“Baldy’s Wedding Night”: A Post-Midnight Marionette Play from Shaanxi

CHINOPERL Papers No. 29 (2010)©2010 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature ―BALDY‘S WEDDING NIGHT‖: A POST-MIDNIGHT MARIONETTE PLAY FROM SHAANXI FAN PEN CHEN State University of New York, Albany The version of ―Baldy‘s Wedding Night‖ (Tuzi naofang 禿子鬧房) translated below is that performed by the government sponsored Marionette Troupe of Heyang County (Heyangxian Heqiang tixian mu‘ou jutuan 合 陽 縣 合 腔 提線 木 偶 劇 團 ). 1 Heyang, which is in Shaanxi Province, is the only location in northern China where the marionette 1 See Li Keming 李克明 et al., eds., Heyang xian’ouxi changduan jijin 合陽線偶戲唱段 集錦 (Collected Heyang Marionette Arias; Heyang: Shaanxisheng Heyangxian wenhua ju, 1999), pp. 12–15. This is a 42-page booklet compiled to help people follow along an audiotape of select plays and arias. The troupe did not give me a copy of the audio recording, but did present me with a copy of the VCD that the local Cultural Bureau and the troupe published concurrently with the tape. While the audiotape contains both new and old recordings, the VCD, titled Zhonghua yi jue—Shaanxi Heyangxian heqiang tixian mu’ouxi 中华一绝—陕西合陽縣合腔提線木偶戲 (A Treasure of China—The Heyang Music Marionette Theatre of Shaanxi) includes only new performances. Although the VCD contains a different selection of recordings from those on the audiotape, the complete version of ―Baldy‘s Wedding Night‖ translated here (but not the excerpts translated in the appendix) is included on the VCD. The troupe‘s addition of Heqiang (Heyang [musical] style) in its title might have been intended as a political statement. Traditionally, the marionette theatre of the region has been known as xianxi 線 戲 (―string opera‖) or xianqiangxi 線腔戲 (―string [music] opera). The term, Heqiang, seems to have been created to help drive home Heyang government‘s insistence that the marionette theatre in that region originated at Heyang. See Shi Yaozeng 史耀 增, ―Xianqiang yinggai jiao heqiang‖ 線腔應該叫合腔 (‗String Opera‘ Should be Called Heyang Opera) Xiyue yishu 西岳藝術 1999.2–3: 59–60; and his ―Xianqiangxi de laojia zai Heyang‖ 線腔戲的老家在合陽 (The Home of the Chinese Marionettes is in Heyang), Zoujin gu Xin 走近古莘 (Approaching the Ancient Land of Xin; Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe, 1998), pp.93–101. Shi Yaozeng is a very knowledgeable retired senior researcher of the Heyang Cultural Bureau. CHINOPERL Papers No. 29 134 theatre has survived. Post-Midnight Plays (hou banye xi 後半夜戲), also known as extra or additional plays (shaoxi 捎戲) or ribald plays (saoxi 騷 戲 ), are comical skits performed after midnight, when the women, children, and elderly men have left. Characterized traditionally by their bawdy content and the treatment of topics from daily life by a clown and a young female role, Post-Midnight Plays are found in a variety of theatrical media including the marionette theatre, the shadow theatre, and human actor minor operas (xiaoxi 小戲). They may be related to the lascivious skits found in the ancient religious masked nuo 儺 performances.2 Sexual content in such skits may have originally been employed to promote fertility. Under Confucianism traditionally and Communism in contemporary times, however, ―lewd plays‖ were condemned. Few PostMidnight Plays have been transcribed, and those that I have been able to find and collect have all been purged of explicit sexual content. One of the most delightful Post-Midnight plays I have encountered, ―Baldy‘s Wedding Night,‖ was similarly bowdlerized by the government troupe. An unscripted version of the play by a private troupe in rural Heyang probably would be studded with hilarious sexual innuendos and double entendres. Due to the evolving nature of unscripted performances that characterized Post-Midnight skits, the origin of this version of ―Baldy‖ is difficult to ascertain. But judging from the use of a fake queue or pigtail, this skit originated no later than the Qing dynasty when Chinese men were ordered by the ruling Manchus to wear queues. The reference to Qigong is of more recent vintage and suggests input possibly as late as the 1980s.3 In order to show the tremendous disparities that can exist among different versions of such originally orally transmitted skits, I append an excerpt from another version of ―Baldy‘s Wedding Night.‖ The text for this excerpt is included in the same source as for that of the full version,4 but the version it represents seems to have lost...