Zhangjiajie's Ancient and Mysterious 'Nuo' Culture
'Nuo,' according to Ciyuan, originally refers to rituals of welcoming gods and driving away plague spirits. The deities worshipped in Nuo are the legendary Fuxi and his sister, honored as Nuo Gong and Nuo Po, to commemorate the ancestors who recreated humanity and to seek their protection for descendants. Nuo activities fall into two categories: 'Chongnuo' and 'Huanyuan.' 'Chongnuo' means cleansing the home, curing illness, and driving away disaster; 'Huanyuan' means fulfilling vows...
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"Nuo," according to the Ci Yuan (Dictionary of Word Origins): formerly refers to ceremonies of welcoming gods and holding temple fairs, and rituals to drive away plague ghosts. The deities worshipped in Nuo are the legendary Fuxi and his sister, honored as Nuo Gong and Nuo Po. This commemorates the ancestors who recreated humankind in legend and prays to them to protect their descendants. Nuo affairs are summarized into two types, namely "chong nuo" and "huan yuan." "Chong nuo" refers to cleansing the house, expelling illness, and driving away disasters; "huan yuan" refers to praying for longevity, seeking children, and ensuring children grow up smoothly without disaster or illness. Chong nuo uses ritual ceremonies to forcibly make ghosts and monsters cause trouble, using the righteous to suppress the evil. "Huan yuan" is to thank Nuo Gong and Nuo Po for their protection, pleasing and rewarding the deities.
Performing Nuo opera is the liveliest and most audience-attracting important part of Nuo ritual activities. Nuo opera is divided into main plays and outer plays. The altar master is both director and actor. The main plays are presided over by the altar master. Masks are used as representatives of character identity; most masks are carved from poplar wood and painted in different colors according to the character's identity and personality traits.
Nuo dance runs through the entire altar-opening ritual and Nuo opera of the Nuo hall theater. The altar master wears a Guanyin jade Buddha crown, a ritual robe, a skirt around the lower body, a sash draped over the left shoulder, and a divine whip inserted at the right back; he holds an ox horn in his left hand and a master's knife in his right hand to welcome the gods and perform rituals. The altar master's dance is the most graceful. There are dances such as "Treading the Nine Provinces," "Treading the Eight Trigrams," and "The General Urges His Horse." At times he leaps and bounds, rolls and spins; at times he steps lightly and rubs slowly, rising and kneeling in cadence. One worker sings and the crowd responds, sometimes high and rugged, sometimes soft and gentle, with graceful movements and lingering charm.
In Nuo rituals there are also some stunt performances, quite thrilling and moving. These include opening the red mountain, treading the heavenly knife, treading the earthly knife, treading the ploughshare, and descending into the oil cauldron.
The Origin of Tujia Nuo Opera in Xiangxi
Tujia Nuo opera in Xiangxi is an opera sung by the Tujia people of Xiangxi to welcome the Nuo gods, drive away epidemics and disasters, and repay the Nuo gods by fulfilling vows. It integrates drama, music, sacrifice, fine arts, and folk singing and other art forms into one, containing extremely rich cultural connotations. Tujia scholar Peng Menglin, in studying the vocal music of Tujia Nuo opera, once pointed out: "If distinguished by religious sect, 'Nuo sacrifice' belongs to the 'shamanic religion' altar tradition. Although its vocal style has countless ties with local folk songs, Yang opera, and Daoist music, in terms of individuality, the musical characteristics of 'Nuo vocal style' itself are very distinct."[1] When we open local gazetteers, we find that the Tujia have always "worshipped shamans and revered ghosts," which is also the social condition that allowed "Nuo sacrifice" to spread widely in Tujia areas. As the "Nuo" of the "shamanic religion" altar tradition, and the "Nuo opera" produced along with "Nuo sacrifice" and "Nuo dance," after merging with Tujia ethnic culture, its artistic characteristics were naturally individualized.
