Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770-1900 by Andrea S. Goldman (review)

From 1770 to 1900, Beijing was the center of a vibrant opera culture in multi-ethnic Qing China, where the Manchu minority ruled over the Han Chinese majority. Tightly anchored on historical and literary sources, and informed by gender and cultural studies, Goldman’s erudite social history of opera takes us on an exciting walk in the capital city, from the height of the empire to the foreign occupation in 1900 that disrupted the state, the society, and the practice of opera. Augmented by fascinating illustrations, the text unravels the evolving opera culture as it tracks turning points where politics, society, and war shaped the urbanite community of a million people.

In the first chapter Goldman constructs the contemporary discourse of opera through sixteen guidebooks, or “flower registers,” a genre that she compares to ethnographies. These were nostalgic biographies of “boy actresses” (boys playing young lady roles and eroticized as female beauties and flower metaphors), homoerotic poetry, patronage, and theater gossip. The authors, themselves opera fans and aficionados, were male and southerners sojourning in Beijing, all immersed in classical literature and feeling unappreciated by the social and political echelons of power. Like the biographers of courtesans, they intended to address the gap in the historical records on the opera actors, their skills, beauty, and sensibilities. The flower registers equated the gender ambiguity of a boy-actress acting feminine to that of a courtesan possessing the male scholar’s literary skills; such “gender performing” and “gender-bending” conduct was acceptable social practice for entertainers and did not transgress social norms. This discourse of opera circulated in public space, guided opera connoisseurship, and educated the audience.

The next two chapters focus on state interventions in performance venue and opera genre. The commercial playhouses and temple fairs served as public venues while private venues were located in salons and Qing palaces. Opera was considered a Han cultural practice that the Manchu emperors and banner aristocracy enjoyed. To preserve the distinction between Manchus and Han Chinese, the state allowed playhouses to be located only in the Outer City, where 90% of the population was Han Chinese. High-ranking officials and the bannermen were forbidden to go to the playhouses and mix with the Chinese population. Nor were women allowed, on stage or in the audience. To better regulate public morality and maintain social control, the state imposed curfews and forced performances to begin at noon and to wrap up by 5–7 pm. But enforcement became relaxed, as wealthy women attended and Manchu patrons mixed with the Han Chinese. Goldman contends that cross-dressing on stage did not transgress social norms of gender, especially when such acts were accompanied by parody and humor. The temple fairs were open to women and the poor; they had fewer restrictions but the state still scrutinized the performances. In the private venues, scheduling was more flexible and invited guests included women, who sat in segregated space.

The Qing state achieved greater success at mandating the musical style, taste or the performance genre, but the genre that it eventually patronized was the product of extensive blending of regional styles. Earlier the state preferred the elitist, highbrow, kun opera, so it ordered the popular qinqiang performers to switch to kun and yi styles. To meet with the legislation, qinqiang actors changed names and adjusted melodies; at the same time kun troupes also borrowed from qinqiang style. In the 1770s, Anhui troupes arrived in Beijing and incorporated xipi and erhuang melodies to produce the hybridized pihuang opera, now known as Beijing opera. Designated as lowbrow entertainment, pihuang opera became popular among lower classes. When the Taiping Rebellion dismantled kun troupes in the 1850s, the Qing court in Beijing forged a new identity with commoners and treated the outlawry found in pihuang opera as patriotism. The Qing patronage of pihuang opera gave it new respect and elevated it to middlebrow and high culture.

In the last...