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Jingju is a highly stylized song-dance theatre with specific role types, internationally renowned for breathtaking acrobatics, exquisite costumes and striking make-up. Like every theatre in the world, it is a socio-cultural product. Its performers stand between its strong theatrical tradition and the implicit, and sometimes explicit, interference of formidable external forces. Performers are the real creators of jingju, not only because “the audience comes to see the actor rather than the play” as A. C. Scott has observed (1957, 17), but also because they are social beings as well as presenters of the genre. Their response to the diverse and continuously changing demands of theatre and society makes jingju what it is and maintains it in a state of constant mutation. As shown in previous chapters, jingju has been inseparable from the concept of “re-form” since its inception. Its birth was a result of re-forming pre-existent music and genres, and thus one of the most distinctive characteristics of the new theatrical amalgamation was the interrelation of different styles. Although some other regional genres share some similar features, jingju is outstanding because it was also born at the time when China was undergoing one of the most difficult periods of its history. The repeated defeats inflicted by foreign powers on the Qing empire challenged the traditional belief that “Heaven does not change; nor does the Way” (Ban Gu c. 90/2000, 680).1 National humiliation and their patriotic desire to “save China” made Chinese intellectuals direct their gaze to the outside world. Recognizing China’s weaknesses and backwardness, they advocated the importance of “reform”. In many ways, the interaction between the reform spirit and the belief in the immutable Way of the universe has formed the dynamics of modern Chinese culture since the late nineteenth century, although the radical intellectuals and the Epilogue New Beginnings or the Beginning of the End? 1 An important Confucian saying, attributed to Dong Zhongshu (179–04 BC), a Confucian scholar and politician. 276 The Soul of Beijing Opera establishments prevailing at different periods have each imposed their own ideology upon it. The interaction has sometimes taken strange and unexpected forms.2 In the early twentieth century, jingju followed the cultural vogue. The reformed jingju that appeared only a few decades after the genre’s emergence exemplified its “forward-looking” nature and Mei Lanfang’s brave formal experiments led to more acting styles (pai) on the jingju stage. As jingju gained popularity throughout China, individual actors were motivated to still bolder innovations. In particular, Cheng Yanqiu was known in jingju circles as one of the greatest reformers. The Republican desire for new beginnings and jingju’s capacity to assimilate different styles encouraged performers to recreate existing stage conventions, either to vitalize the old repertoire or to present new plays. Battles between innovation and tradition were fought and negotiated through performers’ artistic philosophies. Like evolution in the natural world, new elements unaccepted by either audiences or performers were abandoned while well-received ones were absorbed by the tradition. Through this steady but dynamic communication, tradition was carried on and jingju developed. This is the meaning of “passing-down and carrying-on” (chuancheng) in jingju. However, the golden age of jingju shared the fate of the whole nation devastated by the 1937–45 Sino-Japanese war and then the civil war. When the sweeping Communist victory finally brought peace in 1949, optimism that the Chinese Communist Party could give the country a prosperous socialist future faded amid the consecutive political campaigns aiming to remould both outlook and culture. More reforms took place, this time governed by CCP’s ideology. Jingju circles were turned upside down by the Theatre Reform. On one hand, performers were wholeheartedly delighted because the “debased” status accorded to actors for more than a thousand years was replaced with the honourable title of “people’s artists”. On the other, they were overwhelmed by their new responsibility as “gears and screws in the machine” of proletarian revolution. A play, a line or even a gesture might be taken to represent their political standpoint. Formal and institutional changes were forced through; jingju was made part of socialist culture; the revolutionary contemporary model jingju was the ultimate victory of the Communist Theatre Reform. When, in the 1980s, the “open-door” policy and economic reforms brought new challenges, performers had to respond again. In Taiwan, also — although in quite different ways — jingju was inextricably intertwined with politics and national identity; generations of performers...

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