|
Pingtan (art Form)
''Pingtan'' (), also known as Suzhou pingtan, is a regional variety of ''quyi'' and a musical/oral performance art form popular in southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang, and Shanghai (the Jiangnan region of China). It originated in the city of Suzhou. It is a combination of the Chinese narrative musical traditions ''pinghua'' and ''tanci''. It dates back to Song dynasty and is influenced by Wuyue culture. Created by the work of the Pingtan artists, this art form enjoys great popularity in Jiangnan. The long history has also laid a solid foundation for its development. Its contents are rich, though the form is simple. "story telling, joke cracking, music playing and aria singing" are the performing techniques, while "reasoning, tastes, unexpectedness, interest and minuteness" are the artistic features. Although it originated in Suzhou, Pingtan flourished in Shanghai with the development of commerce and culture at the turn of the 19th century and the 20th century. After that, Pingt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suzhou
Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Administratively, Suzhou is a prefecture-level city with a population of 6,715,559 in the city proper, and a total resident population of 12,748,262 as of the 2020 census in its administrative area. The city jurisdiction area's north waterfront is on a lower reach of the Yangtze whereas it has its more focal south-western waterfront on Lake Tai – crossed by several waterways, its district belongs to the Yangtze River Delta region. Suzhou is now part of the Greater Shanghai metro area, incorporating most of Changzhou, Wuxi and Suzhou urban districts plus Kunshan and Taicang, with a population of more than 38,000,000 residents as of 2020. Its urban population grew at an unprecedented rate of 6.5% between 2000 and 2014, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treaty Ports
Treaty ports (; ja, 条約港) were the port cities in China and Japan that were opened to foreign trade mainly by the unequal treaties forced upon them by Western powers, as well as cities in Korea opened up similarly by the Japanese Empire. Chinese treaty ports The British established their first treaty ports in China after the First Opium War by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. As well as ceding the island of Hong Kong to the United Kingdom in perpetuity, the treaty also established five treaty ports at Shanghai, Canton (Guangzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo), Foochow ( Fuzhou), and Amoy (Xiamen). The following year the Chinese and British signed the Treaty of the Bogue, which added provisions for extraterritoriality and the most favored nation status for the latter country. Subsequent negotiations with the Americans (1843 Treaty of Wanghia) and the French (1844 Treaty of Whampoa) led to further concessions for these nations on the same terms as the British. The second group of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culture In Suzhou
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylor, Edward. (1871). Primitive Culture. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Son Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Folk Music
Music of China refers to the music of the Chinese people, which may be the music of the Han Chinese in the course of Chinese history as well as ethnic minorities in today's China. It also includes music produced by people of Chinese origin in some territories outside mainland China using traditional Chinese instruments or in the Chinese language. It includes forms from the traditional and modern, Western inspired, commercial popular music, folk, art, and classical forms, and innovative combinations of them. Documents and archaeological artifacts from early Chinese civilization show a well-developed musical culture as early as the Zhou dynasty (1122 BC – 256 BC) that set the tone for the continual development of Chinese musicology in following dynasties. These developed into a wide variety of forms through succeeding dynasties, producing the heritage that is part of the Chinese cultural landscape today. Traditional forms continued to evolve in the modern times, and over the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quyi
''Quyi'' ("melodious art") and ''shuochang yishu'' ("speaking and singing art") are umbrella terms for over 300 regional genres of traditional Chinese oral performing arts. ''Quyi'' is distinguished from ''xiqu'' (Chinese opera) by its emphasis on narration, as opposed to acting, although they share many elements including the same traditional stories. ''Quyi'' artists generally wear no to little makeup. Musical instruments like drums, wooden clappers, ''pipa'', '' yangqin'', or ''sanxian'' are commonly seen in ''quyi'', as are hand fans. History While the storytelling art concept has been around for centuries, the narrative art concept was mostly recognized in the 1920s. Only after 1949 with the founding of the People's Republic of China did the term ''quyi'' become widely used. Prior to this, it was just classified as ''shuochang yishu''. This is one of the art category that gained momentum since the New Culture Movement. With the exception of the Cultural Revolution period, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The White Haired Girl
