Chapter 394 Liujiazhuang "Performs a Big Show"

During the first and second days of the Chinese New Year, Liu Zhiye's family was very busy dealing with visiting relatives and friends during the New Year.

When he finally had some free time and wanted to take a day off, he was dragged by his wife and children to the village to watch the fun for a few days.

What is the most lively thing in Liujiazhuang during the first month of the year? Of course, it is the stage for opera performances, which are as popular as some temple fairs in Beijing.

During the first month of the lunar year, there are folk activities such as temple fairs and opera performances in the capital area, and Liujiazhuang is no exception.

Nowadays, it is crowded and bustling here. Various snack stalls and performances have attracted a large number of people from the surrounding areas to gather here.

Singing operas in the first month of the lunar year is a form of self-entertainment cultural life that emerged in rural areas during the farming period. It has a wide range of participation, is simple and convenient, and has won the support of the masses. From the initial acrobatics and singing to the later rehearsal of complete plays, it has been passed down for thousands of years.

In those days, almost every village in the capital area had a drama troupe, and every family had actors. Everywhere was filled with the sound of gongs and drums, and it was bustling with activity. The population of a village could be roughly determined by counting it in the theater.

In rural areas, the actual stage for opera performances usually takes place after the Spring Festival, and most of the time before the Spring Festival is spent on rehearsals.

To perform a play, the first thing to do is to build a stage, which is an earthen platform made by digging trenches on three sides, planting a few wooden stakes, and borrowing two pieces of canvas from the supply and marketing cooperative to build a shed. Then, a gas lamp is hung directly above the stage, which makes a "hissing" sound and emits a bright white light. Even though it is inside the tarpaulin, the top of the stage is still bright.

Therefore, when people from other villages come to watch a play, or when people from this village go to other villages to watch a play, they can find the place where the play is being performed in the dark from a distance - everyone comes for the brightest place in the village.

During the performance, there are often some funny things that make people laugh. Some actors forget their lines. What should they do? Someone behind the scenes will remind them of the lines and they will sing one line at a time.

The audience was confused, not knowing whether they were performing or arguing. When they understood what was going on, the audience laughed, and the actors laughed too...

“Pull the big saw, cut the big locust tree, set up the stage in front of grandma’s house, move his aunt and young aunt, but none of his aunt and young aunt came.” This nursery rhyme, which reflects the grand and lively scene of opera performances in the countryside, is well known to people of a certain age.

In the old Qing Dynasty, there was an artist named Liu Huagan in Liujia Village. In order to make a living, he left home and went to Dongshan area to make a living, where he learned to sing Liuqiang and play the huqin.

After he completed his studies and returned to the village, he recruited students and took in apprentices, teaching them the singing methods and techniques of Liuqiang and the skills of accompanying instrumental music. He also set up a troupe and used the evenings and slack seasons to rehearse some traditional Liuqiang plays, such as "Zhao Meirong Watching the Lanterns", "The Case of the Chopping of Mei", and "The Story of the Luo Shan".

During the first month of the lunar year, they would first perform in the village for a few days, and then be invited to perform in other villages to earn some hard-earned money to supplement their family income and the expenses of the troupe.

Gradually, the villagers fell in love with Liuqiang opera. Men, women, old and young could hum a few lines of traditional classic songs. Many people also learned to play the huqin. Sometimes, the whole family could play the huqin and drums, each taking on a role and singing an impromptu song.

Watch a play, not listen to it.

It is different from "Listening to Opera" written by Liang Shiqiu, because Liu Zhiye could not understand opera at all when he was a child, let alone watch opera. If he watched opera, he could only watch the lively and bustling scene.

At that time, Liu Zhiye was a complete layman. He liked to watch plays just because they were delicious, fun and beautiful.

When he was a child, opera performances in his village were always unprecedentedly grand, far exceeding the scale of movie screenings.

There is an outsider named Chen Sanliang in Liujiazhuang now. When he was young, he loved singing opera the most.

Chen Sanliang's original name was Zhang Dajiang, but he changed his surname to Chen because his mother remarried and married Chen Sanhuang from the east of his hometown village.

It is not the skinny monkey that weighs only three taels when it is just born that is called "three taels".

He loved to sing opera, especially to play the female role. The first opera he learned was "Chen Sanliang Climbing the Hall", in which he played the role of Chen Sanliang.

Chen Sanliang was young at that time, with a handsome appearance. With his index finger raised, he looked more feminine than a woman.

