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Tale Of The Pipa
''Tale of the Pipa'' ( "Tale of the Pipa" or "The Story of the Lute") is a Chinese '' nanxi'' play written by the playwright Gao Ming during the late Yuan dynasty. There are French, German, English translations of the play, and an English novelization-translation. It was the most popular drama during the Ming dynasty,Tanaka, p153 and it became a model for Ming drama as it was the favorite opera of the first Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. Plot The play is set during the Han dynasty. Based on an older play, ''Zhao zhen nü'' (''The Chaste Maiden Zhao''), it tells the story of a loyal wife named Zhao Wuniang (T: 趙五孃, S: 赵五娘, P: Zhào Wǔniáng, W: ''Chao Wu-niang'') who, left destitute when her husband Cai Yong is forced to marry another woman, undertakes a 12-year search for him. During her journey, she plays the pipa of the play's title in order to make a living. The original story sees Zhao killed by a horse and Cai struck by lightning, however in Gao Ming's version th ...
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Pipa
The pipa, pípá, or p'i-p'a () is a traditional Chinese musical instrument belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 31. Another Chinese four-string plucked lute is the liuqin, which looks like a smaller version of the pipa. The pear-shaped instrument may have existed in China as early as the Han dynasty, and although historically the term ''pipa'' was once used to refer to a variety of plucked chordophones, its usage since the Song dynasty refers exclusively to the pear-shaped instrument. The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China. Several related instruments are derived from the pipa, including the Japanese biwa and Korean bipa in East Asia, and the Vietnamese đàn tỳ bà in Southeast Asia. The Korean instrument is the only one of the three that is no longer wi ...
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French Language
French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-Romance, a descendant of the Latin spoken in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien language, Francien) largely supplanted. It was also substratum (linguistics), influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul and by the Germanic languages, Germanic Frankish language of the post-Roman Franks, Frankish invaders. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, it was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole, were established. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Fra ...
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Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, American and British English spelling differences), many of the List of Broadway theaters, extant or closed Broadway venues use or used the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names. Many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also use the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, is a theatre genre that consists of the theatrical performances presented in 41 professional Theater (structure), theaters, each with 500 or more seats, in the Theater District, Manhattan, Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End theatre, West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway thoroughfare is eponymous ...
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Sidney Howard
Sidney Coe Howard (June 26, 1891 – August 23, 1939) was an American playwright, dramatist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for '' Gone with the Wind''. Early life Sidney Howard was born in Oakland, California, the son of Helen Louise () and John Lawrence Howard. He is a descendant of Robert Coe, a 17th-century colonist who migrated to America from England. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1915 and went on to Harvard University to study playwriting under George Pierce Baker in his legendary "47 workshop." (Other alumni of Baker's class included Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Wolfe, Philip Barry and S.N. Behrman. Howard became good friends with Behrman.) Along with other students of Harvard professor A. Piatt Andrew, Howard volunteered with Andrew's American Field Service, serving in France and the Balkans during World War I. After the war, Howard made use of h ...
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Will Irwin
William Henry Irwin (September 14, 1873 – February 24, 1948) was an American author, writer, and journalist who was associated with the muckrakers. Early life Irwin was born in 1873 in Oneida, New York. In his early childhood, the Irwin family moved to Clayville, New York, a farming and mining center south of Utica. In about 1878, his father moved to Leadville, Colorado, established himself in the lumber business, and brought his family there. When his business failed, Irwin's father moved the family to Twin Lakes, Colorado. A hotel business there failed too, and the family moved back to Leadville in a bungalow at 125 West Twelfth Street. In 1889, the family moved to Denver, where he graduated from high school. He said he cured himself of a diagnosed bout of tuberculosis by "roughing it" for a year as a cowboy. University With a loan from his high school teacher, Irwin entered Stanford University in September 1894. Irwin was forced to withdraw for disciplinary reasons bu ...
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Lute Song (musical)
''Lute Song'' is a 1946 American musical with a book by Sidney Howard and Will Irwin, music by Raymond Scott, and lyrics by Bernard Hanighen. It is based on the 14th-century Chinese play ''Tale of the Pipa'' (''Pi-Pa-Ji'') by Gao Ming. Though not a great success, the show is significant for Mary Martin's meeting of then-unknown cast member Yul Brynner, whom she later recommended to her friends Rodgers and Hammerstein for the role of the Siamese monarch in the classic ''The King and I'', which premiered on Broadway in 1951. It was also the only Broadway appearance of Nancy Davis, future U.S. First Lady of the United States, First Lady Nancy Reagan. Development Cyril Birch, collaborator in a translation of ''The Peach Blossom Fan'', wrote that presumably the basis of the American play was the 1846 Antoine Bazin, Antoine (A. P. L.) Bazin French language, French translation of the Chinese play ''Tale of the Pipa''.Birch, pxvii Plot The plot focuses on Tsai-Yong (Cai Yong), a young s ...
