Uploaded 1 November 2000

Cinema arrived in China from the West in 1896, one year after the Lumière brothers showed their films in a café in Paris on 28 December 1895, a date generally considered as the beginning of cinema in the world. From 1905 on, with a constant influx of foreign films, China developed its own film industry, merging Western technological invention with rich resources from Chinese literary and performing traditions. At the time when the first film was exhibited to a Chinese audience in Shanghai on 11 August 1896, traditional Chinese performing arts were the major forms of audio-visual entertainment in cities and the countryside. [1]

These performing arts included Beijing opera, various regional operas, and different forms of musical storytelling. Chinese people call all performances xi (literally drama, play or show). When foreign films first appeared in big cities in China, they were referred to as yingxi (shadow drama, shadow play, or shadow show). Since its very beginning, film, as a new form of entertainment in China, has been intertwined with “drama,” “play” or “show”. Thus arose the theory of yingxi which had accustomed generations of filmmakers, critics and audiences, right up to the 1980s, to apply concepts of drama and theatre, rather than cinematic principles, to the analysis of films. At several turning points in the development of the Chinese film industry, traditional Chinese theatre remained closely associated with the making of films, and this interaction has never stopped. At the same time, cinematic modes and techniques have, in turn, played a major role, for better or worse, in effecting the transformation of traditional forms of Chinese theatre.

The above statements do not imply that Chinese films were not susceptible to foreign influences. Being an imported form, cinema in China has been influenced by foreign films, particularly Hollywood films (in the 1920s-1940s) and Russian films (in the 1950s-1960s), which is not the focus of this paper. [2] It should be also noted that Chinese audiences constantly exposed to Western films before the early1950s were mainly young and middle-aged intellectuals and white-collar professionals in coastal cities while audiences with lower education and ordinary workers and farmers in cities and rural areas preferred domestic films. [3] This paper particularly examines a subject neglected or less studied – the mutual influences between the cinema, a Western medium, and the indigenous performing arts of China, throughout the twentieth century. There are four areas covered in this study: 1. cinematic representations of traditional theatre; 2. theatre and its performers as subject matter for fictional films; 3. use of theatrical music and songs as narrative or musical motifs in non-theatrical films; and 4. influences of cinematic modes upon traditional theatre. The focus of this article is on the mainland films, with only brief mention of the films of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

1. Cinematic representations of traditional theatre

I will first survey the chronological development of Chinese films to see the place of traditional theatre at different stages in that history, including the shift of silent films from documentaries to narratives, the period from short features to long features, the beginning of sound films, the beginning of color films, and the transition from the screen to television. This survey will hopefully demonstrate that traditional theatre was an effective vehicle for the technological development of Chinese cinema, served as a cultural base for films that aimed to reach the largest possible audiences, and remained a national symbol for the spread of audio-visual popular culture.

At the turn of the twentieth century, foreign films screened in China were mainly short documentaries of current events, human activities, outlandish places and exotic behaviours around the world. Foreign filmmakers also made documentaries of Chinese life and social habits. [4] To Chinese people who were exposed to these films, the essence of the cinema seemed to be the recording of various human shows. After these films had, for nine years, been shown to Chinese audiences in big cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong, Fengtai Photography Shop in Beijing experimented with making the first Chinese film in 1905. Imitating the foreign films, Fengtai Photography Shop used the motion picture camera to “record”. Unlike most foreign films focusing on contemporary activities, its first film was a cinematic recording of a Beijing opera performance. Fengtai Photography Shop invited Tan Xinpei, the most famous Beijing opera performer at the time, to present three exciting episodes from the opera Dingjun mountain(Dingjun shan) . A camera was placed in front of the actor, and remained static as it recorded Tan’s marvellous performance. [5]

The choice of a Beijing opera performance, rather than other human activities, as the subject matter of the first film ever made in China was culturally determined by the fact that Beijing opera was extremely popular and influential nationwide. [6] Another contributing factor was the background of Ren Qingtai, the owner of the photography shop. [7]  He was born in 1850, and in his youth went to Japan with his elder brother and learned the skills of picture-taking at a photo shop. After he returned to China, he set up his own shop in Beijing in 1892, later developing this into a studio with more than ten technicians and apprentices. As his photo business prospered, he engaged in other lines of business, including setting up a theatre both for live Beijing opera performances and for displaying photos he had taken of well-known actors who had become his friends. [8] One of his technicians, Liu Zhonglun, filmed the first film Dingjun Mountain. It was in this theatre that the film was screened, [9]  and “proved a huge success.” [10]

After the success of Dingjun Mountain, Fengtai Photography Shop made another film of Tan Xinpei’s performance in Changban Slope(Changban po 1905). Later, other Beijing opera stars joined in the making of opera films: Yu Jusheng and Zhu Wenying in Green Rock Mountain (Qingshi shan 1906); Yu Jusheng inYanyang Tower (Yanyang lou 1906); Yu Zhenting in White Water Bay (Baishui tan 1906 or 1907) and The Golden-Coin Leopard (Jinqian bao 1906 or 1907); Xu Deyi in Subduing General Guan Sheng(Shou Guan Sheng 1906 or 1907); Xiao Magu in A Mother’s Revenge by Killing her own Son (Sha zi bao 1908) and Spinning Cotton (Fang mianhua1908). [11]  In 1909, a fire destroyed Fengtai Photography Shop. [12] Although its film venture then came to an end, Fengtai’s pioneering effort was historically important. “The fact that these earliest films attempted to integrate the new Western medium with traditional Chinese theatre says much about the terms on which film was adopted by pioneering Chinese filmmakers.” [13] Using the foreign to serve the Chinese was one of the concerns of the pioneers. Beijing opera was a composite art form, with two major components – conventionalised singing and stylistic acting. Since early films were all silent, the pioneers focused on filming performances with more acting than singing. Most of these films contained only one or more scenes or episodes from the original plays, with the static camera filming the actor(s) performing in front of it. These films looked primitive and simple, but they started the tradition of integrating the new Western medium with traditional Chinese theatre – a tradition that was to last for a century.

Besides these filmed performances, there were other experimental films, mainly documentaries made in the 1910s by newly established film companies in Shanghai, which immediately became the heartland of the Chinese cinema. Recording and representation were characteristic of China’s earlier films. It was not until 1913 that China had its first two short narrative features: The Difficult couple (Nanfu nanqi, Asia Film Company) and Zhuang Zi Tests his Wife (Zhuang Zi shi qi, Huamei Films). [14] The former was directed by Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu, two of the leading figures in Chinese cinema. Both were well connected in theatre circles in Shanghai. Zhang later recalled: “Because it was to shoot a shadow-‘play,’ naturally we thought of old ‘theatre.’ My friend Zheng Zhengqiu centered all his interest on drama at the time. He was in and out of theatres everyday. . .getting along very well with the contemporary actors such as Xia Yueshan, Xia Yueren, Pan Yueqiao, Mao Yunke, and Zhou Fengwen.” [15]

Naturally, their familiarity with old theatre shaped, consciously or subconsciously, their concept of feature films. Zhuang Zi tests his wife was an adaptation from one episode of the Cantonese opera Zhuang Zi’s Dream of Butterfly(Zhuang Zhou hudie meng). Comparing these two films, one finds that the latter was more narrative than the former because its content built on the complexity of the conflict between Zhuang Zi, the great Taoist sage, and his wife – a dramatic tension that had been highly developed in the Cantonese opera. While the filming method inThe Difficult Couple was still static, special techniques were employed in Zhuang Zi Tests his Wife to make Zhuang Zi’s pretended ghost flicker around. “The use of such a new method indicated that Chinese films began to develop from documentaries to narratives.” [16] These two films marked an important transition in the function of the camera from documentation to narration, and the second milestone in the history of Chinese film.

