Jingju lishi wenxian huibian: Qingdai juan 京劇歷史文獻彙編: 清 代卷 (Collected Historical Writings on Jingju: Qing Dynasty Section) ed. by Fu Jin (review)

CHINOPERL Papers No. 30 292 Jingju lishi wenxian huibian: Qingdai juan Ҁ࡛⅋৆᭛⥏ᔭ㎼: ⏙ ҷ ो (Collected Historical Writings on Jingju: Qing Dynasty Section). Edited by Fu Jin ٙ䄍. Nanjing: Fenghuan chuban she, 2011. 10 vols. Cloth RMB 1,480. Although the copyright date for this new collection reprinting material concerning Jingju Ҁ࡛ (a.k.a., Beijing opera, Peking opera, etc.) is given in the first volume as 2010, the same page also indicates that it was actually printed in 2011. It turns out that copies of the collection arrived in Beijing just in time for the fourth bi-annual conference on the study of Jingju hosted by Zhongguo xiqu xueyuan Ё ೟ ᠆ ᳆ᅌ 䰶 (National Academy of Theatre Arts) in May of that year.1 A special panel at the conference was devoted to the collection. The editor, Fu Jin, has been at the center of this series of bi-annual conferences as well as the drive to turn the study of Jingju into an academic discipline that is behind them.2 The associate editor of the collection is Gu Shuguang 䈋Ჭ‫ܝ‬, who was also, along with Wu Xinmiao ਇᮄ㢫, Ding Ruqin ϕ∱㢍, and Chen Tian 䱇ᙀ, responsible for editing or co-editing individual volumes of the collection. At the conference, there was discussion of the prospects of the appearance of a continuation of the collection to cover the Republican era, but the amount of material to be sifted through and the number of volumes that would be necessary to cover that period was acknowledged as truly daunting and it did not appear that at the time any concrete work had been done on any such continuation.3 Volumes 1-2 of the collection reproduce over sixty separately written or published specialized works (zhuanshu ᇜ ᳌ ) about Jingju or its antecedents, dating from the late 18th century to the end of the dynasty. While a lot of these are already readily available in reprints of Zhang &L[L¶V ᔉ ⃵ ⑾ Qingdai Yandu liyuan shiliao ⏙ ҷ ➩ 䛑 Ṽ ೦ ৆ ᭭ (Historical Material of Theatre in Qing Dynasty Beijing), many are not. Volume 3 covers material connected to the imperial palace and includes official documents, costume plots and performance scripts (chuantou І丁) 1 I am greatly indebted to the curator of the library at Zhongguo xiqu xueyuan, Hai Zhen ⍋䳛, for helping me procure a copy of the collection. 2 )X-LQ¶VSUHIDFHWRWKHFROOHFWLRQLVVHSDUDWHO\DYDLODEOHLQZhongguo Jingju Ё೟Ҁ࡛ (Jingju of China) 2011.5: 80-83. 3 The combined page count for the ten volumes of the Qing dynasty section alone is almost 8,000 pages. SHORT NOTICES OF NEW RESOURCES 293 for palace performances, the prefaces and tables of contents for two very long VHULDOSOD\VDQGGRFXPHQWVUHODWHGWRWKHDFWRUV¶JXLOGWKURXJKZKLFK the court organized and controlled actors in Beijing. Volume 4 reproduces articles (no ads) from the important Shanghai newspaper Shenbao ⬇ฅ and the next two volumes reproduce articles from other newspapers (including Youxi bao ␌᠆ฅ and Shuntian ribao ䷚໽᮹ฅ). Volume 7 includes material from almost 20 diaries. and volume 8 material from FROOHFWLRQV RI ³UDQGRP MRWWLQJV´ biji ㄚ 㿬) and other miscellaneous genres (including extracts from records of Korean diplomatic visits to Beijing, epigraphic material [beike ⹥ࠏ], prefaces and colophons, lists of plays, zhuzhi ci ネᵱ䀲 [bamboo-branch lyrics], and specialized journals [the two issues of Ershi shiji da wutai published in 1904 and extracts from journals such as Xin xiaoshuo [New Fiction]). The last two volumes reproduce illustrated works, some published separately and some as columns in periodical pictorials. Typset collections of this sort are, of course, no substitute for working with the originals, but since a good portion of the materials reproduced in the collection are either not presently easy to get hold of, either in their original form or as digitized copies, and some are truly rare (extant in a single copy only), such a collection as this serves a very valuable purpose. There are lots of treasures in this collection. It took several months for me to plow through my copy. Since Jingju is a visual art, I particularly recommend the two volumes of illustrated material. Of particular note in them are two lithographed collections of brief evaluations of actors, one focusing on actors 16 sui and younger in Beijing of the sort featured in huapu ´IORZHUUHJLVWHUV´ DQGRQHLQFOXGLQJ...