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Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database.The basic Google book link is found at: https://books.google.com/ . The "advanced" interface allowing more specific searches is found at: https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives. The Publisher Program was first known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. The Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections of library partners and adds them to the digital inventory, ...
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Shanghai
Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowing through it. The population of the city proper is the List of largest cities, second largest in the world after Chongqing, with around 24.87 million inhabitants in 2023, while the urban area is the List of cities in China by population, most populous in China, with 29.87 million residents. As of 2022, the Greater Shanghai metropolitan area was estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GDP (nominal), nominal) of nearly 13 trillion Renminbi, RMB ($1.9 trillion). Shanghai is one of the world's major centers for finance, #Economy, business and economics, research, science and technology, manufacturing, transportation, List of tourist attractions in Shanghai, tourism, and Culture of Shanghai, culture. The Port of Sh ...
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German Language
German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also an official language of Luxembourg, German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. There are also notable German-speaking communities in other parts of Europe, including: Poland (Upper Silesia), the Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Denmark (South Jutland County, North Schleswig), Slovakia (Krahule), Germans of Romania, Romania, Hungary (Sopron), and France (European Collectivity of Alsace, Alsace). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in the Americas. German is one of the global language system, major languages of the world, with nearly 80 million native speakers and over 130 mi ...
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Vincenz Hundhausen
Vincenz Maria Hermann Hundhausen (15 December 1878 – 18 May 1955) was a German national, who was also a German-language professor at Peking University and a translator of Chinese works into German.Walravens, p92 "xi 洪濤生" (footnote) He used the Chinese name Hong Taosheng (). Hundhausen owned the Poplar Island Press, based out of his Beijing house. In addition, Hundhausen saw himself as a poet and an artist.Bieg, p71 In 2001 Annette Merker, author of a book review of ''Vincenz Hundhausen (1878-1955): Leben und Werk des Dichters, Druckers, Verlegers, Professors, Regisseurs und Anwalts in Peking'', wrote that he was "little known by non-sinologists".Merker, p. 241. "This stay grew into a lifelong intimate relationship with China, where Hundhausen ..This extraordinary German expatriate, little known by non-sinologists, .. Life Hundhausen was born in Grevenbroich on 15 December 1878. His father, V. Hundhausen, was a factory owner. V. Hundhausen's grandfather, , was a friend of E ...
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Bing Xin
Xie Wanying (; October 5, 1900 – February 28, 1999), better known by her pen name Bing Xin () or Xie Bingxin, was one of the most prolific Chinese women writers of the 20th century. Many of her works were written for young readers. She was the chairperson of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Her pen name Bing Xin (literally "Ice Heart") carries the meaning of a morally pure heart, and is taken from a line in a Tang dynasty poem by Wang Changling. Bing Xin published her first prose in the Morning Post (Chinese: 晨報) ''The Impressions of the 21st Hearing'' and her first novel ''Two Families'' in August 1919. Before and after studying abroad in 1923, she began to publish prose letters ''Jixiaoduzhe (To Young Readers; Chinese: 寄小讀者)'', which became a foundation stone of Chinese children's literature. Bing Xin was hired by the University of Tokyo as the first foreign female lecturer to teach a Chinese New Literature course. She returned to China ...
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Liang Shih-chiu
Liang Shih-chiu (January 6, 1903 – November 3, 1987), also romanized as Liang Shiqiu, and also known as Liang Chih-hwa (), was a renowned Chinese educator, writer, translator, literary theorist and lexicographer. Biography Liang was born in Beijing in 1903. His father, Liang Xianxi (), was a '' xiucai'' in the Qing dynasty. He was educated at Tsinghua College in Beijing from 1915 to 1923. He went on to study at Colorado College and later pursued his graduate studies at Harvard and Columbia Universities. At Harvard, he studied literary criticism under Irving Babbitt, whose New Humanism helped shape his conservative literary tenets. After his return to China in 1926, he began a long career as a professor of English at several universities, including Peking University, Tsingtao University, and Jinan University. He also served as the editor of a succession of literary supplements and periodicals, including the famous '' Crescent Moon Monthly'' (1928–1933). During this peri ...
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