In the remaining years of the decade, more short features were made, mostly films of comic content with exaggerated gestures. Some of them were based upon contemporary life; some were influenced by French and American comedies; others were either inspired by or adapted from traditional Chinese theatre, folk tales, popular novels, or the so-called “civilised” plays (wenming xi) . The latter was a new theatrical genre, modelled upon Western plays, and later developed into huaju (spoken drama). A group of young intellectuals and artists started this tradition in Shanghai after they returned from Japan where they had their first encounter with Western plays. As a reaction to the Beijing opera and other age-old regional operas, these young artists aimed to create social problem plays to educate Chinese people. Some of the more successful were later adapted into short feature films. Interestingly enough, though civilised plays were started as a reaction to traditional Chinese theatre, some prominent Beijing opera actors in Shanghai were also actively involved in their performance, and many huaju artists were also filmmakers. The acting style of Chinese films had also been significantly influenced by the style of huaju,which deserves an independent study. Here, I want to mention wenmingxi only from the perspective of the interactions between film and traditional theatre. A perfect example is the film Wronged Ghosts in the Opium Den  (Hei ji yuan hun) . It was originally a Beijing opera adapted from Wu Yanren’s fiction of the same title (1907) about the collapse of a well-to-do family due to opium addiction. [17] After its performances at the New Theatre (Xin Wutai), it was adapted as a “civilised” play with the same title. With huge success, it was performed for several years in theatres, big and small, in Shanghai and other areas. [18] In 1916, it was filmed as a short feature of four reels. [19] More short features made during this period fit into this paradigm in terms of their relations with both traditional operas and “civilised” plays.

As the filmmakers were experimenting with making short narrative features in the 1910s, they were also exploring new ways to integrate film with traditional theatre, such as the two films made by the film department of the Commercial Press in 1920. These were Chunxiang Disturbs the Study (Chunxiang nao xue) and Celestial Maiden Spreads Flowers (Tiannü san hua), both filmed performances by the greatest female-role actor Mei Lanfang, whose later performance tours in America in 1930 and in Moscow in 1935 exerted great influence upon Western drama in the twentieth century. There were some major differences between earlier filmed performances and the films of Mei’s performances. Instead of just recording, the films of Mei’s performance used realistic stage sets, and in Chunxiang Disturbs the Study, the scene where Chunxiang plays in the garden was shot in a real private garden. In this film, long and medium shots were used, with a close-up shot showing Chunxiang’s face first covered by a fan, later emerging as the fan gradually moved away from it, and finally with a mischievous smile. [20] In Celestial Maiden Spreads Flowers, filmed images of clouds were overprinted onto the scene where the actor as the fairy maiden is gracefully dancing with long ribbons, thus creating an illusion of the celestial maiden descending from heaven. [21] It was the first time that Chinese filmmakers tried to use cinematic techniques to interpret or “realise” the beauty of traditional theatrical acting. But at the same time, it subconsciously violated some stylised theatrical conventions, which I will comment on later.

Around 1920 and 1921, more film studios were established, resulting in the first three long features: Yan Ruisheng (1921, Chinese Film Research Society), Sea Oath (Hai shi 1921, Shanghai Film Company), and Beauties and Skeletons (Hongfen kulou 1921, Xinya Film Company). [22] The emergence of these films ushered in a productive period of long features, which can be divided into two general types: one based on contemporary life and the other set in history. The first type produced a few outstanding social problem films such as Orphan Rescues his Grandfather (Gu’er jiu zu ji 1923, Mingxing Film Company). The second type of films fall into three categories in chronological order: baishi pian (literally, films as unofficial accounts of history), guzhuang pian (ancient costume films), and wuxia pian (martial arts films). All three genres drew on classical novels, drama, legends, and traditional performing arts. In the category of baishi pian, those based upon traditional performing arts included influential films such as Pearl Pagoda(Zhenzhu ta 1926), The Tragic History of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (Liang Zhu tong shi 1926), and White snake (Baishe zhuan 1926). The last two were box office hits, starting the first wave of domestic film’s commercial success as well as the movement of films of traditional themes. [23]

The success of the baishi films was followed by a flood of guzhuang films in 1927 and 1928. Seventy-five such films were produced, making up more than one third of the total films produced during the period. [24] The contents of these films were similar to those baishi films; differences lay in the fact that characters in the guzhuang films wore ancient costumes resembling those in performances of traditional theatre, whereas clothes worn by characters in the baishi films were anachronistically realistic. [25] One reason for the rise of ancient costume films was to reach a larger audience in cities and rural regions. At the time, the film market was dominated by American films: domestic films were usually shown in second or third-rate movie theatres, which were frequented by audiences with fewer economic resources and lower education. These audiences had long been immersed in the culture of traditional theatre and musical storytelling. To cater to the taste of these people, ancient costume films adapted from traditional performing arts were appropriate choices. They also helped to promote low brow literature or popular culture as opposed to elite literature and the Westernised culture that was moving into the big cities at the time. One of the most representative films of this genre was The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji1927, Minxin Film Company). It was adapted from the famous Yuan dynasty zaju play of the same title, using cinematic techniques in a variety of ways such as static long shots, “rapid edits, overhead shots, and stylized, superimposed close-ups” to achieve theatrical spectacle in the depiction of the romance of Zhang Gong and Yingying and to create special effects to realise the surreal dream and the fighting scene. In “developing this distinctive genre, studios. . . addressed local audiences and forwarded the independent domestic film industry.” [26]

Amid the fervor of ancient costume films, there emerged a genre of martial arts films in the last years of the 1920s. In this genre, one can glimpse influences of traditional theatre, especially Beijing opera, in acrobatic fighting, stylized combat, and swordplay choreography that often featured in these films. Li Feifei: A Female Knight-Errant (Nüxia Li Feifei 1925, Tianyi Film Company), one of the earliest examples of this genre, employed a Beijing opera performer to play the knight-errant, exhibiting acrobatic skills. [27] These early films paved the way for the immense popularity of the genre, represented by The Burning of Red Lotus Temple (Huoshao honglian si 1928, Mingxing Film Company), which continued in a series of eighteen films. Within the next three years, over 250 martial arts films were produced, [28] and the origin of the world famous martial arts films that were to be made in Hong Kong in later decades can be partially traced back to this period. [29]

Towards the end of the 1920s, Chinese movie theatres began to screen the newly-invented sound films from America. To make the first sound film in China would be another important milestone in the film industry. Again, filmmakers turned to Beijing opera for inspiration, producing Sing-song Girl Red Peony (Genü hong mudan1931, Mingxing Film Company), about the bitter life of a Beijing opera actress. Benefiting from sound, the plot was interspersed with four arias from well-known Beijing operas: The Stronghold of the Mu Village (Muke zhai), Yu Tang Chun the courtesan (Yu Tang Chun), Si Lang visits his mother (Si Lang tan mu), and Capturing Gao Deng (Na Gao Deng) . For the first time, Beijing opera could be heard on the silver screen, and the film delighted filmgoers in major Chinese cities as well as overseas. [30] The second sound film, Yu the beauty (Yu meiren 1931, Youlian Studio), was a story of a theatrical troupe, presenting scenes of theatrical performance. Other studios followed suit, making sound films which often incorporated theatrical singing. With the release of these films, the Chinese film industry gradually entered the sound era; silent films continued for a few years more, until, around 1936, they were phased out.

