Recorded 12 April 2010

Translated and annotated by Kim Hunter Gordon

Lecturer

Yue Meiti 岳美緹 (b. 1941) is a female sheng 生 of the Shanghai Troupe. A 1987 winner of the Plum Blossom Prize (Meihua jiang 梅花獎), she specializes in jinsheng 巾生 roles. Her autobiography, A Jinsheng in Today's World: Fifty Years of Yue Meiti's Life in Kunqu (Jinsheng jinshi: Yue Meiti kunqu wushinian 巾生今世: 岳美緹崑曲五十年), was published in 2008 (see also Yue Meiti 1994).

Synopsis

To Win a Peerless Beauty (Zhan huakui 占花魁), also translated as Winning the Prize Courtesan, is the work of the Suzhou playwright Li Yu (I) 李玉 [Appendix G]. The story concerns a penniless oil peddler, Qin Zhong 秦鍾—actually the son of a general captured during the fall of the Northern Song—and the high-class courtesan he admires from afar. The convoluted plot, adapted from a vernacular short story in the 1627 collection Stories to Awaken the World (Xingshi heng yan 醒世恒言) by Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 [Appendix G], ends happily with the marriage of Qin Zhong (who has been returned to his original status after his father is liberated) and the courtesan (who as it emerges is the niece of a palace eunuch). For an English synopsis and a discussion of the divergences between Feng's story and Li's drama, see Ariel Fox (2015, 73–76).

The fourteenth scene, “The Inn on the Lake” (“Hu lou” 湖樓), is one of the few scenes from Li Yu plays that remains in the traditional performance repertoire. It is in this scene that Qin Zhong first learns of the identity of a courtesan whose beauty has twice struck him as he noticed her on the shores of the West Lake. Having stopped work in order to search for her, Qin enters a tavern by the lakeshore, hoping that he can find out more.

Role Types

As Yue discusses, Qin Zhong is poor but of high birth, and is therefore played as something between a qiongsheng 窮生 and a jinsheng. Shi A-da 時阿大 is a comical chou 丑 of a gossiping but good-hearted variety.

The second juan of the Array of the Five Talismans (Taishang lingbao wufuxu 太上靈寶五符序 DZ 388; hereafter Array), consisting of dozens of medicinal recipes, presents us with numerous textual problems. This chapter will only be able to touch upon a few issues. In her 2011 study of the second juan of the Array, Ikehira Noriko 池平紀子 primarily used Dunhuang manuscript S.2438, the Yunji qiqian 雲笈七籤 DZ 1032 (hereafter YJQQ), and Methods for Abstaining from Grains from the Scripture of Great Purity (Taiqingjing duangu fa 太清經斷穀法 DZ 846) to compare textual variants of recipes. While she examines multiple sources and variants, Ikehira’s stimulating discussion centers on Buddho-Daoist interaction. This essay builds upon her work.

The discussion of textual variants is not merely a philological exercise to determine the correct, or best, reading of a text. The very existence of different textual recensions forces us to recognize the materiality of texts in medieval China as hand copied manuscripts circulated among initiates and within lineages of practitioners, and only sometimes available to more public view. Single recipes, or collections of recipes, circulated independently of the texts in which we find them today, and were often copied and reformulated within different compilations.

A. The Basic Textual Sources

I begin my examination with textual criticism in order to obtain a definitive version of the Array. The first step in this process is to ascertain the correct words of the text. These two tasks are very difficult. While the Zhonghua daozang edition has only one instance of emended textual criticism of the Array, I believe there are several tens of instances where textual criticism is needed, but I am currently unable to fully emend the entire text. While I still have doubts about certain passages, I have no evidentiary basis for emending them.

Recorded 16 April 2010

Translated and annotated by Kim Hunter Gordon

Lecturer

Cai Zhengren 蔡正仁 (b. 1941) of the Shanghai Troupe [Appendix I] is arguably the best-known active sheng 生, famed especially for his portrayal of daguansheng 大官 生 roles, such as the emperor in The Palace of Lasting Life (Changsheng dian 長生殿) as well as for qiongsheng 窮生 parts. A student of Yu Zhenfei 俞振飛 [Appendix H], and former leader of the Shanghai Troupe, he was awarded the Plum Blossom Prize (Meihua jiang 梅花獎) in 1986.

Synopsis

For the general background to The Palace of Lasting Life see Lecture 5. In this scene, the emperor, still in exile in Sichuan, continues to be tortured by grief and regret following the death of Precious Consort Yang Guifei 楊貴妃. He has commissioned a sculpture of her likeness which is now ready to be instated.

Role Types

The role of the emperor, Tang Minghuang 唐明皇, belongs to the broad category of sheng 生 or xiaosheng 小生, the narrower category of guansheng 官生 and, most narrowly, daguansheng 大官生, which is reserved for high officials as well as the emperor. Although bearded and in this case elderly, the singing register remains partially falsetto like that of most sheng rather than the purely modal voice used by other bearded roles. In the lecture, Cai Zhengren specifically warns against the risk of giving the appearance of low status when adopting a more elderly gait, since the gravitas of the role means that movements must have a certain amplitude, which he also contrasts with the smaller movements of the comic xiaohualian 小花臉 or chou 丑, who features in this scene in the person of the palace eunuch Gao Lishi 高力士. Given the emperor's miserable frame of mind, however, he does borrow some movements from the qiongsheng 窮生 role type, which is used to depict sheng fallen on hard times.

Performance

Cai Zhengren's performance is available in a 1992 recording, collected in the first volume of Kunju Collection (Kunju xuanji 崑劇選輯), published in Taiwan.