opera. One essay, in essence, said that Chinese opera is all loud drumming, shouting, and leaping, which dizzies the audience and makes it quite unsuitable for theaters. But if viewed from afar in open, rural settings, it possesses a charm of its own. I felt this articulated what had been in my mind but never put into words, for I distinctly remembered watching an excellent performance in the countryside. My two subsequent visits to Beijing theaters might well have been influenced by that memory. Regrettably, I don't know how I forgot the book's title.

As for when I saw that excellent opera, it was indeed "in the far, faraway past." I was probably only eleven or twelve then. In my hometown, a market town I'll call Luzhen, it was customary for married daughters who were not yet managing their own households to return to their maternal homes for the summer. At that time, though my grandmother was still healthy, my mother had taken on some household duties, so she couldn't return for extended summer visits. She could only spare a few days after the grave-sweeping festival, and I would accompany her each year to my maternal grandmother's home. The place was called Pingqiao Village, a small, remote, riverside hamlet not far from the sea, with fewer than thirty households, all engaged in farming or fishing. There was only one tiny general store. But to me, it was a paradise: for here I not only received preferential treatment but was also spared from reciting lines like "Torrents rush through ravines deep, Southern hills in quiet sleep."

My playmates were many children. Because a guest from afar had come, they obtained permission from their parents to reduce their chores and play with me. In a small village, a family's guest is almost a communal one. We were all around the same age, but in terms of generational seniority, some were at least my uncles, and a few were even my grandfathers, since the whole village shared the same surname and were kin. Yet we were friends. Even if we quarreled occasionally and I, say, hit a grandfather, no one in the village, young or old, would ever think of the term "insubordination." And ninety-nine percent of them were illiterate.

Our daily routine mostly involved digging for earthworms, threading them onto small copper-wire hooks, and lying by the riverbank to catch shrimp. Shrimp are the fools of the aquatic world, never hesitating to use their pincers to carry the hook's tip into their mouths. So within half a day, we could catch a large bowlful. By custom, the shrimp were mine to eat. Next, we would go together to herd the cattle, but perhaps because they were higher animals, both the yellow ox and the water buffalo would bully a stranger and dared to intimidate me. Thus, I never dared approach them closely, only following from afar and standing still. At such times, the children no longer excused my ability to recite from the classics but all laughed at me instead.

But what I most looked forward to was going to Zhaozhuang to see the opera. Zhaozhuang was a larger village about two miles from Pingqiao. Pingqiao was too small to stage its own opera, so every year it paid Zhaozhuang a sum of money for a share in the performance. At the time, I didn't ponder why they performed annually. Now I think it must have been a ritual opera for the spring festival, a proper village opera.

In the year I was eleven or twelve, the date finally seemed within reach. Unfortunately, that year proved disappointing, as we couldn't hire a boat in the morning. Pingqiao Village had only one large ferry boat that went out at dawn and returned at dusk, and it was certainly not available for other uses. The rest were small boats, unsuitable. We sent requests to neighboring villages, but none were available-all had been booked. My grandmother was annoyed, blaming the family for not booking earlier, and she began to fret. My mother soothed her, saying the opera back in Luzhen was much better than in any small village, and we could see it several times a year anyway, so we should let it go for today. Only I was frantic, nearly in tears. My mother earnestly admonished me not to act up, lest I upset Grandmother again, and not to go with the other children, saying Grandmother would worry.

In short, it was over. By afternoon, my friends had all gone. The opera had begun. I seemed to hear the gongs and drums and knew they were buying soybean milk under the stage to drink.

That day, I didn't go shrimp-catching and ate very little. My mother was troubled but could think of no solution. By dinnertime, Grandmother finally noticed and said I must be unhappy, that they had been neglectful in a way never seen in the rules of hospitality. After the meal, the youngsters who had seen the opera gathered around, happily discussing it. Only I remained silent. They all sighed and expressed sympathy.

Suddenly, the cleverest boy among them, a lad named Shuangxi, seemed to have an epiphany. "A big boat?" he said. "Hasn't Eighth Uncle's ferry boat returned?" A dozen other boys also caught on and immediately urged that we could take that boat and all go together. I was delighted. But Grandmother feared they were all children, unreliable. My mother added that it was unreasonable to ask any adults to accompany us, as they had work all day and couldn't be expected to stay up late. Amid this hesitation, Shuangxi perceived the heart of the matter and declared loudly, "I'll vouch for them! The boat is big; Brother Xun never runs amok; and we all can swim!"

