Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

VILLAGE THEATRICALS (see p. [132]).

The drama (such as it is) provides the most popular of all forms of amusement among the agricultural classes. The actors are professionals, who wander from place to place seeking engagements. Contracts are drawn up by middlemen called hsieh-hsi-ti, and contain a concise statement of how many days the performances are to be given (generally three or four), how many actors are to take part in them, and what the payment is to be. The actors carry with them their own garments, false beards, masks and other "properties," while the stage is supplied by the village. The stone-built theatrical pavilions usually face northwards, towards the gateway of the temple with which they are connected. Temples, and the images in them, face the south: thus the gods, for whose benefit and in whose honour the plays are theoretically given, have a full view of the entertainment. The spectators stand between the temple and the stage. The performances (usually consisting of short separate plays) take place at intervals throughout the whole of each day.

There is very little originality in the plots of the pieces presented; they are all taken from or founded on well-known Chinese legendary episodes or on events described in famous historical novels. If this were not the case, the dramatic methods in vogue in agricultural China would have to be modified; for the dialogue cannot under present conditions be heard distinctly except by a limited number of the audience. Not to mention the gongs and cymbals of the orchestra, which frequently come into action at what appears to foreigners to be the wrong moment, the open air soon dissipates the players' voices, and the great body of spectators ("audience" is hardly an appropriate word) is apt to be somewhat restless, if not noisy. Female parts are generally taken by specially trained boys or young men, though actresses are no longer unknown in China. The acting is rarely good from a European point of view; on the contrary, it is very stiff and full of what seem to us ridiculous mannerisms. But it is unfair to judge of the histrionic art of China from what one sees at a country fair.

The frequent association of the drama with religion in China will naturally recall to the minds of students of English literature the miracle-plays and mysteries of the Middle Ages in Europe. But the analogy is not a very close one. The English drama, regarded historically, may be said to be English through and through. The changes it underwent were almost, if not quite, independent of the history of the drama on the Continent. The evolution of the drama can be traced step by step from its origin to its culmination in the hands of the great Elizabethans. In China the origin of the drama is doubtful; it is not (in its present or any similar form) of great antiquity, and dramatic writing has never taken rank as a very high form of art. Some of the elements of drama may probably be traced in the stately gesture-dances, combined with music, of which we read in some of the oldest Chinese books. Dances which are probably very similar to those performed at the courts of the ruling dukes in Confucius's time may be witnessed at the present day in parts of Further India. In the old Indo-Chinese capital of Vientian on the Mekong (now the capital of French Laos) I witnessed, in 1902, a dance of this kind. By a stretch of the imagination it might have been styled a drama in dumb show, but with more dumb show than drama: a dance that aimed at expressing not so much the poetry of graceful movement as the poetry of successive states of more or less dignified repose.

The Chinese drama of to-day is still a drama of posturing and gesture: the player is for ever aiming at "striking an attitude." This is all the more remarkable among a people who in ordinary life consider gesture undignified and indicative of a lack of self-control. It can, I think, be explained only as a survival from the days when the Chinese drama consisted mainly of dance and music. The literary developments of the drama—if indeed they may correctly be described as developments—date only from the time of the Yüan dynasty (1280-1367), and the popularity of the drama among the people seems to have been only of gradual growth since that date. It was apparently an importation from Central Asia, and came to China with the Mongol conquerors. For some time this novel form of art was confined to Peking and the other great centres of Mongol power, and to this day the influence of Peking is shown in the very frequent employment of the Peking dialect even in provinces where that form of speech is unintelligible to the mass of the people.

A theatrical company may be engaged by any person or group of persons willing to pay the required expenses. A theatrical entertainment is not therefore necessarily connected with religion, though in Weihaiwei it is generally so—at least in name. Occasionally a villager who has acquired wealth in Manchuria or elsewhere makes a bid for local popularity by paying the whole expenses out of his own pocket; but as a rule the cost is met out of the common purse. This leads us to a consideration of the internal polity and fiscal arrangements of a Weihaiwei village, which must be clearly understood in their main outlines if we are to arrive at any adequate conception of the manner in which the peasants of this district, as of nearly the whole of China, regulate their lives and allocate their rights and responsibilities.

Certainly the main interest of the Territory, especially for those interested in sociological questions, lies in the quiet and apparently humdrum life of the village communities. As that life is now, so it has been for unnumbered centuries. There is no manorial system, no "villeinage," no landlordism, no rack-renting. The people of Weihaiwei are practically a population of peasant proprietors, though proprietorship is vested rather in the family (using the word in an extended sense) than in the individual. Villages still bear, in very many cases, the name of the family that lived in them as far back as their history can be traced. Chang-chia-shan is the Hill of the Chang family; Wang-chia-k'uang is the Defile of the Wang family; Chiang-chia-k'ou is the Pass of the Chiang family; Yü-chia-chuang is the village of the Yü family.

There is an old story of a weary traveller in Scotland who, having arrived at a certain country town in the Border district late at night, and finding closed doors everywhere, called out, "Are there no Christians in this town?"—whereat an old woman popped her head out of an upper window and replied, "Nae, nae, we're a' Johnstones and Jardines here." The Scottish town at least had its two surnames; more often than not a Weihaiwei village has only one. There may be Chinese Johnstones or Chinese Jardines; but it is improbable that they will be found together in the same village in such an old-fashioned district as Weihaiwei. This is not, of course, universally the case. When a clan is starved out of existence or has emigrated in a body, or, owing to its paucity of numbers, has admitted immigrants, the village may gradually become the property of several unrelated families. It is then known as a tsa hsing village, or village of miscellaneous surnames. Its old name may or may not be perpetuated. Mêng-chia-chuang, which ought to be the village of the Mêng family, is now the property of a well-to-do family or clan named Liang, and the Mêngs have disappeared.