?"Hao! Hao! Hao!" shouted the audience, to express their
appreciation.
They were saluting a Peking Opera performer who had just
finished a marvelous "qiangbei," a movement in which he twirled
himself around, threw himself on the ground and rolled on the
stage. The audience applauded lustily as they jumped out of their
seats.
This, however, was not a scene from Beijing's Liyuan Theater,
which offers foreign tourists a fiesta of Peking Opera. Instead, I
was sitting in the Kennedy Theater, campus playhouse of the
University of Hawaii (UH), watching the English premiere of the
highly-rated "Women Generals of the Yang Family" staged by students
of the UH theater department.
The audience was mostly Americans and I had no idea how these
local, mostly first-time Peking Opera viewers had figured out that
the Chinese word for bravo was "Hao." But I could tell from their
applause-reddened hands that they had fallen in love with this
Chinese performing arts form.
Monica Ham, a UH major in Asian Theater, was one of these happy
clappers. She knew a little about Peking Opera and had come without
very high expectations.
"Oh, but I like its music. I became attached to it ever since
the first clicking beat of the wooden castanet reverberated across
the theater," Ham told me excitedly during the intermission.
When told that many Chinese youth describe Peking Opera music as
an ear-splitting combo of loud clanging of the gong, sharp rattle
of the flat drum, and piercing sound of the Beijing violin, Ham
shrugged, saying: "Well, I do think the music helps set the tone of
the play and motivate the audience."
Peking Opera can enthral audiences; what it needs is simply a
localized adaptation for people foreign to Chinese culture and
language.
"It's like showing Shakespeare play and Italian opera in China.
As long as people can understand the language, the charm of the art
itself will prevail," said director Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak, the
most knowledgeable local expert on Peking Opera in Hawaii, who,
with Hui-Mei Chang of China, translated "Women Generals" for its
English-language debut.
When Wichmann-Walczak talks about Peking Opera, she insists on
using the Chinese word Jingju. "Jingju should become the art of the
world. We should have American Jingju, French Jingju,"
Wichmann-Walczak said. She is obviously excited about its
future.
Sure to catch on
"When I first watched Jingju in Beijing, I was not used to it.
But later on I thought I should not use my standard to interpret an
exotic art. Then I learnt to appreciate it for what it is," said
Michelle Valle, a graduate student at UH, majoring in Chinese
political history.
Valle has frequented Peking Opera theaters while doing her field
study in Beijing and knows that many Chinese young people ignore
Jingju and show a clear preference for pop music.
But she is pretty sure that once they learn to appreciate Peking
Opera, they will love it.
"I have no doubt about the charm of Jingju. What is difficult is
to bring those young people into the theater," said
Wichmann-Walczak, who came to China to learn about Jingju first
hand in 1979.
She has come across so many young Chinese whose views of Jingju
did an about-turn after they sat through just one play.
"There was one boy who said, almost indignantly, to me that he
has been 'brainwashed' by his peers' bias against Jingju. He was
told constantly that Jingju was not in tune with modern art form.
'It's too slow. It's simply dull'," Wichmann-Walczak recalled.
"But after watching just one episode of 'Takeover of Weihu
Mountain,' he was hooked.
"I think China should use proper incentives to bring its young
people into the Jingju Theater, just as we have done here."
As the curtain lowered and the hilarity so recently witnessed on
stage evaporated, I suddenly felt a strong yearning to come to the
next show.
Jingju has cast its spell on me too.
(China Daily March 1, 2006)