In the late 1930s and 1940s, despite the fact that, for most studios, the priority was producing films of social realism and documentaries of the Anti-Japanese War, films of traditional theatre continued to be produced. Unlike previous filmed performances which took scenes of particular plays, films of traditional theatre in this period included some complete operas such as the Beijing opera Wu Han Kills his Wife (Zhan jingtang1937) featuring the well-known actor Zhou Xinfang in the lead role, and the Shaoxing opera Xianglin’s wife (Xianglin sao 1948). [31] When Fei Mu, one of the well-known directors at the time, and his fellow filmmakers considered making colour films in 1947, their first thought went to colourful theatrical performances. The next year they made the first colour film, Eternal Regret (Sheng si hen 1948), with Mei Lanfang in the lead role. [32] As we have seen through this survey, filmmakers returned to traditional Chinese theatre at each new stage in the technological development of the Chinese cinema. The Western camera was the magic and the Eastern theatre was the show: by now the magic camera had completed the process of revealing the acting, the colour and the sound of the show.

After the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, films developed in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan without formal exchanges [33] , yet these three regions shared a tradition of the integration of film with traditional theatre. The mainland government continued to support the genre of filmed theatrical performances, even during the years of the Cultural Revolution. From 1949 to 1979, 1109 films (including features, cartoons, artistic documentaries, and artistic films of theatrical performances) were made by various studios in China. Among them, 217 films are artistic films of operas in traditional forms, representing 20% of the total. The most productive years for this genre were 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1965, and 1976. (Of the 62 such films made in 1976, 49 films were not released to the public, but made, perhaps, for educational purposes.) [34] The most influential films of this type were undoubtedly Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (a Shaoxing opera 1954), The Heavenly Match (Tianxian pei, ahuangmei opera 1955), Fifteen Strings of Cash (Shiwu guan, a kunqu opera 1956), Monkey King Beats the White-Bone Demon Three Times (Sun Wukong san da baigu jing, a shaoju opera 1960), Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng, a Shaoxing opera 1962), and the revolutionary model Beijing operas (performed in the traditional style) made between 1970 and 1974. These films reached almost every corner of the mainland. The huge success of the first two opera films mentioned here inspired filmmakers in Hong Kong and Taiwan to make an unprecedented number of opera films in the 1950s and 1960s.

Since 1979, China has undergone tremendous changes, socially, economically, and culturally. After a short heyday in the late 1970s following the end of the Cultural Revolution, the traditional Chinese theatre, be it the Beijing opera or other regional operas, underwent a decline and was gradually losing audiences in the 1980s and 1990s. Part of the reason for this was rapid economic development in China that ushered in a variety of new forms of entertainment, including karaoke (sing-along) music halls which featured popular songs of the Hong Kong-Taiwan style, ballrooms, foreign movies on video tape, electronic games, coffee shops with light music and, above all, colour TV programs. These new forms of entertainment drew ever-increasing audiences, especially among young people, by bringing convenient entertainment to families both in cities and in the countryside.

Traditional theatre, with its slow pace, could not catch the rhythm of modern entertainment, so efforts have been made in the past fifteen years to promote and revitalise it, including through television, which entered more and more households in China in the 1980s. With few exceptions, film’s traditional responsibility for cinematic representation of theatre has now been shifted to television. Technically, the cinema and television represent traditional theatre in similar ways, [35] and using cinematic modes on television carries on a long tradition. It is, thus, both technologically and culturally logical to include in this study a discussion of cinematic versions of traditional theatre that only appear on television.

Over twenty years, television has expanded the genre. As well as live broadcasting of theatrical productions, there have been four forms of cinematic representation of traditional drama through television. To illustrate the characteristics of these forms, I use as an example different representations of the famous Yuan dynasty play The Romance of the Western Chamber. In the 1980s, Tian Han’s 1950s Beijing opera version was first televised with the famous singer Zhang Junqiu as Cui Yingying. This category is wutai xiqu yishu pian, a version that preserves the style of a stage production, using a realistic setting shot from different angles. Another category is termed xiqu dianshi lianxu ju, a TV series in which actors perform the way they do on stage, but in a realistic environment that does not allow certain stage conventions, such as pantomime. Such an example is Wu Chen’s 1988 adaptation of Su Xuean’s 1950s Shaoxing opera version in a series of four segments. This TV series was followed by the type of musical TV drama termed huangmeixi yinyue dianshi ju , in which characters in a realistic setting speak naturally but sing in the tunes of the huangmeiopera. The last category is called dianshi lianxu ju, which refers to regular television serial drama in a modern spoken form. There have been two different adaptations in this category: one by the Performance Division of the Beijing Film Institute in 1986 and the other, in 1995, by the Chinese Television Drama Production Centre, in association with the Yongji Municipal Government, the Chinese Asia Television Art Centre, and the Chinese Research Association for The Romance of the Western Chamber. [36] This example demonstrates the potential for a classic dramatic text to be adapted in various styles and presented to a larger audience through television. The scale of television production of traditional theatre has been large: in addition to the Central Television Station, whose programs can be received all over the country, most provincial stations and municipal stations in big cities have special channels and programs solely devoted to broadcasting various renditions of traditional theatre.

The sheer quantity of opera films and films based on or inspired by performing arts reflected in the above survey reveals that traditional theatre has been a deeply rooted national symbol for audio-visual entertainment in China. Although cinema has been generally considered as an imported Western entertainment, its growth on Chinese soil has constantly needed fertilisation from the indigenous performance culture. The survey has also demonstrated that in its early stages Chinese cinema relied on traditional theatre as one of its content sources to reach audiences of ordinary people and to develop itself as an independent domestic industry while in the most recent past traditional theatre used both cinematic modes and television to revitalise and present itself to audiences of younger generations.

2. Theatre and its performers as subject matter for fictional films

Besides the abundant opera films produced in China as discussed in the above survey, traditional theatre and its performers have found their way into the subject matter of non-opera fictional films from time to time. As mentioned above, the first two Chinese non-silent films were such cases: Sing-Song Girl Red Peony concerned the life of a Beijing opera singer and Yu the beauty was about a theatrical troupe. More recently, titles familiar to Western audiences such as Stage sisters (Wutai jiemei1965), Woman Demon Human (Ren gui qing 1987), Farewell My Concubine (Bawang bieji 1993), The Puppetmaster (Xi meng rensheng 1993), and The King of Masks (Bian lian 1996) all use traditional theatre as their subject matter. In this section, I will use the critically acclaimed and much discussed Farewell My Concubine to illustrate how film interacts with Chinese theatre in its narration, how film uses theatrical elements to allude to and to satirise modern Chinese politics, and how the stage functions as a mirror to reflect life.

The film’s story spans a period of some fifty years during which the leading characters live under five different political regimes, yet the plot is developed in a narrative structure composed of the intricate arrangement of theatre performances. First, the overall narrative structure of the film builds on the double meaning of its title “Farewell my concubine.” The Chinese title of the film is Bawang bieji (literal translation: “The king bids farewell to his concubine”). This is the title of a famous Beijing opera, which tells the story of a parting moment between the king of the Chu at the end of the Qin Dynasty and his favourite concubine, Yu Ji. The king’s army has been surrounded by the victorious army of Liu Bang, the king of the Han. Predicting that he has little chance of winning, he urges Yu Ji to flee. Instead, the concubine commits suicide, remaining faithful to her master. Thus the opera ends. This Beijing opera was adapted from an earlier source and in the 1920s was popularised through performances by Mei Lanfang as Yu Ji and Yang Xiaolou as the king. Chen Kaige’s film makes a pun on the title of the Beijing opera, portraying a story of the actor Cheng Dieyi who, in the role of Yu Ji, commits suicide out of faithfulness to the Beijing opera and to his unrequited love for his fellow actor, Duan Xiaolou, who often plays the king with Cheng. The performance of Yu Ji’s suicide is a theatrical illusion, yet the actual suicide of Cheng Dieyi is the realisation of that illusion. Thus the title “Farewell my concubine” at the beginning foreshadows Duan Xiaolou’s farewell to Cheng Dieyi at the end, setting the overall framework for the interplay of theatre and life throughout the film.