Nuo opera in the Tujia areas of Xiangxi is also called Nuo hall opera or Nuo god opera, and its relationship with the Tujia primitive shamanic religion and witchcraft is extremely close. The gods believed in by the Tujia ancestors include the Nuo god, the Eight Division Great Gods, the Earth God, and others. As a religious activity, this primitive belief was integrated with social production activities, entertainment activities, and ethnic customs. Therefore, the earliest "chong nuo huan yuan" of Nuo opera carried obvious superstitious coloring. Among the Tujia masses there is a saying, "One Nuo drives away a hundred ghosts, one vow settles a thousand gods," and the Tujia people of Xiangxi simply call it "god opera." The development process of Tujia Nuo opera in Xiangxi was roughly Nuo, Nuo dance, Nuo ritual, and only then Nuo opera. Nuo dance originated in the distant age of ignorance. In struggling against nature and against poisonous insects and fierce beasts, the Tujia ancestors produced the primitive Nuo dance of disguising themselves and covering their faces, galloping, shouting, charging, and leaping amid drum and music. The bird-and-sparrow dance, ape dance, bear dance, and others they imitated were quite spectacular. After Nuo dance combined with the sacrificial ritual of Nuo for driving away ghosts and eliminating disasters, it added content such as praying for the safety of people and livestock, abundant harvests of grain, commemorating ancestors, persuading people to forsake evil and follow good, and spreading production knowledge. This gradually formed a sacrificial custom song-and-dance that combined the propagation of religious doctrine with entertainment.[2] Tujia Nuo opera developed on this foundation. Some Tujia scholars believe that the distant source of Tujia Nuo opera can be traced back to the "Nine Songs" of the Warring States period, and that the "Nine Songs" are the prototype of Tujia Nuo opera. Their basis is that in the Yuan and Xiang river basins of Chu at that time, people "believed in shamans and ghosts and emphasized excessive sacrifices" ("Book of Han: Treatise on Geography"), thereby causing "between yin and yang, humans and ghosts, there could not but be some mixture of irreverence and licentiousness" (Zhu Xi of the Song dynasty, "Collected Commentaries on the Chu Ci"). It was precisely by processing and organizing such "vulgar" words that Qu Yuan created famous pieces such as "Nine Songs" and "Heavenly Questions." Some scholars do not agree with this argument. They believe that Tujia Nuo in the Song dynasty still remained at the stage of Nuo sacrifice and Nuo dance, and that only by the Ming dynasty at the latest did Tujia Nuo develop into Nuo opera[3]. The Jiajing "Changde Prefecture Gazetteer" records: "At the end of the year, in the last several days, villages often use shamans, in red garments and ghost masks, with gongs and drums clamorously dancing all night, called huan nuo." The text does not explicitly mention the two characters "Nuo opera," but it does use the term "huan nuo," which is similar to the folk name for Nuo opera today. Also, according to the Qianlong "Yongshun County Gazetteer" of the Qing dynasty: "In Yong customs, to repay the gods, one must invite shamans from Chen prefecture to sing and perform Nuo opera... By evening, Nuo opera is performed. Gongs are struck and drums beaten, each person has a paper mask, one dressed as a woman, called Meng Jiangnu; one dressed as a man, called Fan Qilang." In Tujia Nuo opera, the legend of Meng Jiangnu occupies a very important place. In the Tujia areas of Xiangxi, Nuo opera generally has twenty-four main plays, namely the twenty-four opera gods. At the end of each Nuo ritual, the shaman must burn twenty-four holes in yellow mounting paper with incense to signify sacrifice to the twenty-four opera gods. There is a folk proverb: "The Nuo god Bodhisattva cannot read; he only wants the twenty-four circles to be full." Among the twenty-four Nuo gods, Jiangnu and Fan Lang, called the vow-completing gods, are two very important deities when repaying Nuo vows. In Nuo opera, "Meng Jiangnu" is the climax of the whole performance. Ordinarily, after the Nuo opera is sung, Meng Jiangnu and Fan Lang, still in costume, go to "bow to the stage" before the host and audience to signify "completing the vow." After the mid-Qing dynasty, Nuo opera absorbed the vocal styles and repertoire of other local opera genres such as flower-lantern opera, Yang opera, and high-pitched tunes, and gradually became increasingly mature. We carefully examined 371 opera genres nationwide and found that Nuo opera and flower-lantern opera share the same troupes, that is, one performance troupe can perform both Nuo opera and flower-lantern opera. During this period, Nuo opera already participated in performances as an independent dramatic genre. Because Nuo opera is a dramatic form evolved from shamanic Nuo rituals, it went through the development process of shamanic Nuo rituals (exorcism and sacrifice), Nuo altar plays, and Nuo hall main plays.
