Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture

8. Three Kingdoms at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century The Shanghai Jingju Company’s Cao Cao and Yang Xiu

111 8 Three Kingdoms at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century The Shanghai Jingju Company’s Cao Cao and Yang Xiu ‫ﱠ‬ Eliabeth Wichmann-Walcak Theatrical versions of Three Kingdoms events are among the most vivid and pervasive in popular Chinese culture. Arguably, even today Three Kingdoms characters are “perhaps better known through stage-performances than by actual reading.”1 The Shanghai Jingju Company’s Cao Cao and Yang Xiu, originally mounted in 1988 and significantly revised and restaged in 1995, is one of the most recent of these theatrical versions.2 It is also one of the most successful. I believe that Cao Cao and Yang Xiu is one of the finest pieces of theater created in the twentieth century anywhere in the world, and that it is certainly one of the finest jingju in existence today. Others agree with me. In 1988, it was named an Outstanding New Jingju Play (Youxiu jingju xin jumu) at the Ministry of Culture’s (national) Festival of New Jingju Plays; in 1989 it received the National Xiqu Institute Award; and in 1995, Cao Cao and Yang Xiu was awarded the grand prize at the National Festival of Jingju Art, in essence recognizing it as the finest jingju created since the Cultural Revolution. At the symposium held by the Chinese Theater Artists Association in celebration of that recognition, scholars and artists praised the production as “simultaneously providing a window into history and a clear image of contemporary problems,” and as the finest play ever created about Cao Cao.3 And Cao Cao and Yang Xiu’s audience reception matches this extraordinary critical acclaim—it continues to fill houses whenever it is performed. The success of this play and its production at the Shanghai Jingju Company throw intriguing light on twentyfirst -century theatrical possibilities for both Three Kingdoms material and the jingju theatrical form. Cao Cao and Yang Xiu is based on characters and incidents in chapter 72 of the Mao Zonggang edition of Luo Guanzhong’s novel Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi tongsu yanyi.) In the latter part of that chapter, Cao is camped at Xiegu, unable to advance and unwilling to retreat. Asked to provide the night’s password while gazing into a bowl of chicken soup and considering this untenable military situation, Cao says“chicken tendons (jilei).” When Yang learns of this password, he interprets it as meaning that Cao has decided to retreat—as he explains to Xiahou Dun, it is a shame to waste chicken tendons, but they are tasteless; hence, there being no advantage to maintaining the present situation, it is best to retreat. Yang and Xiahou ready their men to do so, Yang saying that he wants to avoid rush and confusion later. When this preparation for retreat comes to Cao’s attention, he is furious and has Yang beheaded for destroying the morale of the soldiers. The novelist then explains that Yang Xiu is an officer whose intellectual brilliance is both useful and threatening to Cao Cao, and that Yang himself is inclined to show off unnecessarily and inappropriately. Yang has easily been able to divine the meaning of riddles Cao has created involving the composition of written-characters. Yang has provided intellectual assistance to one of Cao’s sons while appearing to plot against the other. And Yang has let Cao know that Cao can keep no secrets from him—that while others may believe Cao was truly asleep when he killed an attendant who placed a cover over him, Yang knows that in fact Cao was awake and acted intentionally. Cao has therefore been looking for the right opportunity to get rid of Yang, and Yang’s apparent prognostication of retreat serves this purpose for him. In the end, however, Cao is wounded and finally does retreat.Two other minor incidents in the chapter, not actually connected with the story of Yang Xiu, are featured in the play as well: Cao Cao sends a written declaration of war to which Zhuge Liang replies that they will fight the next day, and Zhang Fei and Wei Yan are sent along two different routes to cut off Cao’s supplies. This simple story, taking about as much space in the novel itself as it has just done in this essay, is brought alive for contemporary audiences in the jingju Cao Cao and Yang Xiu, in a way that both provokes deep thought and provides intense aesthetic enjoyment. While the basic plot is the same, significant alterations...