jshen@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Jun Shen) (01/29/91)
An encore performance for the Cultural Revolution Madame Mao's 'Model' opera revived in Beijing The Sunday San Francisco Examiner. January 27, 1991. By Andrew Higgins, London Correspondent, Associated Press BEIJING - Madame Mao, otherwise engaged in Beijing jail, was unable to attend the opening night. But she was there in spirit, hovering in the wings of the People's Opera House, to enhance the titillation that has begun to add to the terror of recent times. It was an occasion the former Shanghai starlet-turned-queen of the Cultural Revolution would have relished. It was the resurrection after a hiatus of 15 years, of her most celebrated and, after her downfall, most reviled contribution to Chinese culture: the Revolutionary Model Opera. For three nights, Beijing's main opera house, a drab and drafty concrete auditorium on Protect the Nation Street, again echoed to the strident revolutionary arias of the "Red Lantern," one of a handful of "model" works promoted by Mao Tse-tung's wife, Jiang Qing, during her heyday as China's supreme cultural commander. Tickets were sold out weeks in advance, as Beijing got its first chance since 1976 to relive an era that, for all its horrors, still grips the minds of people who lived through it. Concurrent with the production of the opera, the government has been conducting trials of dissidents in an ironic counterpoint. Results of the trial were announced Saturday. The Beijing University student who helped sparked China's 1989 democracy movement, Wang Dan, was sentenced to four years in prison. Longtime dissident Ren Wanding got a seven-year sentence. A total of five activists were sentenced to prison, three were convicted but released and 18 were released without trial. Also, 45 people who apparently had been jailed but not charged were let off. "Red Lattern," first performed in 1964, became the soundtrack for the Cultural Revolution, an ear-splitting musical accompaniment to Mao's frenzied drive to purge China of its past and build a new socialist utopia. The role of Jiang Qing in its creation was minimal. She changed a few lines and ordered more realistic patches put on the actor's proletarian costumes. She made it her anthem nonetheless, dragging baffled foreign visitors and grimacing Chinese leaders to admire her handiwork. Politics on stage Officially, at least, the revival has nothing to do with politics: The "Red Lantern" is merely one of dozens of works being staged as part of a two-month festival to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Beijing Opera, a unique and, to the non-connoisseur, often unfathomable blend of acrobatics, piercing singing and elaborate rituals. In China, though, art and politics are never completely separate. "It's not up to us to decide what we perform," said Gao Yuqian, a verteran opera star called out of semi-retirement to play Granny Li, the main female role in the "Red Lantern." "They (officials) decide what we do and what we don't. It's been like that here." Presiding over the Beijing Opera festival is He Jingzhi, a Maoist poet appointed culture minister after the military crackdown of June 1989, with instructions to bring rebellious artists back into line. According to He, the resurrection of the "Red Lantern" is designed to "reclaim something that has been stolen" - in other words, to show that Mao's revolution, though tainted by the excesses of his wife, must never be forgotten. "Long live the Communist Party, long live Mao Tse-tung," cries the "Red Lantern" hero, Li Yuhe, a railway worker and underground Communist, as Japanese soldiers drag him to the execution ground. Filled with passion for the revolution and rage against the Japanese, his beautiful foster daughter, Li Tiemei, goes on to avenge him. It is a tale typical of the genre - a revolutionary Punch and Judy show set to a mix of Chinese music and slushy Hollywood style songs. A subversive message But officials who ordered it got more than they bargained for. Rather than a lesson in revolutionary zeal and obedience, it seemed to many in the audience to contain a more subversive message. "You can't kill all the Chinese people," sings the hero, "a debt of blood must be paid in blood." Powerful lines in a city bludgeoned into submission by the People's Liberation Army 19 months ago. The crowd loved it, shouting, "Hao, hao" (bravo) and applauding wildly when Granny Li recalls the day "when all the workers took to the street in protest." On opening night, the audience stormed the stage. "I haven't seen that for years," said Gao Yuqian, who coached by Madame Mao, played Granny 25 years ago. Some in the audience, too young to remember the Cultural Revolution and bored by gestures and archaic language of traditional opera, had never seen its like. They came out of curiosity and delighted in its message of vengeance. Others had seen it dozens, even hundreds, of times before and knew the lines by heart. For them, it was a night of ghoulish nostalgia, a fascinating peek at a part of their lives they have been told to forget. Even the cast was familiar. Gao and several others had all performed in a film version made of the opera in 1970. But the part of the martyred railway worker had been given to someone else. The original star, Qian Haoliang, is too tainted by "political mistakes" to be allowed back on stage. Popular at last For more than a decade, the "Ref Lantern" and other models monopolized the Chinese stage, reducing one of the world's richest operatic traditions to a dreary procession of wooden Communist heros, cowardly class enemies and acrobatic Red Army platoons singing the praises of Mao Tse-tung. All other works were banned. "With hammer in hand, I set out to smash all old conventions," boasted Mao's wife of her drive to reform the Chinese arts. The results was a slim repertoire of four operas, two ballets and one symphony. In 1976 the constant drone of revolutionary art stopped. Mao died. His wife was jailed. Her model operas were banished with her. Ironically, her political foes seem to have achieved what she had always tried but failed to do: make the "Red Lantern" genuinely popular.