As a primitive religious art, the origin and formation of Nuo opera cannot be separated from the cultural ecological environment of the Tujia ancestors. With low productivity and backward technology, the Tujia ancestors entrusted phenomena such as birth, aging, illness, death, and natural and man-made disasters to the protection of gods, forming primitive nature worship. This is the main reason for the formation of Nuo opera. According to the Qianlong tenth year "Yongshun County Gazetteer: Customs Record" of the Qing dynasty: "The natives like fishing and hunting, believe in ghosts and shamans; when ill, they have no doctors, but only slaughter livestock, and shamans beat drums, shake bells, and strike bamboo to sacrifice to ghosts." The Tujia worship ancestors, especially believing in the Eight Division Great Gods, and sacrificing to the Eight Division Great Gods became a seasonal custom unique to the Tujia. Nuo opera spread in Tujia areas very early, but the truly sacrificial drama that used masks, song and dance, and spoken parts to dress as ghosts and gods, plus secular characters, plots, and entertaining elements, should have appeared in the late Qing dynasty. The Tongzhi "Longshan County Gazetteer" of the Qing records: "Two images of Nuo gods, male and female, are enshrined in the hall, with offerings of livestock and food. The shaman wears a paper mask and performs ancient stories like an actor." However, paper masks were easily damaged and difficult to preserve, so people gradually switched to painted faces during performances. According to research, by the late Qing dynasty, Tujia Nuo opera was influenced by other local opera genres, and many roles changed to painted-face makeup; some Nuo opera troupes even abolished masks. Fortunately, because the Tujia areas of Xiangxi were high in the mountains and far away, with inconvenient transportation, a small number of old masks escaped disaster and have been preserved to this day.
Musical Characteristics
In Tujia Nuo opera, Nuo altar plays are often inserted into ritual activities, while Nuo hall main plays already participate in performances as an independent dramatic genre. The vocal styles of Tujia Nuo opera are divided into Nuo altar main-play tunes and Nuo hall opera tunes. The former emerged from shaman songs, with relatively simple melody and rhythm, and structure preserving the original style of shaman songs; the latter's musical development was influenced by Xiangxi flower-lantern opera, Chenhe opera, and Yang opera. "Flower-lantern" and "Nuo" sometimes performed on the same stage, with simple role-based vocal differentiation, rich melodic variation, and prominent individuality, using connected tunes to express dramatic content and portray characters.
(1) Musical Structure
The music of Tujia Nuo opera mainly comes from Tujia folk songs, narrative-singing music, religious music, folk dance music, folk opera, and folk instruments. Tujia folk songs are the foundation of Tujia Nuo opera. The folk-song elements in Nuo opera concentrate many genres and forms, including mountain songs, short tunes, narrative songs, and labor songs. Examples include "Moving the Vanguard," "Moving the Mountain-Opener," "Moving the Calculator," "Moving the Blacksmith," "Moving the Female Shaman," "Moving Qin Tong and Ba Lang," "Moving the Laughing Monk," "Moving the Judge," as well as "Riddle Song," "Seasonal Song," and "Opening Heaven and Earth." From the content of Tujia Nuo opera, it not only sacrifices to gods and ancestors, but also adopts the form of folk songs to reflect different life contents, using folk-song frameworks to express the content of driving away ghosts and epidemics in Nuo opera, so that the sung sections have a folk-song style with regular rhythmic phrasing and strong melody. Most of the folk songs absorbed by Tujia Nuo opera are highly malleable, can connect with supporting refrains, and have tunes suitable for multiple uses, making them musical tunes that may develop into opera music.
