Mei Lanfang quanji 梅 蘭芳全集 (The complete works of Mei Lanfang). Edited by Fu Jin 傅謹. 8 vols. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe and Zhongguo xiju chuban she, 2016
- Mei Lanfang quanji 梅 蘭芳全集 (The complete works of Mei Lanfang). Edited by Fu Jin 傅謹. 8 vols. Beijing: Beijing chubanshe and Zhongguo xiju chuban she, 2016
David L. Rolston is Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. After working and publishing on traditional Chinese fiction (with an emphasis on traditional Chinese fiction commentary and its influence on later writers), for some time he has turned his attention primarily to traditional Chinese theater in general and Jingju (Peking opera) in particular. While studying in Taiwan in the early 1980s he discovered that Jingju was a convenient avenue to at least one kind of Chinese past. He participated in student productions and worked at Fuxing Opera School in Taiwan. He has taught and lectured at the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts, and produced English language introductory material and subtitles for Jingju and Kunqu troupes in Taiwan, Beijing, and the U.S. He is presently working on a book on the “textualization” of Jingju (the writing down, circulation, and consumption of Jingju plays in various written forms).
Footnotes
1. Mei Shaowu 梅紹武, ed., Mei Lanfang quanji 梅蘭芳全集 [Complete works of Mei Lanfang], 8 vols. (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu, 2000).
2. The older collection only included 66 pieces, earliest one dated 1945 (a total of only two were published before 1949), in its equivalent volume (Volume 3). The earliest item in Volume 1 of the new collection dates from 1919.
3. Mei Lanfang began publishing autobiographical works as early as 1943. Two examples from that year, “Sishi nian xiju shenghuo” 四十年戲劇生活 (Forty years of theatrical life) and “Zhuiyu xuan huiyi lu” 綴玉軒回憶錄 (Memoirs from Zhuiyu Studio), are included in Volume 1 of the collection (pp. 90–102 and 103–12).
4. The preface, however, does not indicate that the two versions of the diary (see below) were published in string-bound facsimile form under the same title by the publishing house of the National Library in Beijing (Guojia tushu guan chuban she 國家圖書館出版社) in 2015 (in this edition, the edited version is reproduced in photo-reprint form while material from the original version is given in typeset form). The one-page preface of the diary reproduced in the facsimile version does not appear in the new edition of Mei’s collected works.
