Hunan's Best — Masterpieces and Art Treasures (Part 5)
The Time-Honored Qiju Opera. Qiju is one of Hunan's major local opera genres, also known as the Qiyang troupe, called "Qiyang Opera" in the early Republic and "Chunan Opera" in the late Qing. Named after its origin in Qiyang, it is popular across Qiyang, Hengyang, Shaoyang, Lingling, Chenzhou, and Huaihua in Hunan, as well as Quanzhou, Guilin, and Pingle in Guangxi.
This article has been compiled from historical materials in the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com · City Overview section). Some administrative divisions, population, socioeconomic data, and policy information may be outdated and are for reference only; for the latest situation, please refer to official releases by the local government and scenic areas.
The Time-Honored Qiju Opera
Qiju is one of the major local opera genres of Hunan. It is also known as the Qiyang Troupe, was called "Qiyang Opera" in the early years of the Republic of China, and was also known as "Chunan Opera" in the late Qing Dynasty, taking its name from its origin in Qiyang. Qiju is widely popular in Qiyang, Hengyang, Shaoyang, Lingling, Chenzhou, Huaihua and other areas of Hunan Province, as well as in Quanzhou, Guilin, Pingle, Liuzhou in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and the regions of southern Jiangxi, northern Guangdong and western Fujian.
Qiju combines three vocal styles: Gaoqiang, Kunqiang and Tanqiang. In the course of its development it gradually formed two major schools, the Yonghe and the Baohe, both of which use the Qiyang dialect as their unified stage language. When singing, the Yonghe school uses the drum master for vocal accompaniment, while the Baohe school uses the suona; the tones are high, soaring and impassioned. Qiju has a rich repertoire and abundant qupai (tune titles), and is a Hunan major opera genre with multiple vocal styles, dominated by Tanqiang.
Qiju has a fairly wide area of circulation. Besides the troupes performing in Hengyang, Lingling, Huaihua, Shaoyang, Chenzhou and other areas of Hunan, many Qiju troupes also performed in other provinces, leaving their footprints in Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, Yunnan and Guizhou. In the course of performing, Qiju learned from and promoted one another with local opera genres such as Guiju, Yueju, western Fujian Hanju and Guangdong Hanju, which both expanded Qiju's influence and enriched its own forms of artistic expression, driving the development of local opera art and once creating a flourishing situation in which "Qiyang disciples are found throughout the world."
Qiju originated from Yiyang tunes. It gradually took shape after being introduced to Qiyang in the early Ming Dynasty, where it merged with local arts and underwent long-term evolution. It is said that during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty (1403-1424), Yiyang tunes spread to Qiyang along with Jiangxi immigrants and gradually took form. The earliest repertoire of Yiyang tunes was "Mulian Zhuan," which is called the ancestor of Qiju's Gaoqiang. By the late Ming Dynasty, Qiju had already become a fairly widely popular opera genre in Hunan. According to the "Qiyang County Annals · Arts and Literature Record" compiled in the ninth year of the Tongzhi reign of the Qing Dynasty, by the end of the Ming Dynasty there were already fairly well-established opera troupes active in the Qiyang area.
Gaoqiang was the earliest vocal style of Qiju. In the late Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, after successively integrating Hui tunes, Han tunes and Xihuang tunes, Qiju gradually formed Tanqiang (the northern and southern routes). Later, in the course of its development, the southern route of Tanju came under the exchange influence of Yihuang Opera. With its popularity and changes in repertoire and performing art, Qiju's vocal forms became increasingly rich.
Farmer Zuo Fuyi Builds His Own Aircraft and Takes to the Sky
In Xiangyangqiao Town, Hengnan County, there is a man who has pursued his dream of the blue sky for more than 10 years, and people all call him "Zuo the Fool." "Zuo the Fool's" real name is Zuo Fuyi, a native of Zhoushi Township, Hengnan County. In 2003, his self-made aircraft "Nahan-100" succeeded in its test flight. Now he has devoted himself to developing a practical type of aircraft—a light manned airship.
Zuo Fuyi is a farmer through and through. In 1985, when he was in the third year of junior high school in Shaoguan, Guangdong, he happened to see a popular science book titled "How Airplanes Fly," which explained the simple principles of flight. He was immediately captivated by its contents and conceived the idea of building an airplane himself. After graduating from high school in 1990, he was admitted to Hengyang No. 5 Technical School, but he never forgot his "airplane dream." To realize his dream, in 1998 he took the national adult college entrance examination and, with excellent results, was admitted to the Aircraft Repair major of the First Workers' University of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force. There he systematically and comprehensively studied professional knowledge of aircraft manufacturing, which laid a strong foundation for his practical aircraft building. Driven by interest, after more than 10 years of devoted research, disregarding outside pressure and even his wife's threat of divorce, he kept exploring and modifying, spending more than 100,000 yuan. In 2003, the miracle finally appeared: the "Nahan-100," designed and built by himself, was finally born... At that moment, Zuo Fuyi could not help but cheer. A 20-year dream had finally come true, and he also became the first person in Hunan Province to successfully send a self-made aircraft into the sky.
