Beijing, 1790

Beijing in 1790 was at the top of its game. The city stood at the center of one of the largest multi-ethnic empires ever gathered together. Its Qing dynasty rulers collected wealth from and exerted control over vast territories including much of today’s Chinese mainland, plus Taiwan, Outer Manchuria, Mongolia and Central Asia. The empire’s population was as diverse as its geographic reach was expansive.

A Manchu elite successfully incorporated Han Chinese, Mongols and other groups into a comprehensive governing system. The current Qianlong Emperor spoke Manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Chagati (modern Uyghur) and Tangut. His court’s diplomatic relations extended beyond Asia to include European powers. As capital of the highly centralized Qing dynasty and Ming dynasty before, Beijing had enjoyed imperial status for more than three-and-a-half centuries. Vast wealth and power came together around its more than one million residents.

Representatives from across the empire converged on the capital in 1790 to celebrate the Qianlong Emperor’s eightieth birthday. These festivities would mark what proved to be a highpoint in the dynasty’s eventual more than two-and-a-half century rule. The Emperor would remain officially in power for another five years before turning the throne over to his son, who ruled in name only until his father died in 1799. The spiral of imperial decline that lay ahead was unknown to those reveling in their good fortune at being alive at the center of one of history’s largest and wealthiest empires during a period of unusual stability and success.

Pilgrims came from across the empire to pay tribute, bringing local and regional ensembles of entertainers with them to delight the Emperor. Troupes of musicians, singers, mimes, dancers, acrobats and musicians had wandered across China since before time has been measured. Localized traditions took shape combining with local folk traditions. Han opera already had developed a number of regional styles, as had distinct regional puppet and acrobatic traditions.

the most democratic of venues as they were open to all audiences including women; and wealthy patrons organized performances — often by their own private companies — in their homes. Opera remained recognizable in its early Qian, Ming and prior formats. Simultaneously, something else was apace in Beijing — and later Shanghai — where opera assumed a new, metropolitan personality. Performance in Beijing was, by its very nature, more political than elsewhere given its proximity to power. Commercial considerations drove the development of opera performance more than was the case elsewhere. Profitmaking theaters, small and large, packed the Qing metropolis catering to a seemingly insatiable demand by men of all social classes (women were prohibited from attending until the early twentieth century). Patrons and actors moved from theater to theater, a behavior which over time thwarted the court’s ability to control what was happening on stage and in the audience. Strict hierarchical seating arrangements reenforced customary social distinctions and censors negotiated what could appear on stage. Social transgression nonetheless became a hallmark of the opera stage. According to legend, the imperial household decided to pull together various regional and performance traditions for an evening of Hui opera to entertain the emperor on his birthday. The result was a new performance merging, music, song, mime, dance, acrobatics and the martial arts which would blend together into what the world would come to know as “Peking Opera.” Over time, the genre would become formalized around several configurations. Generally, Beijing Opera features four role types: sheng (gentlemen), dan (women), jing (rough men) and chou (clowns), who demonstrate their speech, song, dance and combat skills in symbolic movements on a spare (originally square) stage. Music includes arias, songs, and percussion, while movement embraces dance, acrobatics, fighting and mime. Beijing Opera has evolved a rich and varied repertoire despite this seemingly limited menu of components. While each of these elements may be found throughout China — with regional opera and puppetry being especially important in the countryside — what became Beijing Opera took a distinctly urban trajectory very much tied to the ebbs and flows of life in the great city.

Traditional opera genres — such as kunju, yabu and huabu — continued to be performed across China in rural as well as small-town settings. Troupes participated in temple fairs and festivals — perhaps Opera’s ambiguous stature in Beijing became embedded in the capital’s morphology. Forbidden by the court from the Inner City, commercial playhouses nestled in entertainment districts just

south of the Inner City’s three gates. Officials could easily attend these nearby performances, as could other social groups excluded from the inner precincts. Such propinquity led to a mixing of audiences and genres and tossed longstanding identities into disarray. The steady flow of admonitions issued by court officials over the next decades suggests how ineffectual they were.

Manchu officials developed their own attachments to what had long been Handominated dramatic traditions. Visitors and newcomers from China’s vast regions found themselves together in the same hall. Some contraventions of social norms and roles were harmless; but not all. Such mixing and matching produced a metropolitan sensibility unlike any that had come before; a distinctive pihuang style closely associated with Beijing.

Andrea S. Goldman in Opera and the City (2012), writes, “The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a golden age for opera performance in the Qing capital. Many genres of opera, from the elegant Kun operas (kunju, written by scholar-poets), to the far less literary “flowery opera” styles (huabu), all vied for audiences in Beijing. The Qing capital, with a population of over a million and a thriving economy in the eighteenth century, held out the lure of fame and fortune to opera troupes and individual actors throughout the empire.” 1

Beijing opera steadily lost favor with audiences during the first-half of the twentieth century, only to fall further out of favor with the revolutionary Communist regime founded in 1949. New revolutionary works eventually took over the opera stage, which paved the way for a resurgence of interest in the 1990s. The genre’s fortunes brightened as China entered a new growth period in the 1980s, expanding domestic and international audiences. By the twenty-first century, performers can draw on more than 1,400 works based on Chinese history, folklore, revolution and contemporary life. The genre’s influences on Chinese cinema run deep. At home in Shanghai and Beijing — with vibrant scenes in Hong Kong, Taipei, and elsewhere — “Peking Opera” has become globally recognized as a major operatic form.

Actors of the Beijing Opera Troupe perform the famous story “White Snake” at the Huguang Theatre in Beijing, China. Photo: Hung Chung Chi. 2012. Shutterstock.com