ORCHESTRAL INSTRUMENTS
1—Hsien-tze. 2—Ku. 3—Yüeh-ch’in. 4—Chiao-pan or pan-tze. 5—Lo.
Another striking similarity to the European medieval theater is the fact that the Chinese stage has its fixed character types. The four most important among these, called the t’ai chih or pillars of the stage, are: 1, the cheng-sheng; 2, the wu-sheng; 3, the ching-i; 4, the hua-tan. Each company must always have its best actors among these four, because one of them is sure to be the star in the play.
The cheng-sheng is an elderly man wearing a long beard. The great actor T’an Shen-pei, who died about five years ago, but whose fame lives on in his many imitators, played this part. It comprises the rôles of emperors, generals, and also old faithful servants, the latter generally characters oppressed by grief. T’an Shen-pei, who became the founder of a tradition called the t’an-p’ai, was famous for his skill in acting, his fine singing, and his distinct, measured pronunciation. Among his most famous followers are Yü Ssu-yen and T’an Hsiao-sheng, the latter one of his sons. A related type is the hsiao-sheng, a youthful civilian or military character, frequently the young scholar who plays the part of the lover. The young military hero is called the ch’ü-fei-sheng (wearing pheasant feathers) and the young scholar and lover shan-tze-sheng (carrying a fan). Chu Su-yung is the most famous hsiao-sheng in Peking at present. He has been nicknamed the “living Chou Yü”, after a hero from the ancient tale of “The Three Kingdoms” whom he frequently impersonates upon the stage. Mei Lan-fang has found in the handsome Chang Miao-shang a very satisfactory partner for his romantic plays. This young man, who acts the part of the ardent lover to perfection, has the probably unique distinction among actors of being the product of a Christian missionary school, the Peking Methodist Academy. The Chinese criticize the weakness of his voice and say that his reputation is due only to the fact that he plays opposite the greatest actor of the present day in China.
The wu-sheng is the military hero. To impersonate this rôle properly an actor must be very skillful in the art of stage fighting, which means that he must possess great acrobatic skill. He must understand how to fence with wooden stage swords or spears, and furthermore how to box. Chinese boxing has nothing whatever to do with the bloodthirsty Boxers of 1900, for the latter received their name through a misunderstanding. It is, on the other hand, a most inoffensive art, consisting of a series of poses rapidly and skillfully executed. I believe that formerly it was a method of fighting, but that it has become thoroughly conventionalized at present into a system of posturing and rapid movements.
For a gorgeous riot of color one might recommend a play acted by Yang Hsiao-lou, Peking’s most famous actor of military plays, who is beginning to command the same salary as Mei Lan-fang. He is known not only for his ability in fighting, but also because he can sing well and enunciate very clearly. The tourist can tell the home folks that he has seen something if he has watched Yang Hsiao-lou with a face painted in heavy reds and blues, wearing tall feathers on his head, dressed in a garment embroidered in rich colors and studded with little mirrors, mounted on shoes with very thick soles, strutting about the stage in martial attitude, and finally engaging in combat a similarly dressed hero to the end that both whirl about the stage with lightning speed, while the orchestra supplies the excitement by means of a terrific noise which threatens to take the roof off the building. It makes a truly exciting spectacle of which even an untrained Westerner can feel the thrill.
The two types of ching-i and hua-tan are both young women characters. The difference made between them is that the former represents an honest and simple girl generally playing a sad part in which great emphasis is placed on the singing, while the hua-tan represents a woman of doubtful reputation or a maid servant in a comedy part, requiring great skill in acting. It is one of the merits of Mei Lan-fang that he acts both types and thus breaks down one of the stiff rules of the Chinese theater in the interest of developing it into a freer art. Indeed, for over ten years he has been the supreme artist in both types. It is said of him by Peking critics that he sings as beautifully as a nightingale, that he has a pretty face, that he dances gracefully, and that his acting, in the Chinese simile, is like quicksilver which fills up every crevice and crack of a hole into which it is poured—that is to say, satisfying to the last detail. Teh Hing, a man over sixty years old, is another famous ching-i; however, he scorns to play the rôle of the hua-tan, the flowery maiden who treads the primrose path. Still another type in which Mei Lan-fang appears at times is that of wu-tan, or warrior maiden, a rôle comparatively rarely seen.
