A Young Nun Seeks Love
The indifferent actors have been on the stage for hours, impersonating famous emperors of the time of Attila, cunning counselors as old as Alcuin, or sages contemporary with Pope Sylvester. One short play or part of a play after the other—each lasting about thirty to forty-five minutes—has been going on without intermission since noon. The fact that no pause is made between the plays often leads foreigners to believe that Chinese plays are of serpentine length, while in reality they are no longer than the separate numbers of our continuous vaudeville. The orchestra leader merely beats a few short notes on a gong and the stage is set for the next play—that is to say, Chinese drama has no stage settings whatever. A brightly colored curtain forms the background of the bare stage; in other words, the scenery is left to the imagination, as it was in Shakespeare’s theater.
When the hour for the star has finally come, a special fluteplayer takes his seat as leader of the orchestra and sends out soft, wistful notes that contrast gratefully with the brass din of the preceding battle scene. With tense interest Mei Lan-fang is awaited, for to-day he is to play “A Young Nun Seeks Love.”
With light, mincing step he enters in a long nun’s gown of white silk, over which he wears a white coat dotted with a diamond pattern in light blue. Long black tresses and a narrow black belt set off the delicate shades of the light colors. The exquisite color combination is enhanced by his soft, clear voice and the emotional play of his facial expression. The theme of the forty-minute monodrama is similar to Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”, a story which Mei alternately sings and recites to orchestral accompaniment.
A pitiful existence is that of the nun with the shaven head! At night only a lone lantern consorts me to sleep. Time quickly pursues one to old age, leaving only the memory of a monotonous youth.
Sent to the convent at a tender age, she finds her life at sixteen a dull round divided between the burning of incense and the reading of monotonous Buddhistic sutras. The abbess has deprived her of the ornament of her hair and forces her to carry water from the well at the foot of the hill. On these excursions she has stolen long looks at a handsome youth playing outside the city gate, and he seems not indifferent toward her.
For the price of a little sympathy I would be willing to go to the palace of Yen Wang, the god of Hell, to be ground up in the mortar, cut into bits by the saw, crushed between the millstones, or to seethe in burning oil. My love is deep enough to outweigh the punishments of all devils.
Her childhood at the home of her pious parents had been an interminable droning of the sacred syllables, “O mane padme hum, o mane padme hum”, beating of drums, ringing of bells, blowing of horns, tinkling of cymbals—all to drive away the devils. Her heart, hungry for a bit of brightness, feels cramped in her cell and she decides to enter the large hall filled with the statues of five hundred saints and Buddhas. Since the stage is absolutely bare, Mei at this point goes through the pantomime of opening a door and closing it again behind him. After some quaint meditations before the various ascetic lohans and the figure of the “laughing Buddha”,[26] who seems to say, “Why waste the precious days of sweet youth?”, the young nun decides to risk all for the sake of finding love. In a graceful, rhythmic dance Mei moves off the stage. The young girl has gone into the “black world”, as the Buddhist nuns call life outside the convent walls.
Another favorite among Mei Lan-fang’s plays is “Burying the Blossoms.” A young girl, tormented by jealousy and doubt of her lover’s good faith, finds the garden path covered with fallen blossoms. In these flowers, broken from their stems and lying crushed on the ground, she sees the image of herself, a girl whose parents are dead and who is neglected by every one. She takes pity on the flowers, and, placing them in a silk bag, buries them under a tree. As she is shedding tears over the little mound her lover comes upon her. The explanation that follows effects a deepening of their love.
In Professor Giles’ translation (“Chinese Literature”, page 368) we have the sentiment of the play expressed (Cf. Moore’s “The Last Rose of Summer”):