It was true. Among these dozen boys, not one couldn't swim, and two or three were real experts at riding the tides.

Grandmother and Mother were convinced and, no longer objecting, broke into smiles. We immediately rushed out the door in a boisterous crowd.

My heavy heart suddenly lightened, and my body too seemed to expand to an unutterable spaciousness. Once outside, I saw a white-canopied ferry boat moored in the creek under the moonlight. We all jumped aboard. Shuangxi took the forward pole, Afa the stern pole. The younger ones sat with me in the cabin, while the older boys gathered at the stern. By the time Mother came out to urge caution, we had already pushed off, scraping against the bridge stone, backing up a few feet, and then moving forward out from under the bridge. Then we raised the two sculling oars. Two boys to each oar, they swapped every half-mile or so. There was chatter, there were shouts, and mingled with the潺潺 sound of the bow cutting through water, we flew like an arrow straight toward Zhaozhuang, up the river flanked on both sides by the deep green fields of beans and wheat.

The faint, fragrant aroma from the bean and wheat fields on both banks and from the aquatic plants below, mingled with the moisture in the air, blew softly against our faces. The moonlight grew hazy in this misty vapor. The faint black outlines of the undulating hills, like the backs of some leaping iron beasts, all seemed to be rushing far away toward the stern of our boat, yet I still felt we were going too slow. They had swapped oars four times when we began to make out the vague silhouette of Zhaozhuang and seemed to hear the strains of song and flute. I also spotted a few pinpoints of light, which I supposed must be the stage, though they might have been fishing lights.

The sound I heard was probably that of a horizontal flute. It was haunting, mellifluous, soothing my heart, yet at the same time making me feel a kind of self-oblivion, as if I were about to drift and disperse with it into the night air laden with the scent of beans, wheat, and duckweed.

As those lights drew near, I saw they were indeed fishing lights. I then remembered that what I had glimpsed earlier was not Zhaozhuang. It was a small wood of pine and cypress directly ahead of our boat. I had played there the previous year and had seen a broken stone horse lying on the ground and a stone goat crouching in the grass. Once past that wood, the boat curved into a tributary, and then Zhaozhuang was truly before our eyes.

Most striking was a stage standing on a plot of open ground by the river outside the village. Blurred in the distant moonlight, it was almost indistinguishable from its surroundings. I fancied a fairyland I had seen in paintings had appeared here. The boat now seemed to move faster. Before long, we could see figures on the stage and the red and green of their costumes moving about. And in the river near the stage, a dark, formless mass was the canopied boats of the theatergoers.

"There's no space left near the stage. Let's watch from here," suggested Afa.

By now the boat had slowed. We arrived shortly, but indeed could not get close to the stage. We had to stop, our poles down, even farther away than the temporary shrine that had been set up directly facing the stage. To tell the truth, our white-canopied boat had no desire to moor among those black-canopied ones anyway… and besides, there was no space.

In the bustle of stopping the boat, I saw on the stage a man with a long black beard and four pennants on his back, brandishing a spear and fighting a whole group of bare-armed men. Shuangxi told us that this was the famous Iron-Head Veteran Actor, who could turn eighty-four somersaults in succession, as he had personally counted one day.

We all crowded at the bow to watch the fight. But that Iron-Head Veteran Actor did not perform any somersaults. Only a few of the bare-armed men turned a few times, then they all went off. Next, a young female role came out and sang in a squeaky voice. Shuangxi said, "There aren't many spectators in the evening. The Iron-Head Veteran Actor has grown lax. Who's willing to display his skills to an empty ground?" I believed him, for by then there were indeed few people in front of the stage. The country folk, with work waiting the next day, could not stay up late and had mostly gone to bed. Standing scattered about were a few dozen idlers from the village and the neighbors. The families of the local gentry in the black-canopied boats were still there, but they weren't there for the opera. Most had come primarily to eat cakes, fruit, and melon seeds under the stage. So it could very well be considered an empty ground.