At that time, there were women who followed Chen Sanliang and wanted to learn his orchid finger technique.

Liu Ershe from the same village gave Chen Sanliang a comment: "A woman with no talent for women." Nowadays, there is a special word "sissy" to describe such people.

Once, Chen Sanliang was walking at night. With his flirtatious words and swaying waist, he attracted the village playboy Heizi. He came up to him, hugged him, and dragged him into the cornfield. The "woman" struggled with him and made him fall down. Only then did he realize that he had been deceived.

Chen Sanliang laughed loudly, Heizi's face turned red with embarrassment and he ran away.

Many years later, Heizi still looked down upon Chen Sanliang and refused to speak. Chen Sanliang did not mind at all. I have made great contributions by punishing you, a gangster. Even if you ignore me, other people in the village respect me.

Among the people in the village, Heizi was the only one who ignored Chen Sanliang. When Heizi's son saw Chen Sanliang, he still called him "Uncle" happily.

Chen Sanliang once said: I'm not trying to discipline you, but you can't even find a wife and you're still a bachelor, so how can you have grandchildren and daughters?
In the past few years, Liujiazhuang began to prosper. The people here are simple and honest, and they live a rich life. They love opera, and Chen Sanliang, who was often invited to perform, began to think about staying.

So he tried to talk to the village cadres, and unexpectedly, it actually worked.

In recent years, Liujiazhuang has devoted great efforts to the construction of spiritual civilization. For literary and artistic elites like Chen Sanliang who came here on their own initiative, they naturally opened their arms and warmly welcomed them, and the two sides quickly reached an agreement on the willingness to cooperate.

The addition of Chen Sanliang and other professionals of his kind has undoubtedly injected new vitality and professionalism into the Liujiazhuang performance team. Their arrival has not only improved the overall artistic level of the team, but also made each performance more exciting and significantly improved professionalism.

…………

"There's an opera, there's an opera," everyone rushed around to tell each other. Friends and relatives must be informed on such occasions, including all the aunts and uncles, because opera is the biggest event in a village's amateur cultural life. Operas are usually only performed in the first month of the year when there is no farming work or when celebrating the harvest.

Liu Zhiye didn’t know how the opera performances were charged back then, but from the proud looks in the adults’ eyes he could tell it must have been very expensive.

Notifying relatives to come and watch the show is also a big deal.

First of all, we have to notify the daughter, husband-in-law, mother-in-law, cousins ​​and the whole family. We have to notify all the relatives we can think of, and invite the brothers and sisters to watch the show.

This is also a good opportunity for relatives to get together and meet, especially the daughter-in-law who has not yet married into the family. She is the most important guest. The future in-laws must show their utmost sincerity to satisfy the other party.

It was my uncle and father's job to catch the ox cart to pick up relatives.

The main means of transportation at that time was a horse-drawn carriage. Out of curiosity, Liu Zhiye also went with his father Liu Jingzhai.

The winter was really cold at that time and the carriage was slow. Liu Zhiye couldn't stand the cold anymore so he got off the carriage and walked around. He kept stamping his feet and rubbing his hands, and only got back on the carriage after warming them up.

In fact, the relatives were not too far away. Some were five or six miles away, some were fifteen or sixteen miles away, and the farthest was no more than twenty miles away.

Looking back now, I can’t understand how long the journey was.

"Whenever the opera starts, the chicken's head starts to hurt!" Grandma joked to Liu Zhiye back then.

Children like Liu Zhiye were so happy that they couldn't stop smiling, because they could eat delicious food, including chicken and fried cakes, and they could also spend a dollar to buy a small trumpet to blow.

Opera performances are a huge business opportunity for small vendors. People are well-informed and flock to the market like people going to a market. Some sell children's shoes, hats and toys, some sell cloth, some sell cigarettes, some sell melon seeds, and some sell candied haws.
At this time, the men, women, old and young in the village, especially the young men and young wives, would dress up carefully and show up to watch the show. Even the older girls who usually don't like to go out would show up.

The scene is just like the New Year's Day, when everyone puts on new shoes and new clothes and walks or stands on the street, deliberately showing off their new look.

The worrying aunt would tell everyone that the girl from the third child's family has grown up and it's time for her to find a partner.

It gets even more lively at night, as young people don’t come out to watch shows but to find partners.