In addition to the representation of Farewell My Concubine, the film also represents and refers to several other famous operas including the Beijing opera The Drunk Princess (Gui Fei zui jiu), the kunqu opera A Nun Longing for Worldly Pleasure(Si fan) , the kunqu opera Peony Pavilion: Stroll in the Garden (Mudan ting: you yuan), the Beijing opera Lin Chong Escapes at Night(Lin Chong ye ben), and the revolutionary model Beijing opera Red Lantern (Hongdeng ji) . The scenes from the first three operas and Farewell My Concubine are presented by their linkage through the qingyi role – a theatrical role depicting a young female character of high social status and sung in falsetto – in which Cheng Dieyi specialises as the actor. The lyric lines from the other two Beijing operas Lin Chong Escapes at Night and Red Lantern are presented either by other characters or as background music. The presentation of these scenes and arias, like those of Farewell My Concubine, is not merely theatrical display. It also serves the purpose of developing the story and portraying the characters of the film.

The familiar plot of the film is the relation between two Beijing opera actors – Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou – from their childhood in the theatrical school through various stages of their common acting career to the suicide of Cheng Dieyi. When they begin to know each other in the school, Cheng Dieyi is trained to be in the qingyi role and Duan Xiaolou in the jing (painted face) role. The first part of the film highlights the bitter life and rigorous training of the theatrical apprentices through the learning process of Cheng Dieyi in his qingyi role. The film intensifies the scene of Cheng reciting a theatrical self-introduction by the nun of the kunqu piece The Nun Seeks Worldly Pleasure:

I am a humble nun just at the age of sixteen,
Right in the springtime of life:
Already the abbess has shaved my hair.
I was originally a pretty maiden,
Not a youthful man.

Every time the little Cheng comes to the last two lyric lines, he confuses “youthful man” with “pretty maiden.” He recites the lines according to his own sex: “I was originally a youthful man, not a pretty maiden.” Repeatedly, he is physically punished and forced to say: “I was originally a pretty maiden, not a youthful man.” Originally, these two lines are sung in a highly stylised fashion in the kunqu opera, which might not be intelligible to the film’s audience. Therefore, in the film these lines are recited repeatedly in the Mandarin language so as to forge an inescapable impression upon the audience’s mind that the rigid training for achieving theatrical illusion has made the young male actor gradually become a “female”. The pressure not only comes from the strict teacher but also from his best friend, Duan Xiaolou, who persuades him by saying: “Think of yourself as a female and don’t ever recite the two lines wrongly again.” Structurally, the first part of the film ends with the young Cheng Dieyi finally reciting the two lines accurately. It is neither the content nor the theme of the kunqu opera that has relevance to the theme of the film. It is only these two lyric lines that have a significant bearing on the theme of the film and the characterisation of Cheng Dieyi. Emphasis on various scenes of Cheng Dieyi learning to memorise these two lines leaves a strong impression upon the audience that Chen Dieyi’s sexual deviation is moulded by a unique theatrical culture.

As the two actors graduate from the theatrical school and begin to perform on stage, the Beijing opera Farewell My Concubine becomes the pivotal point around which the second half of the film’s plot is developed: in this section of the film, part of this opera is enacted more than five times. No doubt the enactment is itself a theatrical display, adding aesthetic and exotic qualities to the cinematic art. What is more significant, various references to and presentations of scenes of this Beijing opera serve as a narrative link. Every time a scene from this opera is performed on the stage within the film, it is to a different audience (Japanese, then Nationalist, then Communist), signalling a change of historical period. The theme of the opera analysed by the schoolmaster in the following sentences is developed into a motto for Cheng Dieyi’s life: “Yu Ji commits suicide, being faithful all the way to the end. This is the principle of how to be an actor as well as a human being.” The theme of the opera becomes Cheng Dieyi’s motto: he remains faithful all the time to his theatrical profession and to his unilateral homosexual love for Duan Xiaolou. It is this life-long commitment that has made Cheng Dieyi continue to perform with Duan Xiaolou despite the difficult relations between the two, caused by Duan’s marriage to the prostitute Juxian.

Not only is Chinese theatre used as a dominant element in the narrative structure of the film, but the way it is presented also serves as an effective method of alluding to real life. Although the Beijing opera Farewell My Concubine is enacted more than five times in the film, each time it is presented differently. The first time, the king engages in a heroic fight against his enemies: the king’s heroism, the actor’s wonderful acrobatics and the audience’s stormy applause inspire Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou in their childhood to pursue a career in performing the opera. When the opera is later presented, the king’s heroism is no longer visible. Only four lyric lines sung by the concubine are highlighted:

Since I accompanied the king in his battles here and there,
I have endured tempered weather and physical fatigue year after year.
I hate that ruler of the Qin dynasty who ruined human lives,
Making ordinary people suffer one hardship after another.

Because these four lines are sung again and again at different times and on different historical occasions, they become a motif. As Julia Kristeva points out, language itself retains a semiotic flux, especially through its repeated resonance. For semiotic material to become symbolic it must be stabilised, and this involves rhythmic drives. With its lyrics shown in subtitles on the screen, this song conveys its meaning to a much broader audience whether or not they understand Beijing opera, and so becomes indexical. The plot develops from the Northern Warlords period, through the Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist regime, to the Japanese occupation and finally to Communist rule. With these four lines sung in the scenes where a change of historical period takes place, the complaints of the concubine allude to the real situation at various stages of Chinese history. Having grown up in a tradition in which literature and art have often been criticised by political regimes as innuendo, both the director of the film and its audience are fully aware of the political comments this Beijing opera aria has made about every government in modern Chinese history.

Theatrical presentations which allude to situations in real life are abundant in the film. When Juxian first goes to the theatre to see Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou’s performance of Farewell My Concubine, the portion that is presented on screen is only a few words said by the king to his concubine: “My lady! Around us are songs of the Chu kingdom. These songs indicate that Liu Bang and his army have occupied the land of the Chu. Alas, I have lost my battle. I’m afraid that today is the day of our parting.” No sooner has he finished these words than the screen shows a close-up of Juxian sitting in the audience, smiling. This montage foreshadows the emotional separation between Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou once Juxian enters their world. Later, when Chen Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou quarrel over Duan’s decision to marry Juxian, they convey their messages through theatrical allusions. When asked if he can be the chief witness to the wedding ceremony, Cheng retorts sarcastically: “I cannot perform the opera of Huang Tianba and his prostitute. My teacher never taught me how to perform it!” Later when Cheng asks Duan to visit Master Yuan, Duan refuses and takes the opportunity to retort: “I’m a false king, but you ARE a real concubine.” When asked to perform the opera privately with Master Yuan in his courtyard, Cheng sings:

The king’s spirit has been exhausted;
How can I, the humble concubine, continue my life?

These lines could be understood as Cheng’s own lamentation after Duan’s energy is consumed by Juxian. The sad and passive tune of the lyric harmonises with Cheng’s capitulating mood when he accepts Master Yuan’s sexual advances. When the Japanese commanders force Cheng to perform in their headquarters as a condition of the release of the imprisoned Duan Xiaolou, he sings an aria from the kunqu opera Peony Pavilion: Strolling in the Garden.The lyrics are as follows:

See how deepest purple, brightest scarlet –
All is there for the broken well and collapsed walls.
What’s the use of all this beautiful scene and wonderful time?
And where is the garden with joyous cries?