Many items in Tujia Nuo opera belong to narrative-singing, and in this respect it incorporates Tujia folk narrative-singing music. In performance, usually one person speaks and sings a story, requiring relatively high skill. The vocal style is mostly numbered-board, with a special tune between the opening and labeled tunes, irregular in rhythm and fast in tempo. Sometimes percussion preludes, interludes, and supporting accompaniment are added; the narrative-singing is rich in variation and diverse in form. The religious music in Tujia Nuo opera is mostly sacrificial music. Sacrificial music mostly consists of long passages of spoken recitation, with simple melody, and orality and chanting are its main characteristics. The religious music in Tujia Nuo opera is mostly performed in "chong nuo" and "huan yuan" sacrificial rituals. Examples include "Opening the Altar," "Earth God Tune," and "Judge Tune." In addition, there are some sacrificial plays with free form; their lyrics are popular, their spoken parts humorous, and they have strong local color. The vocal tunes are simple and plain, including level tunes, sad tunes, immortal tunes, and so on, accompanied by gongs and drums. Props include ox horns, master's knives, divination blocks, and mountain-opening knives. Whether in sacrificial rituals or dramatic performances, Nuo opera is almost always stylized song-and-dance performance. Its tunes mostly belong to the strophic upper-and-lower-sentence structure, with percussion transitions between sections. Singing is mainly in the form of one leading and the crowd responding. When leading, percussion is not used; when the crowd responds, percussion is added. When singing, there is no dancing; when dancing, there is no singing. In most cases, the performers dance to the sound of gongs and drums during interludes. Dances include solo, duet, trio, and group performances, with simple movements and free but somewhat irregular steps, and dance steps that are rapid and changeable[4]. The music during dance generally has fixed rhythmic patterns. The folk song-and-dance music elements in Tujia Nuo opera are the best expression of the collective atmosphere in Nuo opera. Not only are the musical rhythms rich, but more importantly they often accompany the rhythm and lead into song-and-dance performances, making the scene vivid and lively. In its development, Tujia Nuo opera continuously absorbed the folk opera of the places where it spread. The structure of linked labeled tunes is highly flexible, and there is considerable room for creative vocal variation during singing, and it uses local dialect and colloquial speech, making it very easy for audiences in the region to accept. Therefore, Tujia Nuo opera incorporated the artistic vocal styles of flower-lantern opera, Yang opera, Chenhe high-pitched tunes, and others, boldly absorbing and drawing on the expressive techniques of brother opera arts, making Nuo opera music increasingly complete. Very interestingly, we often see that some plays even show mixed vocal styles; for example, in the Nuo opera play "Riddle Song," the vocal style of the first half is Nuo opera, and the second half is flower-lantern opera vocal style. Common instruments in Tujia Nuo opera include horse gongs, medium gongs, cymbals, small cymbals, drums, master's knives, ox horns, and others. Percussion accompaniment is one of the main characteristics of Nuo opera. Due to the influence of local instruments, labeled tunes gradually increased, and the large tube (also called urn zither) was added to the instruments; later, suona, erhu, zhonghu, dahu, and other instruments were gradually added.
(2) Melody and Vocal Style
Tujia Nuo opera music is mostly composed of pentatonic scales, frequently using the shang, yu, and zhi modes, with melodies that do not rise and fall greatly, being relatively smooth. Since the vocal music of Tujia Nuo opera mainly originates from Tujia folk songs, in the process of vocal delivery it inevitably borrows inherent techniques from folk songs and transforms and develops them, thereby establishing its unique character. In the history of the development of Tujia musical culture, a large number of highly distinctive "three-tone series" folk songs were once produced. Tujia Nuo opera vocal music and Tujia folk songs share a common characteristic: they multiply melodic patterns with "three-tone series" folk songs as their matrix. For example, the vocal techniques of "striking while singing" and "striking instead of singing" in Tujia Nuo opera derive directly from Tujia "three-tone series" folk songs.