You Jiehui, Leaving No Trace Where the Knife Falls
A half-clenched fist, with a V-shaped hand gesture pointing toward the sky—this stone carving work titled "Just Around the Corner" seems ready at any moment to burst forth with the power of fist and fingers; "Autumn Moon, Desolate Sound" is much more restrained in emotion and force, as a piece of stone about three chi square has been polished into a woman with lowered head embracing a qin. The hem of her skirt, the qin, her face, her hairstyle—all the details seem to have come together naturally without elaborate carving. At the recent folk craft expo held in Beijing, stone carving artist You Jiehui from Chenzhou, Hunan, was intoxicated in the joy of stone.
You Jiehui, in his forties, has already dealt with stone for more than 20 years. A large chrysanthemum stone carving, "Nine Dragons and a Hundred Flowers Screen," brought him into the public eye.
Chrysanthemum stone is a fossil of ancient marine organisms, formed in shallow-sea sedimentary layers 67 million years ago, and stone lovers often regard it as a treasure. One day, You Jiehui went to a village near Liuyang to visit a friend and found that the bed in the friend's home was strangely high; it turned out that sand had been buried underneath. After casually brushing it a few times, he saw many "chrysanthemums" revealed, and in a short while there were already 38 of them. In the end he "seized by force what he loved" and bought this rare stone. Facing this already rare chrysanthemum stone, You Jiehui drafted his plan again and again, and finally carved it into the "Nine Dragons and a Hundred Flowers Screen," composed of 118 chrysanthemums and 9 dragons.
Carving stone and sculpting stone is a very lonely affair. When others said he was crazy or mad, circling around stones every day, he would sit alone in front of a stone at night, sitting for several hours at a time, feeling especially calm inside.
Chrysanthemum stone carving brought You Jiehui fame, but what he loves most is still creating from pebbles. In his pebble works, one cannot see meticulous carving or lifelike resemblance; the spirit comes from the stone's natural form and from the creator's "stingy" use of the knife. Some people "play" with stones; others "carve" stones. The former merely appreciates them, leaving no personal trace on the stone, while the latter has too much craftsmanship. He personally leans toward seven parts natural and three parts carved.
Since leaving his home in the mountains of Fujian at the age of 17, You Jiehui has worked and lived successively in Hunan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places. He studied Shoushan stone in Fujian, Qingtian stone in Zhejiang, wood carving in Jiangsu, and large-scale stone carving in Quanzhou, the "hometown of Chinese stone materials"...
In order to take his stone art to an even higher level, You Jiehui consciously studied calligraphy and painting. He had not received formal professional education, so he bought materials and practiced on his own, collected the mailing addresses of professionals, and sent his assignments to them. Many professionals would mostly write back and even "correct" his work for him, and some became friends with him as a result. Having seen much and practiced much, he imperceptibly developed his own characteristic pursuit of spiritual resemblance. Now he has taken over a small factory in Chenzhou, Hunan, and also bought 5 mu of land, planning to open a park specifically for displaying stone carving works. After more than 20 years of traveling about to learn his craft, he has finally come to a stop at this moment.
Tujia Batik
The emergence of batik can be traced back more than 2,000 years to the Spring and Autumn period. Historical works such as the "Book of the Later Han" and the "New Book of Tang" all contain records of batik. This shows that before the Tang and Song dynasties, batik existed across a wide area of China. After the Tang and Song dynasties, as various convenient dyeing techniques gradually spread throughout the country, batik, which relied entirely on hand-painted dyeing, fell out of use in many places and headed toward extinction. But in the mountainous areas of western Hunan, with high mountains, steep slopes, inconvenient transportation and a closed, self-sufficient economy, batik was passed down from generation to generation among working women of various ethnic groups and flourished continuously, and thus the region is called the "hometown of batik."