Symbolically, these lines fit the historical situation: the Chinese had no time to relax or enjoy themselves when their land was trampled by the Japanese invaders. When performing for the KMT soldiers, Cheng sings the following lines about the king’s defeated army:

I hear soldiers ventilate their opinions,
Expressing intentions of quitting the army.

This situation is reminiscent of the KMT army in the late 1940s when many of its soldiers deserted their posts. During the theatre reform movement under the communist regime, Cheng is forcibly replaced by Xiao Si, his foster son, in the role of the concubine. When Xiao Si is performing with Duan Xiaolou, the performance is not presented on screen; only the music and lyrics are heard off-screen. In the frame is a close-up of Cheng Dieyi, silent and lonely in the dressing room. At this moment, the lyrics sung by the king are distinctly heard: “All this has troubled and frightened you!” The singing line accurately describes Cheng Dieyi’s mood: frightened, angry, upset, and feeling powerless due to the political pressure from the authorities and from his foster son’s betrayal. This line also carries Duan’s apology that he is not brave enough to stand up against political pressure. Finally, when Juxian hangs herself at her home after having been humiliated in public by Red Guards and “betrayed” by her own husband, the off-scene music from the radio is an aria from the revolutionary model Beijing opera Red Lantern. From the radio, the leading character Li Tiemei sings:

Listen to my granny talking about the revolution –
Heroic, tragic and solemn.
Now I know I was raised up in the wind
And grew up in the storm…

On the one hand, the choice of this background music is appropriate to the historical time of the plot. On the other hand, independent of the context of the Red Lantern, the chosen section of the aria coupled with the image of Juxian’s hanging body creates a solemn yet tragic atmosphere, alluding to the bitter years both Duan Xiaolou and Juxian have gone through. All these examples demonstrate a pattern in the film’s arrangement of the operatic arias in connection with the plot development: theatre is used as a mirror to reflect real life.

The interplay between theatre and life is also manifested in its power to trigger the audience’s associations between fictitious elements in the film and facts in real life. Fictitious elements surrounding the leading characters remind the audience of the real facts in the Beijing opera circles. For example, Cheng Dieyi shares the same family name with Cheng Yanqiu, one of the four greatest male actors in the female role, who lived in the same historical period as Cheng Dieyi. Duan Xiaolou shares the same given name with the real actor, Yang Xiaolou, who made the role of the king famous. In real life, Yang is said to have sold watermelon, an incident reflected in the film. Cheng Dieyi’s concealed homosexuality and drug addiction can also be found in the circles of traditional theatre. The deliberate mixture of the fictitious and the real further testifies to the Chinese common belief that a human life is just like a show on the stage.

As we have seen, elements from the traditional Chinese theatre provide an overall narrative structure for the film, serve as effective devices connecting the film’s various epic and episodic events, and allude to and satirise modern Chinese politics. The interaction between theatrical elements and the story’s development mirrors the interplay of reality with illusion and of the present with history, thus nurturing a rich and complex theme. The study of these interrelations also shows the significant role that theatre, as a cultural force, has played in moulding people’s outlook and in engaging people in social discourses.

3. Use of theatrical music and songs as narrative or musical motifs in non-theatrical films

The above analysis of Farewell My Concubine indicates how theatrical elements can interplay with cinematic modes in films with theatre and its performers as subject matter. What, then, of films with other subject matter? Obviously, these cannot obtrusively use theatrical performances since their subject matter does not warrant them. Yet some conscientious directors and composers make effective use of music and songs from traditional theatre to create narrative or musical motifs for their non-theatrical films. Such practices are recent phenomena. In the past, films without textual reference to traditional theatre usually used Western musical instruments to compose background music although a number of them did contain Chinese folk songs sung by characters within the diegesis. Using traditional Chinese musical instruments to create a music motif was not the norm, not to mention the use of traditional operatic music.

Since the Fifth Generation directors entered the scene, a significant number of films have consciously employed music from traditional theatre, when they wish to create an atmosphere of authenticity for a particular local culture reflected in their film while, at the same time, striving for a kind of symbolism with which Chinese audiences are familiar. Of all the directors and composers, Zhang Yimou and his music collaborators are among the most conscious in this respect. To look at how theatrical elements are used in non-theatrical films, I will focus on those of Zhang’s films that employ elements from traditional theatre – an aspect neglected or less discussed in other studies of his films.

The films in question are Raise the Red Lantern(Da hong denglong gaogao gua 1991), The Story of Qiuju (Qiuju da guansi1992), and To Live (Huo zhe 1994), all three adapted from contemporary novelettes. It is worth noting that Chen Yuanbin’s The Lawsuit of the Wan Family (Wan jia susong) and Yu Hua’s To Live (Huo zhe), the literary sources of the last two films, do not have any reference to traditional theatre. Although Su Tong’s written story Wives and Concubines (Qi qie chengqun) describes the third wife as a retired Beijing opera singer, it does not have red lanterns or Beijing opera music as rituals. Yet Zhang Yimou’s film adaptations seek inspiration from operatic music.

In Raise the Red Lantern, two types of operatic music formulate the rhythms with other sounds. They are Beijing opera percussion music and the vocal chanting of a xipi interlude from Beijing opera string music. It is the Beijing opera percussion music that starts the film, a type of music that would have been traditionally thought to be irrelevant to the opening scene of Songlian walking alone on her way to Master Chen’s home, because neither the subject matter nor the leading character centres around the Beijing opera. On the stage of the traditional Chinese theatre, it is a custom to strike percussion instruments to open a show. A show (xi) is very self-consciously unreal as opposed to life, the reality of the viewer. Yet Chinese people often compare life to theatre. Common sayings such as “Life is like a play,” “Life is a big stage,” “When coming upon the stage, one needs to join in the show” and “The stage is a mirror for life” are widely used metaphors for the brevity, variety and contingency of life and the referentiality of theatre to life. It is on this metaphorical level that Beijing opera percussion music is used at the very beginning of the film, proclaiming the start of the show, the beginning of Songlian’s life. This percussion music later develops into a motif which resonates to the recurrent scene of the whole family gathering in the courtyard to hear the announcement of the butler on behalf of Master Chen, to the images of raising the red lanterns, and to the spreading of the exciting news that the fourth wife has become pregnant. The effect is a kind of authenticity achieved by merging the pseudo Chinese culture of the lantern-sex relationship into the pure and uniquely Chinese percussion music. The loud and energetic striking of the drum, gongs, cymbals and clappers constitute a rhythmic structure for the story. Like theatrical performances used in Farewell My Concubine to develop the plot through constant changes of historical period, this percussion music is a narrative link between different episodes in the cyclic development of the film’s plot.

Linked with this percussion music is the percussion sound of the wooden hammers that first accompanies the image of foot massage. With its repetition it gradually takes on symbolic weight. In the latter half of the film, when the sound reappears without the actual scene of foot massage, the image remains in the minds of the characters as well as the audience. Thus, the sound of foot massage becomes sometimes a reference of sexual desire, sometimes a symbol of status, and sometimes a tool to develop the story.
These formulaic music and sounds are further supplemented by a vocal imitation in chorus of the xipi interlude with the swift repetition of the melody “Long ge li ge long.” The increasing volume of this repetitive voice imitation creates an atmosphere of intensity, urgency, suspense and horror. It occurs when Yan’er, Songlian’s housemaid, faints after she was forced to kneel on the snowy ground as punishment, and later when Songlian walks on the snowy roof toward the “room of the dead” before she is astonished to find that the third wife has been murdered inside.

