The Rise of Cantonese Opera by Wing Chung Ng (review)

Ng’s account of Cantonese opera (Yueju) from ca. 1900 to the 1930s falls into three parts: three chapters offering an account of the rise of a modern Cantonese opera profession in and around the city of Guangzhou in the first decades of the twentieth century; two chapters focusing specifically on the relationship of popular theater and the state; and a final three chapters that examine the significant transnational setting of Cantonese opera at that time, with Vancouver acting as a principal site for exploration. Ng’s writing is richly informed by archival study on each side of the Pacific, and the result is a distinctive new contribution to our understanding not only of Cantonese opera itself but of the social conditions impacting Chinese theater more widely in the first half of the twentieth century.

Chapter 1 provides a history of traditional opera in Guangdong, with particular emphasis given at first to the rise of a distinctive bifurcated culture of elite troupes hailing from other provinces (the so-called waijiang ban) and more lowly local troupes (bendi ban). This is a readable and engaging account. In a representative passage, Ng quotes a vivid 1840s account by provincial official Yang Maojian that compares each type of troupe. Yang begins by praising the artistry of the waijiang ban, which offer a feast for the ears. He describes the local troupes as mostly specialized in the performance of acrobatics and fighting dramas: “A few of these players are [actually] quite pleasing in appearance,” Yang admits, “but they freeze just like wooden chicken and spoil the occasion [for everyone]” (p. 18; Ng’s additions in square brackets). Like earlier scholars, Ng draws our attention to the elitist biases of the commentator, but he then goes on to remind us that this account dates from well after the heyday of the waijiang troupes, leading to a discussion of the process of artistic localization then already well under way in the Guangzhou area. His analysis ends with consideration of three primary institutions that supported the rise of large-scale Cantonese-language musical drama in this province: the well-known “red boats” (hongchuan) that provided both homes and transport for itinerant troupes, the rise of a centralized bookings clearing-house from the 1860s on (the Jiqing Gongsuo) that coordinated troupes and handled contractual arrangements with a range of traditional patrons, and the workings of a newly established guild (the Bahe Huiguan) that aimed to bring protective regulation to all those in the acting profession.

In his second chapter, Ng describes the urbanization of Cantonese opera in Hong Kong and then Guangzhou, from the early 1900s up to 1925. As a highly commercialized form of public entertainment occupying large-scale, purpose-built theaters, Cantonese opera took on innovative aesthetic and organizational characteristics at this time, not least in its shift to the use of vernacular Cantonese and the rise of a star system of leading actors. This prominence is reflected in a plethora of new forms of unpublished and published data, including contracts, newspaper advertisements, and pictorial magazines aimed at fans, which Ng draws from in his richly grounded account. Again, his writing is primarily concerned with understanding the institutional history of the genre, although there’s plenty of consideration given to the outstanding individuals whose specific agency led cultural work in one direction or another. An instance is the fascinating detail on the apprenticeship agreements called shiyue and debt bondage contracts known as ban ling, each of which allowed troupe owners to control the employment, income, and livelihood of actors over potentially lengthy periods (pp. 40–42). We also get the first description here of the significance of diasporic markets for Cantonese opera, with performers touring to (or hailing from) Cantonese enclaves in Southeast Asia and along the North American Pacific coastline.

Chapter 3 deals with the crash of the late 1920s...