The Textualization of Guo Dingxiang

The story of Zhang Wanliang and Guo Dingxiang, who upon their deaths became king and queen of the stove, was a popular item in "stove singing," a genre of amateur entertainment from Gushi district in southern Henan. The story was best known by the name of the female protagonist. It was orally transmitted and performed not only as a ballad but also as a play. Guo Dingxiang has been published in three different editions of 1981, 2007, and 2009, respectively, which not only are quite different in length but also in nature, even though the basic plot is the same in all three versions. This article assembles the available evidence on the textualization process, and highlights the differences between the resulting versions. The textualization started as a private initiative, but in the early twenty-first century was supervised by a governmental committee. While the protagonists in the 1981 edition were given a background as poor peasants, they are the offspring of elite families in the later versions. Compared to the 2007 edition, the 2009 edition devotes more space to the inner life and motivation of the protagonists as more emphasis is placed on internal cohesion.