In contrast with Beijing opera’s overbearing music is the melody of the flute, which is reminiscent of the melodious music of kunqu opera. The music arises when Songlian is by herself, fondly regarding the instrument her father gave her, when she attentively listens to the young master playing the flute, and when she sobs after learning that Master Chen has destroyed her flute. The coupling of these visual images with the flute music signifies the loving attachment that Songlian has toward her deceased father, reminds her of a happy past that has been long lost, and also suggests her romantic feeling toward the oldest son of the family – a longing for freedom from the smothering atmosphere of the Chen household.

Yet, like all her predecessors, Songlian cannot escape from the repressive living compound of the Chen family. Finally, the singing of the Beijing opera in the voice of the third wife through her records is mixed with the reprise of the percussion music, the vocal imitation of the xipi interlude, and the sound of foot massage to reach an acoustic climax to accompany the final scenes: the living complex is believed to be haunted by the spirit of the third wife; Songlian, who has discovered the horror of the murder, is pronounced crazy, thus eternally imprisoned within the four walls; and a new wife, the fifth one, is brought into the household to start another life cycle like the one Songlian has experienced.

Like Raise the Red Lantern, The story of Qiuju uses music and lyrics from traditional theatre. The theme song, or the musical motif, is an aria from the regional qinqiang theatre, which, like the dialect spoken by the characters, provides local flavour and authenticity. It starts the film and then is played off-scene the moment Qiuju sets off on her way from her house to the town, the county or the city to sue the village head who has injured her husband. And the scene remains more or less the same: the pregnant Qiuju is on a moving vehicle on a zigzagging path leading out of the village toward a background of mountains. The same music accompanies similar scenes five times altogether. Qiuju’s five journeys indicate her desire to go against tradition in order to achieve justice. Yet her strong desire is offset by the recurrence of the unchanging age-old music, a sign of permanence. Though the lyrics are mostly incomprehensible for general audiences, the same musical rhythm is preceded by the two chanted words: “Let’s go!” and the only incomplete lyrics comprehensible for audiences are “Every year, every month, everyday, we will go… and the peach blossoms remain the same…” It seems that these lyrics precisely describe Qiuju’s predicament and point to a social pattern: life has been, still is and will be unchanged in the countryside, and so are the human relationships in the rural community. Thus an irony is created by the juxtaposition of the visual images and the recurrent music, an irony enhanced by the final scene. Qiuju, in the midst of the celebration of the first month of life for her son, is puzzled by the fact that the village head is arrested for a fifteen-day sentence due to her legal action against him. The scene takes a close-up shot of Qiuju, perplexed and confused; the same qinqiang music with its lyrics returns as a voice-over accompaniment. The question remains: will Qiuju want justice or let the traditional relationship between the villagers and their leader remain unchanged? Or will Qiuju’s earlier actions for justice really achieve what she wants? Despite the cinematic emphasis on a newsreel slice-of-life style, the insertion of the operatic music and its recurrence not only mark the narrative pattern, but also make both narration and musical themes rich and subtle.

A system of patterning, as seen in the recurrence of the operatic music to the image of Qiuju on her way to seek justice, is also reflected in the relationship between the operatic singing of the shadow play and the changes of historical periods in To Live. The shadow play with its energetic songs and colourful puppets does not exist in the original novelette: the film borrows it from a rich local performance culture in Shaanxi Province and uses it as a rhythmic vehicle to develop the story from the 1940s to the 1970s. There are a series of intense scenes centring around the shadow play, each ushering in a new historical period. For most of these scenes, folk songs are sung behind the screen of shadow images and the singing is interrupted by damage to the screen, signifying a change of historical time. First, during a performance the screen is pierced through by a bayonet of a KMT soldier, signifying the end of a peaceful period in Fugui’s hometown. Fugui and Chunsheng are then drafted by the KMT. Later, when the KMT is defeated, it is the bayonet of a Communist soldier that lifts a shadow puppet, which, through montage, directly leads to a scene of a performance by Fugui and Chunsheng for the Communist army, indicating the beginning of a new period of Communist rule. The next show of the shadow play is on the public square of Fugui’s home town where masses are mobilised to smelt steel in the period of the Great Leap Forward. This enthusiastic singing is interrupted by Fugui’s vomiting of vinegar onto the shadow play screen. Though the incident is caused by a practical joke played on Fugui by his own son, the vomiting achieves the same effect as does the bayonet in interrupting the show: it marks the end of the shadow play and foreshadows the failure of the Great Leap Forward, during which Fugui’s own son dies as a victim of the nationwide blind enthusiasm. Later, the burning of the shadow puppets (as a remnant of the Four Olds) ushers in the Cultural Revolution, the most destructive period for the PRC. Finally, the film ends with Fugui’s grandson happily raising a group of young chicks in the big box that had held the puppets. Here, a connection between the only remnant of the shadow play and the change of historical time is again made. Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution when the film ends, most Chinese people became disillusioned and no longer believed in communism. What they hoped for was a better life, with food and comfort, as reflected in the final dialogue between Fugui and his grandson. This last image of the puppet box in which the young chicks are to grow is highly symbolic. The preservation of the box represents the perseverance of Chinese culture; the innocent young lives of the grandson and chicks seem designed to signify a hope of the Chinese people for a new period to come – a period that will bring a better life.

Alternating with the singing of the shadow play is a musical motif by a local instrument called banhu, a major musical instrument of the qinqiang opera. It opens the film and recurs with each of Fugui’s journeys for shadow play, of his son’s death in the Big Leap Forward Movement, of his daughter being sent away for marriage during the Cultural Revolution, of Chunsheng (labelled a “capitalist roader”) leaving Fugui’s home alone into the darkness, and of Fugui’s daughter’s death in the hospital. The return of the same music marks the film’s end. This short musical passage is always played softly, signifying the passivity and resilience in Fugui and, by extension, the Chinese people, accepting their fate within the different political periods in contemporary China.

As is reflected by Zhang Yimou’s films, music or arias from traditional theatre are used in recent films mainly for three purposes: to set up a cultural tableau for the theatricality of individual films in order to achieve a kind of authenticity, or Chineseness in the presence of foreign audiences; to serve as a narrative device or musical motif to help develop the story; and to create a kind of symbolism that can be understood by general domestic audiences. The viewer’s experience of these films, naturally, is greatly enhanced by the rhythm, voice quality, and lively melodies of arias and their orchestration. Through their repeated resonance to recurrent yet ever-changing visuals, music and songs in a given film create a structural rhythm, ensure an organic unity and generate a semiotic flux. The audience’s understanding of the film is thus enriched by the complexity and subtlety of a dense network of meanings that elements from traditional theatre have helped to create.

4. Influences of cinematic modes upon traditional theatre

As we have seen in the previous three sections, traditional theatre has enriched Chinese cinema in many ways. Then as the result of this constant interaction between theatre and film, what kinds of effect has cinema brought upon traditional theatre? To seek a comprehensive answer, I have looked at various cinematic versions of traditional operas on film and television in comparison with the traditional stage conventions and acting style.

As I pointed out in the first section, the earliest opera films of Fengtai Photography Shop were made with static shots: the camera angle did not affect the way an operatic episode was enacted. By the time that Mei Lanfang’s performances were filmed in 1920, directors began to use realistic settings and to experiment with cinematic techniques to create special effects. On the one hand cinematic modes helped realize the beauty of traditional theatre while, on the other, the realism that the camera brought did not allow the full realisation of certain conventions such as the bare stage, the symbolism of the one-desk-two-chair setting, and pantomimic gestures in the absence of real objects. The essence of traditional Chinese theatre is its non-realism of acting and staging. A character walking a circle on a bare stage signifies his long journey; a whip in his hand with a stylised body movement suggests his mounting of a horse; the stage is “immediately compartmented” by pantomimic gestures of opening or closing a door “into inner and outer playing areas . . . without any demand on credibility” [37] ; a desk and two chairs arranged differently can symbolise a judge’s court, an inn room, or even a mountain. Traditional conventions like these cannot be mechanically translated into opera films. Since the cinematic camera first introduced its narrative mode into traditional theatre, Chinese filmmakers and theatrical performers have been faced with the challenge of keeping a balance between cinematic realism and theatrical non-realism. When making cinematic versions of traditional theatre, they have tried to preserve the essence of a particular theatrical style through innovative use of camera.