Tujia Nuo opera music is closely related to Tujia folk songs. The vocal delivery pays great attention to the charm of words and tones, and the musical structure is short and concise. The lyrics are based on dialect, and because the dialects spoken differ, the musical tunes also differ. Under the influence of the "three-tone series" structure, Nuo opera vocal melodies have no large melodic contours, being a natural vocal delivery based on linguistic tones, emphasizing the exaggeration of intonation. The difference is that sometimes, due to many words and few notes, the rhythm is highly compressed, in a "duoban" style of vocal delivery following the words; sometimes there are few words and many notes, highlighting the melodic singability. Therefore, the melodic development techniques of Tujia Nuo opera vocal music have the following characteristics: First, repetitive imitation and unified metrical patterns. Most vocal pieces in Tujia Nuo opera have no instrumental accompaniment and are "unaccompanied singing" from beginning to end, which requires that the vocal melody and metrical pattern must be fixed, requiring a unified metrical pattern. Since Nuo opera vocal music in performance, unlike other art forms, has instrumental accompaniment, it lacks the link of using instruments to heighten and set off the atmosphere. Presumably, as soon as one opens one's mouth, one must set into the basic "tune and meter," so as to achieve "following the tune." Second, contrast of division and union, and introduction, development, transition, and conclusion. The contrast and division-union in Nuo opera vocal music are the main methods of Nuo opera melodic development, possessing strong religious and local color in Nuo opera singing. The contrast is mainly between sentence patterns and section patterns, commonly seen as the contrasting echo of upper and lower lines. This technique can shape different character images and has distinct, rich color changes in vocal music. The contrast in Nuo opera vocal music is technically embodied in melodic lines and line-ending notes. Third, same-tone alternation and same-tone repetition. The same-tone alternation and repetition in Tujia Nuo opera vocal music mainly rely on the variation or repetition of the same musical melody in the vocal music, highlighting alternation and repetition within the internal structure of vocal sentence patterns. In Nuo opera, "stepwise" same-tone alternating repetition is relatively common.
(III) Tunes
The vocal music of Tujia Nuo opera features "gong and drum dividing phrases" and "not relying on strings and pipes." In its early period, it still retained the tradition of "vocal accompaniment" of shamanic tunes. After the 1950s, suona, erhu, and dizi accompaniment were added. The tune structure is relatively free, with strong narrative quality, and the sentence structure is similar to that of high-pitched tunes, mainly using "words first, tune after," with the end of the tune joined by the [Liaozi] gong and drum pattern. Nuo opera has many vocal tunes, with the main tunes being [Xianfeng Tune], [Songzi Tune], [Tudi Tune], [Kaishan Tune], [Tong'er Tune], [Chunhua Tune], [Xianniang Tune], [Qintong Tune], [Ganlongchuan], etc., as well as specialized tunes for xiaodan, xiaosheng, laodan, naisheng, zhengdan, hualian, etc., derived from them as matrices. In actual use, different roles often sing their own basic tunes within one aria, forming melodic contrast and modal alternation. For example, in the Tujia Nuo opera "Pang Shi Nü · Repudiating the Wife," Jiang Lang sings the upper-line tune [Songzi Tune], the sheng role uses [Xianfeng Tune], the jing role uses [Kaishan Tune] and [Panguan Tune]. The chou role uses [Suanjiang Tune] and [Tong'er Tune]. Today, when Tujia people in the Xiangxi Tujia region hold shamanic Nuo activities, they mainly perform the "Three Women Plays" of "Meng Jiang Nü," "Pang Shi Nü," and "Dragon King's Daughter," still participating in sacrificial and vow-fulfilling activities. The gong and drum patterns of Tujia Nuo opera, apart from the specialized [Cross Gong], [Five Birds Jumping Frame], and [Eight-Character Pattern], mostly borrow from Yang opera and Chenhe opera, and the interlude wind music is also the same as that of Chenhe opera.
Artistic Characteristics
In the course of performance and transmission, Xiangxi Tujia Nuo opera gradually formed its own artistic characteristics. Its rituals are completed through song, dance, and drama, while its theatrical performance is interspersed with content of vow-fulfillment and sacrifice. This ancient art form retains the primitive appearance of performing arts in the process of evolution from sacrifice, song and dance, and storytelling to opera.