The boys looked at whose daughter this girl was, whose relative that girl was, and whistled at pretty girls, which was a way of greeting for young people at that time. If the girl expressed friendliness or approval, she would turn back and smile; if she didn't like the girl, she would walk away quickly without looking back.

My third uncle Liu Yuanhai and his wife Lianhua got together when they were performing in operas.

The opera performances in the village are also a good opportunity for people to visit relatives and friends. People ask about their lives, see whose relatives are coming, how many relatives are coming, and who they are.

When operas are performed, neighbors compete with each other. It doesn't matter whether the food is good or not. The key is to see who has more relatives. This is also a chance to show off one's popularity.

The most annoying thing about performing an opera is quarreling for seats. The theater is open-air, the actors perform on the stage, and the audience watches below.

You said you came early and placed the bricks, and he said he came early and made a mark, and you each had your own reasons and kept arguing.

With the efforts of bystanders to persuade and mediate, the storm soon subsided.

The children who occupied the seats could not understand the play at all. They fell asleep as soon as the gongs and drums sounded. When the play was over, they woke up and happily followed the adults home.

"Let's go to the theater! Let's go to the theater!" A figure rushed to the theater. Yes, you read it right, that person is Liu Zhiye's grandfather who is a fan of the theater.

The old man likes to sing opera very much. In the early morning, grandpa was practicing his voice in the yard.

At around 7 o'clock, the old man began to sing opera. When singing, grandpa's voice was loud and beautiful, with a bit of opera flavor.

Grandpa raised his arms and tilted his head slightly: "...I have neither an ambush nor any soldiers, so don't let your mind wander. Come, come, please come up to the city and listen to me play the piano..." With the last sentence of "The Empty City Scheme" falling, Grandpa's morning exercise ended.

The old man not only likes to sing opera in real life, but also likes to play roles in operas.

He was wearing a red robe, holding a fan in his hand, and wearing a pair of black high-heeled shoes. He swung his sleeves, looking so handsome!

Every time he walked on the street, passers-by would ask him, "What play did you listen to today? What role did you play?"

Today, as the problem of food and clothing for the people in Liujiazhuang has been solved, every family has begun to live a prosperous life.

After the collective economy of Liujiazhuang Village began to take off, the village committee invested in purchasing opera costumes and musical instruments based on the current situation and the needs of the villagers, and formed an art troupe mainly composed of young militia members with good family backgrounds.

They also make use of the busy and off-peak seasons to rehearse some plays required by the situation under the instruction of some veteran artists, which can combine education with entertainment and enrich the spiritual civilization of the villagers.

At the beginning, there were some plays about recalling the bitter past and thinking about the sweet past, such as "A Silver Dollar" about a poor family who sold his daughter to a landlord as a servant for a silver dollar, "Three Generations of Revenge" about a grandfather and his grandson who worked as long-term workers in a landlord's house for three generations and suffered torture, as well as "Rolling up the Mat", "Xu Ce Runs Away from the City", "Beating the Golden Branch", "Counting Grain"...

This year, the "model operas" being rehearsed are "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy", "Sha Jia Bang" and "The Red Lantern".

“During the New Year, there will be opera performances in my place. I will call my brothers, hitch a carriage, and take you away. I will invite you to my home and make pancakes, dumplings, boil rice, and roll noodles. Isn’t it nice…” This is a folk song with Dongshan accent that has been circulated in Liujiazhuang. Even after three hundred years, people in Liujiazhuang, whose ancestral home is Dongshan, still have a bit of the Dongshan accent.

Since Liujiazhuang has a long history of performing opera, the actors in the village have exquisite singing skills.

Therefore, Liujiazhuang's folk drama troupe is well-known in the surrounding areas.

During the days in the first month of the lunar year when operas are performed, people would come from hundreds of miles away to listen to the operas. There would actually be scenes where people would invite their aunts, uncles, and grandmothers to come and listen to the operas. The scene was truly packed with people.

Every time there is a performance in Liujiazhuang, there will be several militiamen holding long bamboo poles to maintain order. The long bamboo poles are used to beat those who can't help but stand up and shout loudly during the climax of the plot, affecting the audience behind.

Of course, not only the folk art groups formed by Liujiazhuang performed here, but the Liujiazhuang Subdistrict Office also invited drama troupes or professional performance groups from other places to perform here.