One such use of cinematographic techniques quickens the pace of dramatic development. On film, the traditional entrances and exits of Beijing opera conventions providing for changes of scene have been in some cases greatly modified and in others eliminated by the swift change of scenes realised through change of camera angles and montage techniques. As a commonly-used device to highlight the melodious yet lengthy Beijing opera arias, the screen shows by montage two scenes either alternately or at the same time: one continuous scene is a close-up picture of the detailed expression of the singing character and the other is a series of background scenes showing the events and scenery described in the lyrics. This allows the audience to appreciate the voice, facial expression and body movement of the singing character, the melody of the aria, and the literary flavour of the lyrics while enjoying the scenes created as reflections of the lyric lines. This is what I like to call the fusion of the static and the kinetic. With the kinetic, the sense of slow space is greatly reduced. Furthermore, the incomprehensibility of some difficult lyrics is overcome with the help of the image and the captions shown on the screen. One example is an aria that Cao Xueqin sings in the television serial Beijing opera Cao Xueqin (1991) when he re-visits his Jiangnan residence in his middle age. The lyric mentions different places Cao Xueqin is revisiting and his thought of his female cousins: the cinematography makes them visible on the screen in the flow of the pensive tune. A further example, from Twelve Child-Actresses in the Red Chamber (Honglou shi’er guan , a Beijing opera 1992), is the heroine Fangguan’s singing soliloquy when she is imprisoned in a deserted house of the Jia family’s complex mansion. In this long, pensive, sorrowful, melodious aria, she recalls how the twelve child actresses shared happiness and bitterness and recounts what she sees in her delirium: the scenes are artistically created on the screen according to the mood of the aria. A sense of slow pace which would have otherwise resulted from the one-minute tonal drag of the ending sound of the first line is now overcome by vivid showing of conventional theatrical gestures. Such a method fits the Chinese poetic concept of qingjing jiaorong – the fusion of feeling and scenery.

The second characteristic is the use of montage or special effects to “realise” the non-realism or symbolism of the traditional form. This method can be commonly observed in well-known opera films. In the 1954 Shaoxing opera film Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, special filmic techniques realise the romantic ending of the tragedy when the Chinese Romeo and Juliet turn into a pair of beautiful butterflies flying freely from the erupted tomb – an image which the traditional stage is unable to represent. In the 1955 huangmei opera film The Heavenly Match, the personified Chinese scholartree is made alive as a matchmaker for the seventh daughter of the celestial emperor and an honest poor peasant, preserving the original legend while strengthening the surreal effect. Further examples can be seen in the 1980s Beijing opera film The White Snake, in which the white-snake lady and her green-snake maid fly through the clouds between lofty mountains and land on the earth, where the lady charms a young man through her magic skills. Surreal effects such as these, true to the imagination of storytellers and performers in history, are now represented by the magic of cinematic modes.

The third characteristic is the modification of some Beijing opera conventions to make the performance appear more life-like. Most settings are made realistic by cinematic presentation of real scenery. In a significant number of cinematic versions, characters do not wear the long artificial beard. Instead, characters such as the Qianlong Emperor and Cao Xueqin wear a moustache which resembles their respective personal pictures. The painted face is not visually employed if the hualian singing style remains. The recitation of the laosheng, laodan and qingyi roles is done in Mandarin without the Zhongzhouand Huguang pronunciation. The shrieking falsetto of the xiaosheng singing style is not heard from young male characters though all the other singing styles are still preserved and represented. Yet whenever possible, these conventions so far modified, reduced or eliminated are still represented in a play within the play. For example, in The Story of Pan Yueqiao (Pan Yueqiao chuanqi, a Beijing opera 1990) there is a scene showing the audience watching Pan Yueqiao perform in the traditional opera Wronged Ghosts in the Opium Een. On the stage within that scene everything is done according to the traditional mode. The audience sees the conventional gestures with the artificial beard and long hair. This scene demonstrates another beneficial use of the cinematography. The first line of the aria is in the erhuang daoban tune and is traditionally sung at the back of the stage. Instead of focusing statically on the empty stage, the camera moves in a series of close-ups to show the details of the theatre environment such as stage design, the musical instruments, the audience, and stage conventions. Such a method uses historical realism to highlight traditional theatrical conventions.

The fourth characteristic relates to aspects of music and singing. In some of the filmed versions, the traditional formulaic opening bars and interludes in the accompanying music are minimised to speed the pace, while keeping the singing in harmony with the mood of the lyrics. In addition to the traditional Chinese musical instruments, an electronic synthesiser is used to make the Beijing opera music more melodious in some cases and more rhythmic in others, in accordance with the content of the lyrics. An example can be seen from Pan Yueqiao’s singing to persuade the governor of Shanghai to cooperate with Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s revolution. Another example is the Qianlong Emperor’s singing on the boat when he tries to outwit the boatman, an assassin in The Qianlong Emperor’s Travel to the Jiangnan Area (Qianlong xia Jiangnan, a Beijing opera 1989). In these operas, the background music is composed with Beijing opera melody. Furthermore, unlike stage performances, a common device in most television series of traditional operas is the recurrence of a piece of music or a song to form a motif linking different cinematic images. For instance, in The Story of Pan Yueqiao each part ends with a song sung twice by the off-screen voice of Pan Yueqiao. The lyric goes as follows:

People say that the actor is a madman
And the audience is crazy.
Don’t you know that the madman is not mad
And the crazy one is not crazy.
On the theatrical carpet are enacted
Strange things from antiquity to the present;
Accompanied by the strings and drums
Excellent songs are sung about happiness, anger, sadness and fear.
Wisdom is hidden in absurdity;
Reality resides in the depth of illusion.
A play ends with its meaning inexhaustible,
Relying on the audience to comment on its merits and defects.

This song has a double meaning in its reference to Pan Yueqiao as an actor and in its philosophical summary of the play itself. The melody could make this song a popular aria to be sung by amateurs.

What might disappoint the fans of the traditional conventions is that most recent cinematic versions of traditional theatre do away with pantomimic gestures such as the symbolic opening and closing of doors. Stylised movements are preserved mainly in those scenes which involve singing and acrobatics such as the traditional boat-rowing scene. Different types of filmed versions vary: some have more stylised movements and gestures than others; some still have traces of a stage form on the screen while others are more akin to a film or television drama format with realistic settings.

With the authenticity of various regional operatic singing and yet deviated from its stage conventions, most contemporary cinematic versions of traditional theatre transmit the knowledge and art of an old tradition through an innovative, popular and entertaining form.

The significance of the recent marriage between traditional theatre and television further lies in four areas. First, it is likely to make Western-influenced television culture more Chinese and help the old Chinese theatre become modernised. Secondly, these popular cinematic operas have attracted some of the young members of the television audience who could not understand the traditional form and seldom went to see stage productions: when they have cultivated a stable taste for traditional operas, they may go to the theatre to see the classical form. Thirdly, the cinematic operas can widen the range of the traditional topics and produce more playwrights who are willing to explore new fields: under their authorship, more theatrical pieces have come and will continue to come to the television screen. Fourthly, the shift to television has encouraged the inclusion of different regional styles of the traditional theatre in the writing of scripts for serial plays, the production of stage serial plays and the making of television series. For instance, Sister Empresses (Jiemei huanghou) is a script of a serial play in three parts. From its publication in the late 1980s to the end of 1990, it was adapted into thirty-two regional styles and staged by around 400 theatrical troupes in cities and the countryside. It was telecast through various TV stations in the styles of huaguxi  (Anhui TV Station), huangmeixi  (Hubei TV Station), jinju (Shanxi TV Station) and xiangju  (Xiamen TV Station). [38] Although the case of Sister Empresses seems exceptional, the trend of adapting successful stage productions onto television is still developing, and its significance is growing.