(I) Comedic Nature — The Establishment of the Entertainment Element
The performance of Tujia Nuo opera was attached to religious activities of rewarding gods and fulfilling vows. It was originally a shamanic drama sung by Tima (shaman priests) during sacrifices, and old prefectural and county gazetteers all recorded it. "At the time of sacrifice, two images of Nuo kings, male and female, must be set in the courtyard, with painted scrolls of deities arranged all around." The Nuo shaman priests invited deities from all paths to gather in the Nuo hall, first praying for blessings and averting disasters for the host. When inviting the gods, the priest wore ritual robes, shook the ritual knife, twirled the ribboned cloth, blew the ox horn, made hand gestures, and stepped the Eight Trigrams, chanting incantations, with an extremely solemn atmosphere. However, when entering the main plays and performing stories, teasing, mockery, and humorous episodes and language were everywhere. Later, the main plays of Tujia Nuo opera were divided by artists into three parts: "Upper Cave," "Middle Cave," and "Lower Cave," known for humor, wit, charm, and comedy, often making people unable to hold back laughter. This joyful atmosphere is first manifested in dramatic plots. For example, "Buying a Pig" tells a series of stories that occur on the way to the capital for examinations between a scholar named Gan Sheng and Qin Tong, who helps him carry his load. In the play, Qin Tong is a clown with a bald head, crooked mouth, and hunched back. His strange appearance, strange movements, and strange tones, plus Gan Sheng occasionally hitting his bald head with a pig bladder, constantly cause the audience to roar with laughter. This rough, popular, and comical performance is suited to the knowledge level of the local people and is a reflection of the aesthetic tastes of the Tujia people. Among traditional plays, scenes such as Kaishan performing alone and the blacksmith's wife pulling the blacksmith's leg and causing more trouble make people feel they are the most enjoyable to watch; the comic dialogue of the fortune-teller's self-mockery, the couple's teasing, the laughing monk wanting a wife, and the homophonic and ironic words between Tong'er and the mistress also make them laugh the most. Originally, "entertaining the gods" was false, and "entertaining people" was true; "entertaining the gods" was the surface, and "entertaining people" was the inner reality; "entertaining the gods" was a kind of entrustment and expectation, while "entertaining people" was the comic soul and source of Tujia Nuo hall opera, and the core that enabled it to possess unique artistic charm, be closely linked with people of all ethnic groups, and thrive endlessly. The pretended divine decree that "the uglier the performance, the happier the gods" actually reflected a common comprehensive need in people's aesthetic realm. The flexible and casual approach of Tujia Nuo opera performers, the audience-centered dramatic concept, and the broad audience's concept of pastime and entertainment characterized by playful laughter blended together, forming its distinct and prominent comic consciousness.
(II) Variability — The Salty and Bland of Aesthetic Consciousness
Duan Anjie of the Tang Dynasty proposed the idea of "salty and bland" in "Yuefu Zalu," very vividly presenting a dialectical artistic viewpoint, referring to contrast, foil, cold and hot, virtual and real, etc., in artworks and performances. Throughout the entire performance of Tujia Nuo opera, the artistic technique of "salty and bland contrasting" is used to develop stories, set up plot points, strengthen contrast, and regulate atmosphere. Taking the plot development of "Meng Jiang Nü" as an example, scenes such as the official pursuing Fan Qiliang, parting at the East River, and crying at the Great Wall clearly form a salty-bland distinction with "Juanzi Teases His Sister," "Meeting at the Pond," and "Baiwang Escorts Mother." From the perspective of character contrast, Meng Jiang Nü, Fan Qiliang, and Father Meng belong to the "salty," while Juanzi, Baiwang, and Meixiang belong to the "bland." Looking again at the main plays of Nuo opera, inviting the deities, the judge making vows, and many Nuo rituals and sacrifices, as well as Kaishan throwing the axe, the blacksmith couple, the fortune-teller couple, and Tong'er and the mistress, naturally also have differences of salty and bland, cold and hot. The mutual foil and harmonization of strong and light make Tujia Nuo opera more colorful and full of charm, and also more watchable.