In this era of lack of cultural life, people pay more attention to self-entertainment. In the past, the main work of rural farmers was farming, so the slack season became their time to have fun. The popular proverb at that time: "Play in the first month, make noise in the second month, and have fun in the third month" also illustrates this point.

Therefore, every year, after Liujiazhuang's troupe performs in their own village for five days, they will be invited to perform in surrounding villages, and the performance will not officially end until the busy spring farming season.

Time flies, and the world changes. After Liujiazhuang replaced MtG as the new center of the surrounding areas of western Beijing, it became the commercial center and even the cultural center of western Beijing and the surrounding areas of Hebei Province.

From the first to the fifth day of the first lunar month, Liujiazhuang welcomes 10,000 to 20,000 visitors every day, and every street and alley in the village is crowded with people.

The stage in Liujiazhuang performs operas in the morning, afternoon and evening, which is called "three boxes" (because in ancient times the audience in the theater all sat in the boxes to watch the opera).

Before each performance, the musicians would play some opera excerpts to warm up the audience, and the audience would sit down on their own small stools, craning their necks and waiting.

In the corners and edges of the crowd below the stage, there are various stalls selling snacks. From a distance, you can see the balloon-like cotton candy swaying, attracting excited and greedy children.

This year, "model operas" began to be popularized across the country.

Liujiazhuang Sub-district Office sent young cadre Liu Zhendong to play Shao Jianbo, and he organized the young people in the village to successfully rehearse the Peking Opera "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy".

There are many girls in Liujia Village. Liu Xiaoling, a cadre of the Women's Federation, played the role of Hong Changqing and organized the villagers to successfully rehearse the ballet "The Red Detachment of Women".

Ordinary villagers actively participated in the drama. Although there were differences in their performing arts levels, they performed for themselves and entertained themselves during the first month of the lunar year, making the Spring Festival rich and fulfilling.

The annual New Year's drama not only adds to the festive atmosphere, but also provides a platform for local people to communicate with each other and enhance neighborly ties.

Several surrounding villages often freely unite and take turns to host the New Year's opera in the first month of the lunar year. People from all over the country gather together to watch the opera and exchange information and feelings.

Many young men and women got to know each other while watching the play and formed sweet love relationships.

The common people, who have been busy for a year, talked about the plot, commented on the actors, and often sang a few songs along with the actors on the stage. The satisfaction and intoxication they felt were difficult to describe in words.

No matter how vividly and emotionally the narration is, it cannot match the immersive feeling we have now. It is difficult to reproduce the excitement of the audience when the opening gongs and drums sounded, the spontaneous cheers and screams when the show reached its climax, and the feeling of being reluctant to leave and looking forward to the next day's performance at the end.

Around the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, in addition to opera performances, various entertainment activities also began, including lion racing, stilt walking, land boat racing, etc., which added a joyful atmosphere to our festival.

Liu Zhiye, along with his wife and children, temporarily put aside his worries and happily traveled around the capital for many days, until the Lantern Festival.

After the 15th, those who go to school are preparing to go back to school, those who go to work have calmed down, those who work away from home have started to return, and those who farm have started to work in the fields as the temperature rises and the crops turn green. Everything is gradually returning to its original state.

After the excitement, there was a sense of emptiness in my heart. Liu Zhiye took another look at Liujiazhuang, which had started to get busy, and embarked on the journey back to school with a heavy heart.

What is coming will eventually come. As soon as the five-member team headed by General Manager Fu submitted the report "Outline of Report on Current Academic Discussions" (referred to as "X Month Outline") to XX on February 2, Liu Zhiye knew that the trend was unstoppable.

When the Spring Festival came next year, the State Council of the Xia Dynasty proposed the policy of "no holidays during the Spring Festival". During the Spring Festival, communes and factories across the country organized various activities and started various study classes to celebrate a "revolutionary Spring Festival."

In addition to the sudden changes in the situation this year, if you want to see such a lively New Year scene again, you may have to wait a few years.

When Liu Zhiye returned home this time, all the established matters had been properly handled.

The business dispute between him and Hao Shun of Tianjin Port had been completely resolved without leaving any trace. Under his careful arrangement, Hao Shun and his accomplices had also left Tianjin Port and set foot on the road to a foreign land, and from then on, each of them lived their own lives.

He also had other arrangements for "Polan Hou", Yan Jiecheng, Xu Damao and others. When the "Destroy the Four Olds" movement arose, he had to rely on these people to continue the unfinished "antique cause".

(End of this chapter)