Lixiang Shiye Guifan: Xiqu Jiaoyu de Shiyan—Beiping Shi Sili Zhongguo Gaoji Xiqu Zhiye Xuexiao (Zhonghua Xixiao) (1930–1940) (Ideal, Vision, Norms: An Experiment in Traditional Theatre Education—Beiping Private advanced Vocational School of Traditional Theatre [Chinese Theatre School] [1930–1940]) by Li Ruru (review)

As one of the best-known jingju (Beijing opera) schools in Republican (1912–1949) China that produced some of the genre’s most prominent stars, including the author’s mother, Li Yuru (1924–2008), the Zhonghua Xiqu Xuexiao (Chinese Traditional Theatre School or Zhonghua Xixiao [Chinese Theatre School],¹ 1930–1940) has yet to receive the type of scholarly attention it deserves. Even in Chinese scholarship, the lack of in-depth research on the school forms a sharp contrast to that on Fuliancheng (1904–1948), often considered the standard bearer of Republican-era jingju education as a keban, the traditional name for a theatre school generally with a male-only student body and exclusive focus on skill transmission. By contrast, as Li Ruru argues in this Chinese-language monograph, the Chinese Traditional Theatre School was more of a hybrid product of both conventional skill transmission and modern, Western theatrical and pedagogical principles that captured the Republican-era spirit of experimentation, as aptly summarized in the book’s title: ideal (lixianng), vision (shiye), and norms (guifan).

Following this guiding principle, Li devotes the first half of the book, Chapters 1–3, to contexts that determined the school’s ideal and vision. The opening chapter starts by arguing that kouchuan xinshou (transmitting from the mouth and teaching from the heart), the exclusive method of physically passing down performance techniques from master to student, was in reality an aberration from earlier pedagogical principles that relied on both physical transmission and teaching manuals (although Li admits evidence for the latter is limited). Nevertheless, this focus on the importance of textual analysis in addition to physical transmission allows Li to highlight the Ming critic Pan Zhiheng’s (1556–1632) contention of the ideal order of actor training as “‘delineating the meaning’ (xun qi yi), ‘harmonizing the melody’ (he qi diao), and ‘formalizing the posture’ (biao qi shi)” (p. 33). Li argues the elimination of this primary attention to the text in late Qing/early Republican keban was accelerated by another contributing fact, the elimination, in the early Republican period, of siyu (private residence) culture of catering boy-actors to the literati, which had fostered cultured discourse among actors. Consequently, its eradication resulted in “the loss of incentive for many actors to elevate their cultural accomplishment. In short, by around the 1920s, cultural elements in traditional theatre had significantly diminished, with skill training as the sole remaining element” (p. 47).

In contrast to Chapter 1’s diachronic approach, Chapter 2 zooms in on the synchronic context of modern reform efforts and innovations in several other xiqu institutions, including the school’s umbrella institute, the Zhongguo Xiqu Yinyue Yuan (Chinese Traditional Theatre Music Institute) established in 1929, together with its publication Juxue yuekan (Theatre Studies Monthly, 1932–1936). Li’s methodical examination of the institute’s seven foundational documents offers the reader a window into the aspirations of and financial hurdles to the institute’s establishment. Such aspiration/ideal is manifest in the institute’s journal that adopts the term juxue (theatre studies), as forcefully argued in the inaugural issue by Jin Zhongsun (1879–1945), the school’s second principal, who urged his fellow theatre practitioners to “fundamentally rectify the issue that ‘there has always been only the artistry of theatre and the profession of theatre, but not the study of theatre’ in China” (p. 110).

This discussion of the school’s aspirations is further carried out in Chapter 3 on the four founders of both the institute and the school: Li Shizeng (1881–1973), Cheng Yanqiu...