In the artistic treatment of "salty and bland contrasting" in Tujia Nuo opera, comic dialogue played an obvious aesthetic function, serving to set up scenes, shape characters, and heighten atmosphere, increasing its comic flavor. For example, the laughing monk sings: "Monk harmony, monk harmony, the monk is born without a wife. I wanted to make one from straw, but at midnight she went 'rustle-rustle'; I wanted to mold one from mud, but at midnight she was not warm." It can be seen that the monk's lyrics are very humorous. Another example is the fortune-teller couple teasing each other. His wife says of the fortune-teller: "Standing up, he's like a roly-poly; lying down, he's like a winter melon; picked up, he's a bitter buckwheat cake." The fortune-teller mocks his wife: "Two streams of snot hang down; her eye crusts are like two lumps of tofu dregs." His wife laughs at the fortune-teller: "The roof is covered with yellow thatch," and "a broken pot is used to cook rice." The fortune-teller retorts that his wife's natal family is a "broken tile kiln, that's your home. Stretch up, and you hit your head." How is this like the world of gods, or like immortals in the "Peach Blossom Spring"? It is simply a quarrel between an ordinary couple, a true portrayal of poor folk life. Of course, their "quarreling" and "spatting" are actually teasing and joking, because "husband and wife are naturally mostly harmonious; without jokes, how can the night pass?" The impoverished and dreary social life needed comedy and needed the regulation of "salty and bland." The aesthetic ideal of the laboring people was expressed as pleasure, and the purpose of aesthetics lay in pastime and entertainment. Everyday vulgar sayings from life and "coquettish postures and wild words" could both "awaken the eyes and ears" and give the audience aesthetic enjoyment.
(III) Performability — The Construction of Stage Time and Space
In the early period, as a kind of "shrine drama," the way of reproducing ancestral gods' lives could not but be constrained by the shrine environment. Tujia Nuo opera in its performance mode had more primitive implications than performances of other theatrical genres. In the late Qing and early Republic, "Moving the Blacksmith" was a one-role play. During performance, it first sang of what was seen and heard in the Nuo hall, then sang mountain songs. Next came blacksmithing, and then the finished axe was handed to Kaishan before exiting. From the 1920s onward, this play developed into a chou-dan paired play. The blacksmith couple lit the forge and worked iron, performing comically and teasing each other. For example, the blacksmith called "Strike the head," and his wife struck her husband's head with a fan; the blacksmith called "Strike the tail," and his wife struck her husband's leg with a fan. In Nuo opera, such humorous and highly performative plays abound. Nuo opera is generally performed in the host's main hall, without a stage, with viewing on three sides, and time and space are virtual. In the center of the performance area, near the shrine wall, a square table is placed, with the band seated on both sides. The band generally consists of three or four people, and the gong player is equivalent to the program host. Nuo opera is relatively simple in performing arts. Female roles are played by male actors, with certain performance conventions. Characters generally first exit backward from the entrance door with their backs to the audience, and only turn around after the introductory singing section is finished. More importantly, the masks of Tujia Nuo opera have distinctive features. They preserve the prominent characteristics of ancient Nuo masks, with evil, fierce, upright, and ugly images turned into facial types, while also extensively absorbing nourishment from brother theatrical arts. Its relaxed atmosphere, moving song and dance, and optimistic sentiment express a harmonious beauty of life and also make Nuo opera performances more vibrant.
(IV) Mass Character — Participation in Daily Life
What is especially prominent about Tujia Nuo opera is its mass character, with a broad and deep mass foundation. Before the 1950s, almost every village and stockade had Nuo altar organizations. Nuo opera could be described as "Nuo altars forming a network, shamans spread everywhere." The development of Nuo opera troupe members proceeded according to the master-disciple relationship of shamanic organization. Once a master obtained "conferred authority," he could independently develop members and form his own hall. Joining was unrestricted, but in practice most were fathers, sons, and clan relatives. Therefore, Nuo opera troupes were often centered on one village and based mainly on one surname. Nuo opera troupes were called "altars," with as few as three to five people and as many as fifteen or sixteen. The troupe leader was called "altar master" or "palms-altar master." Performance time ranged from as little as one day to as much as half a month.