To summarise what has been discussed and analysed in the above four areas, we may conclude that the presence of traditional theatre in Chinese cinema throughout history is manifested in the production of a large number of opera films, in the treatment of theatre and its performers as a constant subject matter in fictional films, and in the use of operatic music, well-known arias, and striking theatrical images as motifs in developing stories of non-theatrical films. Throughout this long process of the interaction between theatre and film, theatre was an inspiration for the making of films at different technological stages; it served as a cultural base as well as a force to advance an independent domestic film industry in competition with foreign films; and it still remains as national symbol or an authentic Chinese entity in its power to mould people’s outlook, to engage people in social discourses, and to generate a distinctly local symbolism. While traditional theatre has greatly influenced the film/television medium in China, the cinematic modes have in turn played a significant role in effecting innovations within traditional theatrical forms. These innovative changes include the construction of realistic stage settings, the modification of stylised conventions, the use of a variety of camera shots to achieve special effects in opera films or the use of lighting to focus on part of the stage to achieve the effect of close-up shots, and the employment of montage technique to quicken the pace of performance. Cinematic modes are much needed now to revitalise an old theatre for a large audience of the younger generation.

Footnotes:
[1] Different scholars have named different people as the first person to screen films in China. But all agree on the date of 11 August 1896 based on advertisements in Shen bao (Shanghai newspaper) 10 and 14 August 1896, quoted by Cheng Jihua, Zhongguo dianying fazhan shivol. 1, (A history of the development of Chinese cinema) (Beijing: Zhongguo Dianying Chuban She, 1963), 8. For different accounts see Jay Leyda, Dianying: an account of films and the film audience in China (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), 1; Zhiwei Xiao, “Chinese cinema” in Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, eds., Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (New York: Routledge, 1998), 4; Zhen Zhang, “Teahouse, shadowplay, bricolage: ‘Laborer’s love’ and the question of early Chinese cinema,” in Yingjin Zhang, ed., Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999), 32.
[2] For Hollywood influences, see Leo Ou-fan Lee, “The urban milieu of Shanghai cinema, 1930-1940: some explorations of film audience, film culture, and narrative conventions,” in Yingjin Zhang, 1999, 74-96; Marie Cambon, “The dream palaces of Shanghai – American films in China’s largest metropolis prior to 1949,” Asian Cinema7, no.2 (Winter 1995): 34-45; and Wang Zhaoguang, “Minguo nianjian Meiguo dianying zai hua shichang yanjiu” (“A study of American films in the Chinese market during the Republican years”), Dianying yishu (Film Art) , 1 (1998): 57-64.
[3] Wang Zhaoguang, 63.
[4] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi (A History of Chinese Silent Film) (Beijing: Zhongguo Dianying Chuban She, 1996), 6.
[5] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 15.
[6] Beijing opera grew from the competitions of various regional operas in Beijing in the first fifty years of the 19th century. In the next half of the century, it matured and spread to most areas in China. It enjoyed its period of nationwide popularity in the first thirty years or so of the 20th century. See the first two volumes of Ma Shaobo, et. al., eds., Zhongguo jingju shi (A History of China’s Beijing opera) (Beijing: Zhongguo Xiju Chuban She, 1999).
[7] Various historical accounts of the Chinese film industry do not have an agreed name for the owner of Fengtai Photography Shop. There are at least three different names for him: Ren Qingtai, Ren Jingfeng and Ren Fengtai.
[8] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 14.
[9] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 15.
[10] Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, 167.
[11] Yu Ji, “Youguan mengyaqi Zhongguo dianying de jige wenti” (“On a few issues of early Chinese films”), Dianying yishu (Film Art) , 4 (1998): 88.
[12] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 15-16.
[13] Zhiwei Xiao, “Chinese cinema,” in Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, 5.
[14] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 45.
[15] Quoted from Tan Chunfa, “Changqi bei wudu bei lengluo de yiye – zaoqi de Zhongguo dianying” (“Early Chinese films: a historical page misread and ignored for a long time”), Dangdai dianying(Contemporary Cinema), 2 (1995): 13.
[16] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 49.
[17] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 58.
[18] Cheng Bugao, Yingtan yijiu(Reflections on the Past Events of the Silver Screen) (Beijing: Zhongguo Dianying Chuban She, 1983), 101; 105.
[19] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 27.
[20] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 65.
[21] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 65.
[22] Hu Xingliang and Zhang Ruilin, eds., Zhongguo dianying shi (A History of Chinese Film) (Beijing: Zhongyang Guangbo Dianshi Daxue Chuban She, 1995), 24-26.
[23] Hong Shi, “Di yi ci langchao – mopian qi Zhongguo shangye dianying xianxiang shuping” (“The first wave: a review of the phenomenon of Chinese commercial cinema during the period of silent films”), Dangdai dianying (Contemporary Cinema) , 2 (1995): 6; and Tan Chunfa, 19.
[24] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 210.
[25] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 177.
[26] Kristine Harris, “The romance of the western chamber and the classical subject film in 1920s Shanghai,” in Yingjin Zhang, 1999, 60; 72.
[27] Hong Shi, 8.
[28] Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, 237.
[29] Bey Logan made a persuasive analysis of the Beijing opera’s influence upon Hong Kong kungfu films in his Hong Kong Action Cinema (Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1995), 9-21.
[30] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 280.
[31] Hu Xingliang and Zhang Ruilin, 91; 98. The English title of the literary work on which the film Xianglin sao is based is The New Year’s Sacrifice.
[32] Wang Changfa and Liu Hua, Mei Lanfang nianpu (The Chronicle of Mei Lanfang) (Nanjing: Hehai Daxue Chuban She, 1994), 155-156.
[33] See articles in this issue by Jeanne Deslandes (on Taiwan) and Linda Lai (on Hong Hong).
[34] These calculations are based on the titles listed in Zhongguo yishu yingpian bianmu 1949-1979 (The Catalogue of Chinese Films 1949-1979) edited by China Film Archives (Zhongguo Dianying Ziliao Guan) and the Film Institute of the China Art Research Centre (Zhongguo Yishu Yanjiu Yuan Dianying Yanjiu Suo) (Beijing: Wenyi Yishu Chuban She, 1981).
[35] John Ellis commented on the technical similarity between the two media. He states: “Both are media which combine sounds and images, and are predominantly used to provide narrative fiction. . . . Their particular products are to some extent interchangeable: cinema films are shown on TV, some materials made for TV surfaces in the cinema. Ideas circulate freely between the two media. Films give rise to TV series; shooting techniques are transposed from one medium to the other. . . .” [Visible Fictions, (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 175].
[36] The statistics presented here resulted from my original research on the adaptations of Yuan drama since the 1980s. I viewed all these adapted versions.
[37] A. C. Scott, “The performance of classical theatre,” in Colin Mackerras, ed., Chinese Theatre: From its Origins to the Present Day (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 142.
[38] An Zi, “Tiren zuowei ganxing de meixue yuanze” (“Knowledge through experience: aesthetic principles of perception”) Anhui xinxi (Anhui New Plays), 1 (1991): 71