Journal of a Sabbatical |
|||||||
China Trip 2000 |
|
change faces, spit fire |
|||||
|
|
|
|||||
Quote of the Day: Though a tree writes no memorial, yet people understand -- Du Fu - Song of an Old Cypress Today's Reading: The Story of the Stone (a.k.a. Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xuequin
Photos: Du Fu's Cottage Ticket to Du Fu's Cottage Green Trees and Green River at Du Fu's Cottage Writing Desk Ticket from Shufengyayun Tea House Change Faces Actor Showing His Real Face - from the poster the tea house manager gave us Woman Juggler Spit Fire Rolling Light Stick Puppet - from the poster Stick Puppet 2 - my own photo
|
|
Somehow, the whole time we were discussing the itinerary for this Tibet trip and hearing we were going to visit "the thatched cottage" on our stopover in Chengdu it never dawned on me that it was Du Fu's thatched cottage. As our tour guide, Mona, who met us at the airport was telling us the story of the cottage we were about to visit, light dawned on marble head and I got way more excited about this little diversion.
![]()
I could easily have spent an entire day at the cottage. I wanted to take the experience with me. The souvenir bug that bit me this morning at the Temple of the Azure Clouds in Xiangshan bites me again in Chengdu and I end up with a scroll painting of the cottage surrounded by dense vegetation. I have to have it, despite the fact that I have no place to hang it at home and I'll have to carry it around Tibet with me. ![]()
The Shufengyayun Tea House is near the Du Fu Cottage. It's a big barn-like space furnished with high-backed bamboo chairs and small tables set with covered tea cups and plates of peanuts. They serve the tea from an eagle tea can and the hot water from a copper kettle with a very long spout for reaching to the middle of the aisles. It's quite crowded with people packed in everywhere. I see maybe three other non-Chinese faces besides ours. The back of the ticket says the building has the style of Old West Shu and is supposed to make the people "feel the folk customs and folkway of the Old West Shu". I can't vouch for that because I am ignorant of the folkways of Old West Shu. The program for the evening includes drum and gong music, a juggling act, stick puppets, and Sichuan Opera. I'd never heard of Sichuan opera before and assumed it was pretty much like Peking Opera. Not so. Sichuan opera features a series of stunts including: change faces, spit fire, and rolling light. We're told these stunts are unique to Sichuan opera and we definitely won't see them anywhere else.
Between acts a guy dressed in black silk pants and jacket with black cap, runs across the stage with a placard in Chinese and English telling you what's next. The juggler keeps everything from clay pots to round pieces of cloth in the air using both hands and feet. I don't know if that's a Sichuan specialty too, but it's impressive to watch. Changing faces (bian lian in Chinese) is a performance art technique of high-speed changing of face masks. Instead of using painted on face makeup, Sichuan opera performers change their "makeup" suddenly on the stage. Well, it's not really makeup, it's masks. They change their masks so quickly that the audience barely notices it. I kept trying to catch the moment of the change but never did. With all the leaping around and mask changing, it seems like there's a cast of thousands on the stage instead of a couple of players doing multiple roles.
The MC reminds us constantly in Chinese and English of the uniqueness of Sichuan opera - between every act. I start to wonder what parts of China all these people in the audience are from. Are they as amazed and impressed as the handfull of foreigners? She tells us that "rolling light" is another skill unique to Sichuan. These actors must like playing with fire. Besides spitting it, they do amazing stunts with it.
While we're watching the show, our tea cups are refilled constantly. Basically if you take a sip, someone tops up your cup. Also while we're engrossed in the show, Mona disappears and returns a few times. We think nothing of it. Then it's time to leave and get a few hours sleep before the early (really early) flight to Lhasa. That's when we discover that our driver has dumped all our luggage in the tea house's office and taken off. He apparently had yet more words with Mona. So we sit in the office while Mona tries to find us a cab or another driver or something. The manager of the tea house comes in and gives us each a poster (from which some of the pictures in this entry were scanned.) Finally, we get a cab to our hotel. Only then do we find out Mona is going to wake us up at 4:00 AM to get to the airport. Four o'clock in the morning! Yikes. |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |