The moral Chinese stage sets forth not only the reward of virtue, but also the punishment of vice. There can be seen on the Peking stage almost any day a warning to cruel husbands called “Pang Ta Pao Ch’ing Lang” (Beating the Heartless Husband). Mu Chi was a scholar holding the first degree (Hsiu Tsai, corresponding somewhat to our A.B.), but he was very poor because his parents had not left him any property whatsoever. When a famine struck the country he was forced to beg for his bread. In his half-starved condition he was one day caught in a snowstorm, in the course of which he fell to the ground more dead than alive. In this condition the daughter of the head of the beggar’s guild found him lying before the door of her home. She took pity on him and nursed him back to health. At first her father was none too pleased with his daughter’s action; but when the daughter represented that the gods would surely reward her good deed, he became reconciled to the presence of the young man in the house. The daughter fell in love with her protégé and was very proud of his rank as a Hsiu Tsai. The father also became quite fond of the young man and gave him his daughter in marriage. Then it was arranged that Mu Chi was to go to Peking to take the examination, while his wife and father-in-law were to go along to beg and thus furnish the young man with a living until such time as he should have secured a profitable post. Mu Chi passed the examination and was appointed the magistrate of a town. The moment he had received his appointment he became extremely disdainful of his new relatives and in the course of the journey by boat to the town where he was to become magistrate he pushed his wife overboard into the stream and drove off his father-in-law. However, a certain high official saved the life of the beggar chief’s daughter and adopted her as his child. When he had learned from her the story of her husband’s ingratitude he decided to punish the wretch properly. He called on him in his magistracy and offered him his daughter in marriage. Mu Chi, the cad, naturally was glad to marry into the family of such an influential man, and accepted eagerly. But what was his chagrin and fright when on the evening of his marriage he raised the bride’s veil to find under it the beggar’s daughter! The official then entered the bridal chamber with a powerful stick and ordered the beggar’s daughter to give Mu Chi a sound thrashing. This she did with a great deal of “heart”, as the Chinese say, for which no one can blame her. But Mu Chi decided to become a wiser and a better man; he sent out men to find his father-in-law, and the three lived happy ever after.
But the very crowning piece of righteous moral indignation in all the Flowery Kingdom is found in a story connected with Yo Fei, deified as the god of war and worshiped as a special patron of the theater. In his lifetime Yo Fei was a faithful general of the Sung emperors, a great fighter against the Mongols. In fact, he had almost succeeded in capturing the Mongol emperor with his entire army when the enemy bribed some high Chinese officials, chief among them Ch’in Kuei, to do away with their great patriotic leader. Yo Fei was summoned before a court for trial, but was cleared of all charges. Then he was tried again before Ch’in Kuei and two other judges, this time being condemned to death by strangling. Before the sentence was carried out, his cruel executioners tore the skin off his back where his mother had tattooed the famous inscription, “I repay the state with integrity and loyalty.”
At Hangchow is found the tomb of this great Chinese patriot. Before it, as every tourist sees to his surprise, are four statues in a kneeling position and bound with chains, while an inscription invites the wanderer to urinate on them.[21] These villains, who are literally in very bad odor, are Ch’in Kuei, his wife, and the two other judges who condemned Yo Fei to death. This drastic, posthumous punishment seems to have had very little effect in furthering patriotism in China, for in recent decades neither the Russians nor the Japanese seem ever to have had any trouble in finding Chinese statesmen willing to accept bribes for the betrayal of their country. The story is also told that in 1678, fully 500 years after Yo Fei’s death, this play was performed in a certain town, when suddenly an excited spectator rushed on the stage and stabbed to death the unfortunate actor who was playing the part of Ch’in Kuei, the traitor. In the course of the trial this fervent patriot told that in all his books he had carefully cut out the name of Ch’in Kuei wherever it occurred. The man was not put to death, as would have been the case had he been a Britisher, nor was he celebrated as a hero, as would have been the case had he been a Frenchman, but in characteristic Chinese manner he was dismissed as an idiot.
Though as a general thing there is very little courtship on the part of young people in China, yet there are on the stage quite a number of romantic love stories. In the chapter on Mei Lan-fang I have mentioned some taken from the novel, “Dream of the Red Chamber.” The same actor frequently presents “Yü Chan Chih” (A Precious Hairpin), the plot of which might be an Occidental love story. In a certain convent the abbess had living with her the daughter of her deceased brother, a very attractive young girl by the name of Ch’en Miao. In the vicinity there lived also the abbess’ nephew, with whom, because of his personal charm and great learning, the young lady fell in love. One day the nephew became ill and Ch’en Miao asked permission to assist in taking care of the patient. Under the tender care of such an attractive nurse the young man recovered speedily, but he too had lost his heart. He found means to visit Ch’en Miao in her room one day as she was reading poetry, whereupon, like Paolo and Francesca, that day they read no more. In the village there lived an elderly magistrate who wished to marry Ch’en Miao, but when the generous judge learned that she loved a younger rival, he did not show any signs of jealousy; on the contrary, he went to the abbess to urge her to join in marriage the young lovers.
Peking theaters have very few properties, as has been stated, but behind practically every stage one finds a pair of plaster-of-Paris lions in imitation of the marble lions that guard the gateways of Chinese palaces and temples. They are used in a very popular play called “Chü T’eng Kuan Hua” (Trial of Strength and Viewing the Ancestral Portraits). The play seems to be a modern imitation of the Yuan Dynasty drama “The Orphan of the Chao Family.” A wicked minister persuades the emperor that an entire family, one of whose members he hates, must be exterminated root and branch. A friend decides to save the family name by substituting just before the execution his own young son for a child of the condemned family. His wife absolutely refuses to enter upon his plan, but when he kneels before her she is compelled to yield to his wishes to sacrifice her child; this is typical of the Chinese, inasmuch as they seem to think that when some one humbles himself unduly he must gain his end and other people must grant him whatever he asks. The man and his wife then bring up the orphan as their own son. The child they sacrificed was chopped into three pieces by the wicked minister himself, because he feared that it might some day revenge on him the slaughter of his relatives.
The play as given in Peking theaters opens at the time when the orphan has attained the age of fifteen. He and his servant are playing in the courtyard of his foster-father’s house. The boy proposes that they make a test of their strength by moving the stone lions standing at the door of the house. The servant tries in vain to move them, while the boy, a prodigy of strength, picks up the massive stones and moves them with ease. Soon afterward the master of the house returns and asks angrily who is responsible for displacing the stone lions. The good-natured servant, who has the rôle of the clown in this play, says that he did it. His master then orders him to return them to their proper place, and thus in a comedy scene he is soon proved a liar. Then the adopted son is called; like George Washington he acknowledges what he has done, and returns the lions to their proper places without the slightest trouble. His foster-father now perceives that although but fifteen years of age, the boy is strong enough to avenge the cruel injustice done his family. Therefore he conducts him into the ancestral temple where he shows him the portraits of his ancestors down to the ones put to death by the wicked minister. No sooner has the orphan boy heard the story than he puts on his armor and sets out on his mission of revenge on the enemy of his family. Incidentally there is often a bit of comedy of a simple kind thrown in by the stage hands when they remove the stone lions, which they pretend to find very heavy.
On one occasion when I saw this play I was surprised to hear the audience break out into peals of laughter at the point when the boy set out on his errand of revenge. I inquired the cause of this from a Chinese friend. Amid sobs of mirth he told me that the orphan boy had left the temple on horseback! As usual, there was no scenery, the stage was bare, only a picture suspended from a chair set on a table marked the locality as an ancestral temple. The actor dressed for war had absent-mindedly acted as though he were on the battle field and had made with his leg the conventional sign for mounting a horse. I had not noticed the gesture at all, as it was a rather inconspicuous one. The humor of the episode is of about the same variety as that engendered years ago in the Philadelphia Little Theater when, in the course of the action, a cat wandered on the stage and in her haste to remove him an actress thrust him into the glowing stage fireplace—in reality, of course, off-stage into the wings.
In this imitation of a Yuan drama, in fact of the drama that several Western writers have called the nearest approach to true tragedy among all Chinese plays, practically all that is presented to modern audiences is the farcical element. Of farces the Chinese stage possesses many, some good and some less so. A certain Liu Yen-ming, in a farce by that name, lends money to a magistrate for a journey to the capital. The loan is arranged, like most things in China, through a third party—in this case an abbess of a convent. When a year has elapsed and the magistrate has not returned, Liu demands his money, or, in case the abbess cannot repay him, the hand of Yu Ying, the magistrate’s pretty daughter. He brings such pressure to bear by means of threats that the abbess finally agrees to arrange a rendezvous at midnight in the Convent of Great Purity. Yu Ying naturally enough refuses to marry a man just because her father owes him money, but when the abbess pictures the old miser as a dashing youth of twenty-three she gradually changes her tone and at last gives her consent. At midnight, therefore, Liu Yen-ming stealthily approaches the convent, but unfortunately he meets with a patrol of police who arrest the nocturnal prowler as he is unable to account for his presence near the convent at such an unseemly hour. Instead of in the arms of his beloved the money-lender spends the night in jail. But much more disagreeable for him is another development of the story. A young scholar on his way to the capital is on the same road when he observes that the police have arrested Liu Yen-ming. He decides that the police must be very strict in these parts and so demands hospitality at the very next house, which is of course the convent. The door is opened by a novice who has been told by the abbess what to do; the young scholar is asked to enter and to await the young lady. The youth, though somewhat surprised, is wise enough to hold his tongue and to follow instructions. Soon Yu Ying enters and finds that the young man possesses all the charms the abbess had falsely attributed to her father’s creditor. Love at first sight, then follow mutual explanations, and before morning an engagement sealed by pledges.
A rather good scene follows when on the next day the abbess calls on the miser to felicitate him on the pleasant night he has spent! There are delightful misunderstandings, but at the end of the scene Liu Yen-ming is in a towering rage, and determined to have revenge. He forces the daughter of his debtor to become a maid in his tavern, where she must perform the most menial tasks. In the end, of course, the young scholar returns from the capital as a magistrate; he enters the very inn where his beloved is serving the guests, recognizes and rescues her, giving the miser the punishment he so richly deserves.
One evening when I had gone to see Mei Lan-fang at the Chen Kwang Theater, there was performed as the last play among the curtain raisers another farce, “San Yao Hui” (Shaking Dice). This farce is much less presentable in every way, but is, I believe, more typical of the present-day drama, because of its episodic nature and lack of real plot. On the eve of the husband’s return the wife and the concubine are quarreling as to which is to share his first night at home. The dispute waxes hot and violent; herewith follows a prize specimen of the dialogue: