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Zi Cha (Mistaken Characters): A Short Shadow Play from Beijing
- CHINOPERL Papers
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 30, 2011
- pp. 183-220
- Article
- Additional Information
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CHINOPERL Papers No. 30 (2011)©2011 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature ZI CHA (MISTAKEN CHARACTERS): A SHORT SHADOW PLAY FROM BEIJING MARY E. HIRSCH1 Independent Scholar Zi cha ᆇᐞ (Mistaken Characters) is a rare comedy about a series of misunderstandings arising from a letter written by a young man overlyconfident of his writing skills that is read differently by different characters in the play. Imperfect mastery of writing and reading by ordinary folk might seem an odd topic for a shadow play, a type of regional opera regularly celebrated for enacting spectacular supernatural battles and visits to hell. But short plays such as this one are an important part of the repertoire in northeast China. The vast inventory of Chinese shadow plays includes many that are episodes from long story cycles based on history or myth. The script translated below, however, is not derived from any familiar plot, but is instead a one-of-a-kind, anonymous play with no known antecedent. It also stands out from the many short, burlesque plays known in the Beijing area for its emphasis on language and puns and because it focuses on ordinary people. The story has quite a bit of fun with people just trying to make a living. The script features a mix of classical and colloquial language spoken by a family of pawnshop owners, a brash simpleton, and a schoolteacher. The way the characters in the play use words and names exhibits a special interest in language and communication. The Chinese language naturally lends itself to punning (and miscommunication), in both written and spoken forms, because of the high number of homophones. Such punning and miscommunication is at the center of the play and is used to great 1 I would like thank the editor and assistant editor and the anonymous reviewers for their help with the preparation of the translation and its introduction. CHINOPERL Papers No. 30 184 effect. The action begins with the trusting father, Sun Zihui, dictating a letter home to Sun Gui, his not overly-educated son, who miswrites several characters and ends up turning what was intended as a simple letter into the catalyst that will, with a little help, turn the Sun family completely upside down when it is delivered back home. In the play, customs that dictate reticence between strangers and especially between women and men instead devolve into a series of surprisingly rude exchanges between the supposedly docile old Ms. Qian 6XQ=LKXL¶VZLIH DQGWKHVLPSOHWRQPHVVHQJHU0DR%DR0HDQZKLOH Sun Gui, despite his ineptitude, always addresses his father and Master Zhou, the schoolmaster, in the most obsequious sounding formal language. While this usage seems slightly out of place, so too does the creative invective that the angry Sun Zihui later unleashes on his subservient daughter-in-law. The inappropriate use of important sounding phrases is 0DVWHU=KRX¶VIRUWH+LVFKDUDFWHULVDFDOFXODWHGGHSLFWLRQRIDSHGDQWLF scholar whose erudition is lost on the unlettered people who surround him. The conflicts and contrasts between different levels of literacy and language use are at the center of the play. Zi cha is one of only eight shadow theater scripts included in the famous and voluminous Prince Che 䓺⦻ collection of oral performing literature manuscripts.2 These manuscripts from the household of Prince Che in Beijing came onto the old book market in batches after the fall of the Qing dynasty. Some researchers made manuscript copies of them, and the original manuscripts and those early copies of them ended up in various library collections in China, Taiwan, and Japan. The largest 2 See Qiu Jiang ӷ⊏ ³&KH ZDQJ IX TXEHQ ]RQJPX´ 䓺⦻ᓌᴢᵜ㑭ⴞ (Complete List of the Contents of the Prince Che Collection of Performance Manuscripts), Zhongshan daxue xuebao ѝኡབྷᆨᆨ (Journal of Sun Yatsen University) 2000.4: 119±28, p. 123, for the eight titles, the originals for which are all held at the Capital Library (Shoudu tushuguan 俆䜭െᴨ佘) in Beijing. None of the eight plays is a serial play. It is not clear why there are so few shadow theater texts in this huge collection or why none of them are serial plays. By contrast, 108 volumes (volumes 166±273) in Su wenxue...