A Night At Liyuan Opera and Nanyin Music

It was the 9th day of the 9th lunar month, also known as the day Goddess of Mercy (Guan Yin) entered Nirvana. A local Liyuan Opera and Nanyin Music association was scheduled to perform at Thian Hock Kheng temple tonight. The association had been performing here for many years during the Guan Yin festivals, which includes the Goddess' birthday, enlightenment day as well as the day she entered Nirvana.

Although I've known that this association performs on every of these occasions, this was the first time I attend their performance. Some of my friends were there to help out too. The settings was very simple: The area behind the threshold of the main door acted as the musicians' area, while a small platform was placed in the courtyard to act as a stage. Although it lacked the sophistiaction of a standard theatre, it was afterall unique and personal.

The shows put up tonight included 2 opera excerpts, 1 nanyin music piece and 4 nanyin songs. The show started from with one of the excerpts, "Ball Kicking". This excerpt is one of the main highlights of the show "Zheng Yuanhe and Li Yaxian", as it featured an unique folk dance called "Gong Qiu" (Ball Kicking) which was only found in central Fujian Province and all other opera versions do not have this scene. The story of this excerpt goes like this: Zheng Yuanhe was a honest scholar who fell in love with courtesan Li Yaxian and decided to look for her the brothel. The brothel's owner, Li Ma, saw this as a chance to extort him of all his money, hence she got all her ladies to put on their best to entertain him and make him stay for long. In this excerpt, the main focus is on the 4 ball kicking ladies. However, as only 1 of the actress is a regular dan actress (1 was a nanyin teacher who had never acted, 1 was a cross-over from san hua genre and another one was roped in just for this show only), so the coordination between them were a bit lacking. This was obvious as at times they could not hit the ball as according to the pre-recorded music. Zheng Yuanhe and Li Yaxian were played by Quanzhou borned and trained actors Lin Shaoling and Hong Ruwang, who were real-life husband and wife too.

The second item on the show list was nanyin music "Chu Ting Qian" from the nanyin group. It was a very fine piece of music, but the percussion section seemed a bit unstable. Some of the percussionist could not get the tempo right initially, but it was overcomed as they played along

Following next was a song titled "Chong Jiu" (Day of the "Double Nine"). One of the ball kicking actress in the first item was featured here as the main soloist-cum-vocalist. She is a nanyin musician by profession, and she performed much better here, accompanied by two other helpers with bells from the opera group. One of my friends who was in this item too did not performed well as she was suffering from sore throat. It was nevertheless a good effort from her.

The fourth show was another nanyin song titled "Zhu Lian" (Beaded Curtain). Lin Shaoling, who is also an instructor in the association, was the solo vocalist in this segment. This song, although is a new composition, sounded very traditional still as the melody retained the musical structure of one of their nanyin tunes.

After "Zhu Lian" was "Guan Yin Festival", a choir piece. The music for this piece was richer, as more instruments like Yang Qin and cello joined in. However, the singing wasn't too good, as the lead singer did carry the Quanzhou accent, which is one major characteristic of nanyin. It was after this piece, where according to the association's culture, that everyone present where to stand up and face the inner hall and pay respect to the Goddess of Mercy. However, there was one thing on my mind: This is a temple worshipping Goddess Tian Hou (Ma Zu), so where was Goddess of Mercy? My eyes were scanning around the hall, but I did not see any Goddess of Mercy statue!

The second last segment was a small-group ricital titled "Xing Fa" (The Punishment), which is extracted from nanyin sing-show "Chen San Wu Niang" (Legend of Chen San and Huang Wuniang). The background of the song was like this: Chen San and Huang Wuniang eloped from Chaozhou to Quanzhou, and was caught by the constables. The magistrate wanted to seperate the couple, so he tortured Wuniang's maid Yi Chun, hoping that she would confess everything under pain and accuse Chen San of kidnapping. Something interesting about this song is that one of the singers assuming the role of the magistrate was singing in Mandarin (with a strong minnan accent). The reason behind this was that government officials were to use "official language" (Mandarin) instead of local language (quanzhou dialect) because of their status.

Another opera excerpt from "Zheng Yuanhe and Li Yaxian" titled "Lian Hua Lao" was the last item of the night. This excerpt tells the story of Zheng Yuanhe ended up in the streets together with some street artisans after Li Ma chased him out of the brothel when his all his money had been used up. Li Yaxian and her maid A-Gui had since left the brothel in search of Zheng. One one cold snowing day, A-Gui was out looking for him again when she bumped into this group of street artisans. She noticed that the head of the group resembled Zheng, and hence decided to test his identity by asking him to sing solo. Zheng Yuanhe started to sing about his family background, confirming his identity. A-Gui was happy that she founded him, but to be discreet, she decided to lead the group of street artisans back to Li Yaxian's residence so that both of them can meet in private. In this excerpt, the four street artisans (Lian Hua Lao performers) were the centre of attraction as they sang entertaining folk songs of various themes. Zheng Yuanhe here, was only a minor role, and hence the nanyin soloist in the second segment was asked to double-up this role as well. My friend who performed in the second segment also, assumed the role of the maid A-Gui. She did not have to sing in this show fortunately, so she did not have to strain her voice. I personally feel that Lin Shaoling acted better as one of the street artisans here than in "Ball Kicking".

The entire show ended by around 10pm. The duration was considered a bit short, but I think the selection of the programmes were good, as it somehow compensated for the length of the show. A good effort by the entire performance crew, I would say, but I hope to see more improvements in the actors and singers in future, as I feel that they were not really totally prepared for the show. But anyway, it'd be almost 5 months to their next show here again, so it should be not much of a problem!