Uncle Xing sings the Gaozhou Puppet Theater piece "Bao Gong Tries a Strange Case"
Text/Picture Yangcheng Evening News reporter Xie Xiaowan
For more than a year, in Lima Village, Gaozhou, Maoming, Guangdong, almost every night at around 7:30, Uncle Xing's A good show will begin.
Uncle Xing's stage is not big. A red curtain surrounds the stage about two meters long. A piece of yellow gauze hangs in the middle, which can sometimes block his face so that the puppets, the protagonists of the scene, are more visible. Each Gaozhou Puppet Show performance lasts nearly three hours, from beating drums and playing music, to reciting and singing, to manipulating the puppets to complete civil and military actions, all by him.
Behind Uncle Xing are the puppets sitting in a circle waiting to accompany him on the stage. There is no audience in front of him. Only the mobile phones set up are used to broadcast each performance in real time. Fans who cheer for the show will appear in Uncle Xing's live broadcast. room. At the end of 2022, Uncle Xing moved the Gaozhou Puppet Show into the live broadcast room. This is actually his voice again after 27 years.
acting
When Uncle Xing mentioned the Gaozhou puppet show, he did not say "acting", but "acting". Gaozhou puppet show "operators" not only have to sing and recite the content of the play in vernacular, but also can play drums and music, and control the puppets to make corresponding actions according to the plot. One person is a theater troupe. This opera culture with unique local characteristics has a history of more than 400 years. It was particularly prosperous in western Guangdong in the 1970s and 1980s, and it was at that time that Uncle Xing entered the industry.
Uncle Xing’s real name is Che Youjie. In 1972, at the age of 16, he began to learn Gaozhou puppet show. The reason was simple, and his answer was straightforward: “It makes money!” When it was most prosperous, he could get five yuan for a night of singing. The remuneration was far superior to other labor at the time. But mastering this skill is not easy.
The inheritance of Gaozhou Puppetry relies entirely on word of mouth among artists. One of its major difficulties is that most of the lyrics are improvised by the performers instead of following the script for each performance. This extremely tests the performers' speaking skills and adaptability. ability. When Uncle Xing began to learn opera, he carried a pole for his master and did chores. He followed his master to perform everywhere, listened to the afterthoughts in the audience, memorized the stories of hundreds of traditional plays one by one, and was familiar with the historical legends involved. Only by knowing the songs, anecdotes, stories of gods and ghosts, and koan legends by heart, and memorizing the basic lyrics by heart, did I dare to formally perform on the stage.
"No play is repetitive. If you realize a little truth today, you will talk a little more. Maybe you will realize a new truth tomorrow and you will tell new content." Uncle Xing explained that it depends on the reaction of the audience in the audience. It also tests your understanding of the play.
Before he was 40 years old, Uncle Xing worked in the fields during the busy season. During the slack season, he carried two poles and began to travel to various villages and towns singing operas. When the two poles are put together, the entire stage object is on the shoulders. When the two poles are pulled, the stage will be opened, and singing can be performed immediately. Uncle Xing was highly skilled and well-known. He went as far as Jiangmen to sing opera. Every time he went to a village, he was always cheered and welcomed by the villagers, especially the children. Every time he started singing, it was not surprising that hundreds of people gathered in the audience.
This was also the last flourishing period of Gaozhou Puppetry. With the development of the times, the villagers' entertainment programs are no longer limited to listening to a play in the square after working in the fields. In 1996, no one asked Uncle Xing to sing. In order to make a living, Uncle Xing could only find another way out, moving bricks or doing some physical work in a cement factory. In the next 27 years, he never sang in a play again.
In 2006, Gaozhou Puppet Show was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists. However, according to Uncle Xing's calculations, there may be less than five puppetry artists in Gaozhou who can perform the entire play by one person. He recalled with emotion: "There used to be more than a dozen performers in Guanglimacun."
live
Although he has not been on stage for a long time, Uncle Xing has not forgotten this skill, and he will hum a few lines from time to time while doing farm work. As he grew older, Uncle Xing left Lima Village and came to Dongguan to live with his son Che Qinghua.
"One day he asked me what those people in the square were doing with their mobile phones. I explained to him what a live broadcast was, and he said that he also wanted to do a live broadcast." Che Qinghua recalled that it was the end of 2022, and his father On a whim, I told him this idea.Che Qinghua supported his father's decision and purchased live broadcast equipment for him. They then returned to the countryside together to collect the performance stage and puppets.
"I originally had a set of beautiful puppets. I put them in someone else's shop. When the owner took the shop back, he threw the puppets into the river." Uncle Xing was very sad when he mentioned the past. Gaozhou Puppetry has been in decline for some years. The former artists were scattered and scattered, and it was not easy to collect all the puppets, musical instruments and other supplies used in the opera. Relying on Uncle Xing's memory, the father and son visited the homes of many old artists. Visit for help. After more than a year of buying and selling, Uncle Xing has more than 50 puppets. By changing the costumes and hair accessories, he can perform more than a hundred traditional plays.
