Gods and spirits can be recognized by the horsehair switch they carry whenever they appear and by the slight tapping of the gong as they enter the stage. The ghosts of the deceased wear black veils over their heads, or bundles of strips of paper under their right ears. Whenever any character from the world beyond, god or ghost, appears, fireworks are set off by a stage hand; usually this takes the form of large flames emitted repeatedly from an oil lamp. Monks and nuns carry the same horsehair switch, perhaps because of their “spiritual” lives. A bride can be recognized by the red veil she wears on her head. Good officials wear square hats, while wicked officials wear round ones. The wicked jailer in his round hat is a frequent figure on the Chinese stage.
A strong wind is indicated by the waving of flags, which recalls the fact that the flags used in our operatic performances are not made of silk as are ordinary banners, but of stiff material, giving them the appearance of banners flying in the wind. A snowstorm is produced by flakes of paper tossed into the air by a stage hand in full view of the audience. A sick person is designated by a yellow cloth which covers his face. When a character has died his face is covered with a red cloth. The head of a decapitated person is symbolized by some object about the size of a human head, wrapped in red cloth. Sometimes an execution is portrayed by making a sword thrust at the victim who then runs off the stage, after which his head is brought on.
For new or exceptional situations new symbols must be invented. There is a play called “Chu Fang Ts’ao” taken from the novel “The Three Kingdoms.” It is the story of a guest who hears his host sharpening a butcher knife and, as he fears the worst, runs off under somewhat amusing circumstances. However, his host was the very reverse of a robber; he was in fact slaughtering the fatted pig in honor of the visitor. The business of slaughtering the pig is done in the following manner: an actor with a black cloth thrown over his head and back walks on the stage in a stooping posture, driven forward by another actor’s stick and making the various deviations from the right path by which a pig in real life exasperates the swineherd. The actor-pig finally walks up to a chair on which he can rest his hands in comfort, while the business of slaughtering is given in pantomime. After this has been done the cloth is removed and the man, now neither pig nor actor, walks off the stage erect.
The above conventions, which have come under my observation in the course of my attendance in Chinese theaters, do not by any means exhaust the list, nor do they represent anything permanent. Changes are continually occurring. One that I have been observing is that the long conventionalized beards no longer hang down from the upper lip, covering the mouth; probably because this was found to be inconvenient for purposes of speaking or drinking tea, and some one hit upon the idea of having the beard only below the mouth and of painting in the moustache to match. Incidentally, only good characters have a moustache, while the villains of the Chinese stage have no hair on the upper lip. One ought to note, too, that these conventions are not so arbitrary as they might seem at first glance, but are generally founded on some real element in Chinese life. The yellow dress denoting the emperor, the red veil marking the bride, and the black costume signifying the poor man have their basis in everyday Chinese custom. A mourner on the Chinese stage appears in white, and the long beards of old men naturally enough have the same color, both quite as in real life. The symbols are an imitation of real life more or less stiffened into conventions. Of course, the origins of the conventional signs are sometimes a bit difficult to trace, especially in the case of ghosts and gods.
From the instances cited above it is plain that the Chinese theater contains much that from our point of view tends to “destroy the illusion.” Another factor in this process is the “property man”—made known to Americans through “The Yellow Jacket”—who is ever on the stage in the midst of all action. When the heroine must kneel before the judge a coolie in a dirty blue cotton gown rushes forward to place a pillow on the floor lest the actor’s costly embroidered gown be soiled. An actor is frequently handed a cup of tea by another such attendant; some actors to-day even equip their servants with thermos bottles for these occasions. A general preparing for combat by removing his outer coat is aided in this operation by ordinary stage hands, not by servants forming part of the dramatis personae. From all the above it would seem that human nature does not demand any particular kind of realism on the stage, but is quite able to adapt itself to any illusion whatsoever.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mei Lan-fang—China’s Greatest Actor
