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KUNQU CONCERT AT LION HILL AND KUNQU AMATEUR CONVENTION AT SUZHOU, November 2001 BRET SUTCLIFFE University of Chicago The UNESCO world heritage listing ofkunqu~EIE· (Kun regional opera) as an oral masterpiece in May 2001 has spurred a flurry of congratulatory events with three. amateur opera conventions. (quhui ElE~) held in the last four months. The latest convention, held in Suzhou in November, coincided with a series of concerts by prizewinning artists to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Suzhou Kunqu Training School (SuzhouKunqu chuanxi suo ~~+I~ElE1_~pJT). The highlight of this week-long event was the outdoor kunqu concert at Lion Hill (Huqiu mIT) in Suzhou. The concert·drew inspiration from the annual mid-autumn festival concert held at the same site from the early sixteenth century up until the midQing .1 The concert is memorably described in Zhang Dai's (15971685 ?) memoir: "As the sky darkened and the moon rose, drums and horns sounded out loudly on all sides, followed by ten rounds of the cymbals and a thrashing of the drums, thundering and rumbling the ground so that even shouting was inaudible .... The crowd sung songs like 'Unfurl the brocade sails' and 'Endless clear lake' in a grand chorus and stamped to the beat of the gongs, blending with the stringed instruments, flutes and voices, so thata listener couldn't tell one from the other.,,2 Gathering overtive hundred people into the site's natural rock canyon, this year's concertpresented.a one-hour program of performances by local school and university choirs, amateur singers and professionals, accompanied by an orchestra of period instruments. True to.its "chorus of thousands" .tradition, the concert began and ended with chorus renditions of tunes from Palace of Eternal Life and a poem by Mao Zedong. Particularly worthy of mention was a performance by one of the few living graduates of the Training School Ni Chuanyue {~1t&JX, CHINOPERL Papers No. 24 (2002)© 2002 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. CHINOPERL Papers No. 24 now 93 years old, who drew warm applause from the audience. The event was recorded for television broadcast and the Suzhou authorities have plans to hold the event annually. While previous concerts at Lion Hill on the mid-Autumn festival in 1982, 1988 and 2000 were small scale day-long events organized by enthusiastic amateurs, the concert this year bore all the accoutrements of a state-sponsored event: TV cameras, loud speakers and longwinded official speeches. But taken in context, this year's concert forms just the latest in a series of events held over the past few years in mainland China to promote the solidification ofkunqu as China's preeminent performing art form. The establishment of the Kunqu Museum in· 1994, the revival ofthe'Yongjia (Wenzhou) Kunqu Troupe in 1999 and events like the 2000 Inaugural SuzhouKunqu Festival testify to the activity that finally culminated iil the UNESCO listing. In some respects, the listing vindicates the support' given by the government of the People's Republic to the performing arts .. Indeed, '. official sources routinely portray the Chinese state as the 'savior of kunqu from its pre-liberation state ofnear..:death. Other commentators, however, point out more soberly that the listing also implies the' "endangerment" ofkunqu as it continues to face shrinking audiences and inadequate government.subsidies. Aside from, the rhetoric of rejuvenation and crisis that do'minates much of the official discourse, the current burst ofkunqu activity also occurs at a time when kunqu is being taken up as an art form of the metropolitan middle class with amateur opera clubs {qushe BEtJ) exerting a significant influence in this trend; Of twenty clubs attending a previous amateur convention held in Yangzhou in October, only one amateur group came from a non-metropolitan level, and a list of participants' backgrounds revealed that most were affiliated with white-collar government departments~ work units, and;enterprises. The formation of amateur opera clubs at Fudan (established 2001) and Suzhou University (established: 1991)'is-indicative of the emergence of amateur groups as a meeting place for the educated metropolitan middle·class .. Such clubs are flourishing,as adjuncts to the drama research aridteaching'activities in.fhose institutions. Young ptofessionals...

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