Everything was ready. Uncle Xing was not afraid of the stage again after 27 years. He had over a hundred plays engraved in his mind. With the excellent skills he had built in the past, it only took him more than ten days to become familiar with it again. At the end of 2022, the "Uncle Xing Puppet Show" live broadcast room will be launched on the short video platform.
However, in the past two months since its launch, few people have paid attention to it. "He just doesn't understand. He only knows how to turn it on and off. He doesn't know how to operate it. He just perseveres." Che Qinghua joked. The turning point of
will appear during the Spring Festival of 2023. New Year celebrations are held in every village and town in Maoming, and Uncle Xing's performance evoked another memory of the New Year for the locals. The puppet show was once one of the highlights of the year, but now it has disappeared. Uncle Xing's live broadcast was caught by netizens, and the familiar singing voice sounded again, arousing people's long-standing nostalgia. On the third day of the Lunar New Year that year, over 10,000 people flocked to Uncle Xing’s live broadcast room. The next night, at its peak, more than 700,000 people were online watching him perform.
Recollection is a common sentiment among the audience. Fans in the comment area told stories about gathering friends to go to the theater when they were young. Many people were surprised that Uncle Xing could sing continuously for three hours, only occasionally stopping to drink water to moisten his voice. The veteran artist's solid foundation and persistence in his skills have won the admiration and emotion of fans.
Uncle Xing hasn’t fully understood what live streaming is all about, and he still hasn’t mastered how to operate it, but looking at the number of people and messages scrolling on the screen, he is also very happy: “There are still people watching the show, so I will continue. Sing. "
html On March 28th, Uncle Xing wrote tonight's live broadcast on the board early in the morning: Bao Gong was ordered to investigate a strange case. The synopsis of the play is attached below. This is an adjustment and change made by Xingshu Live Broadcast for more than a year. In order to let the audience know more clearly what is being sung, and to make it easier for audiences who cannot understand Cantonese to try to understand. He also put names on the chests of each puppet, such as "Princess Eight Treasures", "Sun Xiu", "Bao Gong", "Hu Yanzan", etc., which also took suggestions from fans.Fans stayed in the live broadcast room as soon as the Bao Gong drama started broadcasting today. To sing the entire play, three hours a night was not enough, so Uncle Xing sang for several days. If the story is about the Yang family generals, it can be told from the beginning of the Yang family's rise to the tragic death of the Yang family generals one after another for more than a month. Some fans jokingly called it "like following a TV series."
inheritance
After the peak traffic, the number of viewers of Uncle Xing’s live broadcast has also entered a period of calm. In the past month, there have been hundreds of people watching every night, and occasionally it will exceed a thousand when the data is good.
"After he started singing, he became more energetic and full of hope. He would think about what to sing and how to sing every day. Unlike before, when he had nothing to do and his eyes were dull, sometimes fans would give him rewards. It can also bring some fun to his old life," Che Qinghua mentioned.
Unlike his father, Che Qinghua studied Western art and now works in violin training classes. In his memory, he had never heard his father sing. It was not until his father started live broadcasting that he fully understood his father's past and this folk art for the first time. "At first I thought this stuff was very tacky, but later he asked me to sort out the information for him. It was a libretto with hundreds of thousands of words. I took the time to type on the computer for four or five months before finishing it." Che Qinghua was attracted by the libretto. , "These old artists have never read books, but look at what they sing: Spring is gone and autumn is coming, the night is deep, winter is coming and summer is coming, we can trace it, young people are not willing to ignore book friends, how can you know the past and present when you grow up... It's very beautiful, I think these things can't be thrown away."
Che Qinghua began to gradually learn Gaozhou puppetry, and he also set up a stage at his home in Dongguan.He could sing for ten minutes, but his singing was stumbling. From this, he realized how difficult it was for his father to improvise for three hours. When he had free time, he also carved more modern puppets by himself. He also visited his father many times and painstakingly collected and compiled a large amount of information on Gaozhou puppetry, hoping to make some contribution to the preservation of this art.
Nowadays, there are elderly people in online live broadcast rooms who come to pursue their local accents, and there are also "post-90s" and "post-00s" who have revealed their identities and frankly said that they hung out in the live broadcast room all night to listen to Uncle Xing's opera. Many college students will also visit Uncle Xing when they are conducting research activities offline to learn more about Gaozhou Puppetry.
Uncle Xing was full of witty words while singing, but he seemed a little reserved when communicating with reporters. He answered questions but didn't say much. When the interview was about to end, he suddenly said happily: "On the tenth day of the Lunar New Year this year, Dianbai Na (People) invited me to sing in an opera all night." After many years, Uncle Xing returned to the stage.
