Bi Feiyu: The Moon Opera

For Qiao Bingzhang the dinner party was like a blind date, and it was half over before he learned that the man sitting across from him ran a cigarette factory. Qiao was an arrogant man and the factory boss was even more so, which is why their eyes hadn’t really met. One of the guests asked “Troupe Leader Qiao” if he’d been on the stage in recent years. Qiao shook his head; now the other guests realised that he was none other than Qiao Bingzhang, the celebrated Laosheng of the Peking Opera, who had been wildly popular in the early eighties, his voice heard on transistor radios day and night.

They raised their glasses in a toast.

“Actors these days,” a guest quipped, “find their looks are a faster road to fame than their names, and their names will get them there quicker than their voices. Apparently, Troupe Leader Qiao was born at the wrong time!”

Bingzhang laughed agreeably.

“Isn’t there someone called Xiao Yanqiu in your troupe?” the large, heavy-set man across from him asked. Then, on the off chance that Qiao Bingzhang didn’t know who this was, he added, “The one who played the lead role in the 1979 performance of Chang’e Flies to the Moon—The Moon Opera .”

Qiao Bingzhang set down his glass, shut his eyes and then opened them slowly. “Yes, there is” he said.

Putting aside his arrogance, the factory boss talked the guest next to Bingzhang into switching seats with him, then laid his right hand on Bingzhang’s shoulder. “It’s been nearly twenty years. Why haven’t we heard anything from her since then?”

“Opera has fallen on hard times in recent years,” Bingzhang explained primly. “Xiao Yanqiu now spends most of her time teaching.”

“Hard times?” The factory boss stiffened. “By that I take it you mean money.” Thrusting his prominent chin in Bingzhang’s direction, he said, “Let her sing.”

Puzzled by this comment, Bingzhang tentatively sounded the man out: “Does that mean you’re offering to pay for a performance?”

The factory boss’s arrogance resurfaced. “Let her sing,” he repeated in the voice and countenance of a great man.

Qiao Bingzhang asked the waitress for a cup of baijiu . He rose from the table. “You aren’t trying to be funny, are you?”

“The one thing we have at our factory is a bit of money,” the man said, still arrogantly, but with the serious tone of someone making a formal report. “Don’t presume that all we know how to do is fill our coffers and endanger the people’s health. We also strive to promote a climate of culture.”

The man remained seated, while Qiao Bingzhang stood, bent slightly at the waist. They clinked glasses, then Bingzhang tipped his head back and emptied the contents of his glass. On occasions when he was excited, as he was now, he tended to blur the line between honesty and flattery. “Today I am in the company of a bodhisattva ,” he said, “a true bodhisattva .”

The Moon Opera , long a painful memory for the troupe, had been commissioned in 1958 as a political assignment. The troupe had planned to perform it in Beijing a year later as part of the festivities marking the Republic’s tenth anniversary. But before the first performance could be staged, a certain general was unhappy with what he saw at rehearsal. “Our lands are lovely beyond description,” he had said. “Why would any of our young maidens want to flee to the moon?” It was a simple comment but one that raised goosebumps on the troupe leader’s flesh. The Moon Opera closed before it had opened.

Xiao Yanqiu’s voice, it’s fair to say, made The Moon Opera a hit, but one could also say that Xiao Yanqiu’s star rose thanks to The Moon Opera . The opera’s good fortunes ignited those of the performer, and the performer’s fortunes sparked those of the opera, as is so often the case. But that was in 1979, when Xiao Yanqiu was nineteen. People pegged her as an emerging star, even at nineteen a natural for the role of a heartbroken woman. Everything about her—her eyes, her interpretation, her enunciation, and the way she tossed the water sleeves of her costume—was imbued with an inbred aura of tragedy: sad, melancholy and fanciful. At the age of fifteen she had appeared on the stage as Li Tiemei in the revolutionary model opera The Red Lantern . Holding her lantern high as she stood beside Granny Li, she had evoked no sense of incorruptibility, no thundering spirit of “never leave the battlefield untill all the jackals are dead!” Instead, like autumn winds and rain, she’d left her audience with feelings of intense melancholy, so angering the old troupe leader that he shouted at the director, “Where did you get that little seductress?”

It was in 1979 that The Moon Opera had a second chance; this time it was staged. During the dress rehearsal, everyone fell silent the moment Xiao Yanqiu began to sing. And as he watched her up on the stage, the old troupe leader, who had only recently taken up his post again, muttered, “That girl knows the taste of bitter gall. She was born to wear water sleeves.”

A one-time entertainer who had studied at an old opera school, the old troupe leader had been a man whose word carried considerable weight. And so nineteen-year-old Xiao Yanqiu was elevated to be principal portrayer of Chang’e. Her understudy was none other than the renowned portrayer of maiden roles, Li Xuefen. In a performance of the model opera Azalea Mountain years earlier, Li had excelled in the role of the heroine Ke Xiang, and had then enjoyed a spell of popularity. Now that she was relegated to the status of understudy, she displayed the magnanimity befitting a once successful performer. At the cast meeting she rose to say, “For the future of the troupe, I shall be happy to devote myself to the training of others, to selflessly make my experience on the stage available to Comrade Xiao Yanqiu, and to pass the baton in a worthy manner.” Her eyes brimming with tears, Xiao Yanqiu joined the others in a hearty round of applause. Yes, Xiao Yanqiu’s voice made the The Moon Opera a hit. The cast staged performances throughout the province, and they were the talk of the town wherever they went. Older aficionados reflected on past performances, while younger members of the audience marveled at the classical costumes. Provincial cultural circles welcomed this “second springtime,” as they did “all other battlefronts.” The Moon Opera was all the rage, which, naturally, flung the contemporary Chang’e, Xiao Yanqiu, into the public eye. A famous general from the military command, known for his talents as a calligrapher, praised her performance effusively. In the style of a great poem by Marshal Ye Jianying, he wrote: Fearlessly besiege a city wall / Courageously stage a difficult play / The drama troupe may find it a tough call / But hard work will see you through the day . That was followed by the inscription: “For Young Comrade Yanqiu, in mutual encouragement.” He then invited her to his home and, after reminiscing about the good old days, presented her with the framed poem in his own calligraphy, which she could hang on a wall.

Who could have predicted that “Young Comrade Yanqiu” would one day wreck her own career? After the incident, an old-time entertainer was heard to say that they should never have staged The Moon Opera . Each person has her own destiny; so do operas. The Moon Opera was too feminine, contained far too much yin . If they insisted on staging it, they should have balanced the roles with a male singing character. And Houyi the Archer ought to have been played by a “Brass Hammer,” a Hualian , not a Laosheng , even if that had meant getting one on loan from another troupe. If they’d done that, they could have avoided the troubles that ensued, and Xiao Yanqiu would not have done what she did.