''The White-Haired Girl'' () is a Chinese opera, ballet, (later adapted to Beijing Opera and a film) by Yan Jinxuan to a Chinese libretto by He Jingzhi and Ding Yi. The folklore of the white-haired girl is believed to have spread widely in the areas occupied by the Communist Party of Northern China since the late 1930s. Many years later, a literary work was created in the liberated area controlled by the Chinese Communist Party in the late 1940s. The film was made in 1950 and the first Peking opera performance was in 1958. The first ballet performance was by Shanghai Dance Academy, Shanghai in 1965. It has also been performed by the noted soprano Guo Lanying. The opera is based on legends circulating in the border region of Shanxi, Chahar and Hebei, describing the misery suffered by local peasantry, particularly the misery of the female members. The stories are based on real-life stories of no fewer than half a dozen women, in a time frame stretching from the late Qing dynas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liu Hulan
Liu Hulan (刘胡兰, 1932–1947) was a young female spy during the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. She was born in Yunzhouxi village, in the Wenshui County of the Shanxi province. She joined the Communist Party in 1946 and soon after joined an association of women working in support of the Liberation Army. She was actively involved in organizing the villagers of Yunzhouxi in support of the Communist Party of China. Her contributions involved a wide range of activities, such as supplying food to the Eighth Liberation Army, relaying secret messages, and mending boots and uniforms. Biography On October 8, 1932, Ms. Liu Hulan was born in a middle-class peasant family in Yunzhou West Village, Shanxi Province. In January 1945, Liu Hulan participated in the movement of seizing gain by the Western Union and loaded grain with the revolutionaries. In October 1945, Hulan carried her family to Guanjiabao village and participated in the training co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Injustice To Dou E
''Dou E Yuan'', commonly translated as ''The Injustice to Dou E'', and also known as ''Snow in Midsummer'', is a Chinese play written by Guan Hanqing (c. 1241–1320) during the Yuan dynasty. The full Chinese title of the play is ''Gan Tian Dong Di Dou E Yuan'', which roughly translates to ''The Injustice to Dou E that Touched Heaven and Earth''. The story follows a child bride turned widow, Dou E, who is wrongly convicted of crimes by a corrupt court official for actions perpetrated by a rejected suitor, Zhang the mule. After her execution, three prophesied phenomena occur to prove her innocence, including blood raining from the sky, snow in June and a three-year drought. After a visit from the ghost of Dou E, her father eventually brings the corrupt court official, a doctor and Mule Zhang to justice, thereby vindicating his daughter. Today, the phrase "snowing in June" is still widely used among Chinese speakers as a metaphor for a miscarriage of justice. The story was repeatedly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romance Of The Western Chamber
''Romance of the Western Chamber'' (), also translated as ''The Story of the Western Wing'', ''The West Chamber'', ''Romance of the Western Bower'' and similar titles, is one of the most famous Chinese dramatic works. It was written by the Yuan dynasty playwright Wang Shifu (王實甫), and set during the Tang dynasty. Known as "China's most popular love comedy," it is the story of a young couple consummating their love without parental approval, and has been seen both as a "lover's bible" and "potentially lethal," as readers were in danger of pining away under its influence. Contents of the Play ] Play I, Burning Incense and Worshiping the Moon Play II, Icy Strings Spell Out Grief Play III,Feelings Transmitted by Lines of Poetry Play IV, A Clandestine Meeting of Rain and Clouds Play V, A Reunion Ordained by Heaven Plot The play has twenty-one acts in five parts. It tells the story of a secret love affair between Zhang Sheng (张生), a young scholar, and Cui Yingying, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fate In Tears And Laughter
''Fate in Tears and Laughter'' () is a 1930 Chinese novel by Zhang Henshui, set in 1920s Beiping (modern Beijing). A few chapters (Chapters 1, 2, 18, 19) were translated into English by Sally Borthwick for the anthology ''Chinese Middlebrow Fiction: From the Ch'ing and Early Republican Eras'' (1984). The novel has been adapted into many films and TV series, as well as a number of local Chinese operas. Adaptations Films *''Fate in Tears and Laughter'' (啼笑因緣), a 1932 Chinese silent film directed by Zhang Shichuan, starring Zheng Xiaoqiu, Hu Die and Yan Yuexian. *''Fate in Tears and Laughter'' (啼笑因緣), a 1941 Chinese film directed by Sun Jing, starring Mei Xi and Li Li-hua. *''A Tale of Laughter and Tears'' (啼笑因緣), a 1952 Hong Kong film directed by Yeung Kung-leung and Wan Hoi-ching, starring Cheung Wood-Yau and Pak Yin. *''Between Tears and Laughters'' (啼笑因緣), a 1957 Hong Kong film directed by Lee Sun-fung, starring Cheung Ying, Law Yim-hing and Kon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diao Chan
Diaochan was one of the Four Beauties of ancient China. Although based on a minor historical personage, she is mostly a fictional character. She is best known for her role in the 14th-century historical novel ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'', which romanticises the events in the late Eastern Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period. In the novel, she has a romance with the warrior Lü Bu and causes him to betray and kill his foster father, the tyrannical warlord Dong Zhuo. She was praised in tales as woman of uneven beauty who did what no other hero in China was able to accomplish, put an end to Dong Zhuo's regime of terror and the eventual end of Lu Bu; triggering the events that would lead to the formation of the Three kingdoms: Cao Wei, Eastern Wu and Shu Han. Chinese historical records indicate that Lü Bu had a secret affair with one of Dong Zhuo's maids and he constantly feared that Dong Zhuo would find out. This was one of the reasons why he betrayed and assassinated D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