On the magical and beautiful land of Zhangjiajie on the western border of Xiangxi live many ethnic minorities, and products with strong local ethnic cultural characteristics handed down from ancient times, such as batik, Miao embroidery, Dixi opera, Yangxi opera and Huaguxi opera masks of the Miao and Tujia peoples, were born amid these green mountains and clear waters. These products are astonishing not only for their delicate handmade craftsmanship, simple and honest natural feelings, and unique and bold imaginative conceptions, but also display to people the legends of a distant ancient Ba-Shu kingdom, depict and reproduce a return-to-nature ethnic flavor, and constitute a traditional ethnic culture and art of distinctive ingenuity. At the same time, these works, with their pure, primitive and elegant style and their desolate, wild and rugged sentiment, also bring pure natural beauty to men, women, the old and the young living in today's fast-paced modern cities, and add a bright line of pastoral charm and idyllic scenery to the decoration of modern luxurious and elegant homes.
The batik series of products is the traditional handmade dyeing and painting art of ethnic minorities such as the Miao and Tujia in western Hunan. Batik originated in ancient times from copying bronze drum patterns: homespun cloth was stretched around a bronze drum and rubbed back and forth with wax dye, then soaked in a prepared dye vat, hence the saying "paint on cloth with wax and dye it; once the wax is removed, the patterns appear as if painted." During the Qin and Han dynasties, the Miao, Tujia and other ethnic minorities living in western Hunan used this method, with specially made copper pens and brushes dipped in liquid wax, to depict their love of and pursuit of life, their rich imagination and conceptions, and beautiful folk legends in exquisite pattern forms on homespun cloth, which then underwent more than ten processes including hand dyeing, dewaxing and bleaching before becoming batik. Dunhuang murals and the Tang Dynasty painting "Lady of Shu Guo on a Spring Outing" by Zhang Jin once depicted figures in batik clothing.
With its unique artistic charm, primitive patterns, and the ingenious blending and combination of various artistic styles from ancient and modern times, China and abroad, with the endlessly changing soul of batik—ice patterns—batik is truly astonishing and makes one gasp in admiration. No wonder batik enjoys the reputation of being the "living fossil" of today's clothing.
A 50-Meter-Long "World Business Card"
Longshan County is the birthplace and main production area of Chinese Tujia brocade. In the summer of 2006, the China National Light Industry Council and the China Arts and Crafts Society awarded Longshan County the honorary title of "Hometown of Chinese Tujia Brocade." Tujia brocade is the Tujia people's "world business card."
Traditional home-woven brocade is made through primitive hand operations, using the method of "continuous warp and broken weft, broken-tail cut flowers," relying on orally transmitted and mentally remembered imitation, and woven on the reverse side on a primitive inclined loom. Its craft process includes spinning thread, dyeing, winding thread, stretching thread, mounting the reed, rolling thread, picking heddles, turning the pole, picking patterns, tying rods and mounting the loom, weaving the cloth edge, and picking and weaving, among other procedures. It is divided into two major schools: "counting yarn flowers," "diagonal pairing" plain-color plain weave, and "upper-lower diagonal" twill colored. Tujia brocade is famous for its brilliant colors and excels in romantic design. Its pigments are taken from natural materials, and its rules of color use and forms of pattern composition are flexible and varied. At present, there are more than 220 traditional Tujia brocade patterns circulating within Longshan County, of which more than 120 have been collected by experts and scholars studying Tujia brocade.
On August 26, 2007, the 50-meter Tujia brocade long scroll "Charming Xiangxi" was publicly displayed for the first time at Century Square in Longshan County town.
The 50-meter Tujia brocade long scroll "Charming Xiangxi" took 13 months from design of the patterns to completion of weaving. The entire scroll is 50 meters long, 1.6 meters wide, 80 square meters in area, and weighs 50 kilograms. The 50-meter length of "Charming Xiangxi" symbolizes a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the founding of Xiangxi Prefecture; the 1.6-meter width derives from the total area of the eight counties and cities under the prefecture's jurisdiction, nearly 16,000 square kilometers; the content of the brocade patterns includes the main scenic spots of the eight counties and cities, such as Liye Ancient Town, Wulong Mountain Grand Canyon and Xiche River in Longshan County; Laosicheng and Bu'ermen in Yongshun County; Zuolong Gorge in Guzhang County; the Southern Great Wall and Nanhua Mountain in Fenghuang County; and Aizhai and Dehang in Jishou City, as well as ethnic songs and dances and ethnic musical instruments reflecting the customs and flavor of the Tujia and Miao peoples.
The "Charming Xiangxi" Tujia brocade scroll set new historical records in overall length, overall area and overall weight, becoming the longest Tujia brocade scroll in the world today. Its creative inspiration came from the inclusion of Tujia brocade craftsmanship in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists in June 2006; its name came from the title "China's Top Ten Charming Cities" won by Xiangxi Prefecture; its purpose was to present a tribute to the 17th National Congress of the Party, the Beijing Olympics and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the prefecture, and at the same time to apply for the Guinness World Record.