The content performed in Tujia Nuo opera mostly concerns sisters-in-law and mothers-in-law, scholars and page boys. These roles are almost all lower-class laboring people, and what the plays present are figures from their lives. For example, "An'an Delivers Rice," whether in characters, plot, script structure, or performance, appears relatively complete and mature. Through a typical lower-class woman, Pang Shi, and her story of joys and sorrows with her loving husband Jiang Shi under persecution by feudal forces represented by Aunt Qiugu, the drama reflects the reality of broad masses of women being cruelly persecuted by feudal ethics in feudal society. The audience not only does not find it unfamiliar; on the contrary, they feel it is intimate and suited to popular taste. In language, whether sung or spoken, Nuo opera's dramatic literary language is vivid and visual, distinct and typical, highly local, mass-oriented, and life-oriented. The audience does not find it unfamiliar at all; it is easy to understand and gladly accepted. Most Nuo opera repertoire is drawn from people's daily life, mostly trivial matters of lower-class commoners such as weddings and funerals, marriages, despising poverty and loving wealth, medical practice and diagnosis, wisdom and folly, right and wrong, and mother-in-law and daughter-in-law disputes. These people and events seem to be writing about themselves and expressing their own wishes, easily arousing resonance.
Value
Whether in form or content, Xiangxi Tujia Nuo opera has distinct ethnic characteristics and regionality, and possesses an extremely profound artistic character. As a primitive religious drama of the Tujia people, it embodies distinct humanistic individual characteristics in the course of inheritance and evolution through the ages, and has high research value, historical-cultural value, and artistic value.
(I) Research Value
Xiangxi Tujia Nuo opera is mainly circulated in the Xiangxi Tujia region. Judging from cultural site evidence, as early as the earliest stage of humanity, ancient humans were active here and long multiplied and lived in this area. Tujia Nuo opera is rich in primitive artistic color and provides living examples for us to study the evolutionary history of Chinese drama, the origin of religion, the formation of ethnic groups, and folklore, sociology, and other aspects. Through the primitive, crude, bizarre, ignorant, and even savage surface of Tujia Nuo opera, we discover that it itself contains a large amount of historical and cultural heritage. Over thousands of years, the cultural consciousness and psychological characteristics formed through long accumulation by the Tujia people have been organically merged into Nuo opera. It not only transmits ritual implements and props from generation to generation, but also uses vivid colored carved masks. To this day, it remains active with tenacious vitality in the Xiangxi Tujia region, and people today can still see certain primitive appearances of the early stage of Chinese drama development.
(II) Historical-Cultural Value
Although Tujia Nuo opera is an art form combining sacrificial ritual and drama, it is also ethnic culture and art accumulated by the Tujia people over the long historical process of understanding and transforming nature. Its content involves history, ethnicity, folklore, production, life, love and marriage, sacrifice, and other aspects. The inheritance and performance of excellent Nuo opera played an extremely important guiding role in cultivating good folk customs and practices and guiding Tujia production and life, and has a very important educational function. Because Nuo opera is an art form loved by the Tujia people, it has been passed down from generation to generation among them. The Tujia people's wish to pursue a better life is all condensed in Nuo opera. Nuo opera truly reflects the various feelings of the Tujia people amid changes in nature, society, and history, expresses the Tujia people's ideal of revering nature and pursuing harmony, and has extremely high historical-cultural reference value.
(III) Artistic Value
Tujia Nuo opera is a wonderful flower in the hundred-flower garden of folk opera art, with rich flavor of life. Although Nuo opera is a religious art, its "gods" have been humanized. With the artistic treatment of singing and dancing, the audience and performers have already produced artistic resonance, and their thoughts and feelings gradually merge into one. In the long river of history, people's aesthetic psychology and views are constantly changing, and the religious sacrificial parts of Nuo opera have naturally been eliminated, while excellent programs loved by the people have been retained and developed. The tunes of Tujia Nuo opera borrowed tunes from brother arts; they are integrated as one, rich in content, and have become an art form with extremely strong local and ethnic characteristics, long influencing the lives of the Tujia people. Tujia Nuo opera not only permeates rich connotations and profound consciousness, but also embodies the artistic form in which the Tujia ancestors integrated "shamanism," "sacrifice," and "dance" into one, possessing distinct artistic value. Tujia Nuo opera is mainly rooted in Tujia cultural tradition and history, and its content involves all aspects of life customs, religion, etc., possessing special value as research material for art studies, ethnology, folklore, religious studies, and history. In recent years, people have achieved considerable results in the study of Tujia Nuo opera, and it has attracted attention from academic circles at home and abroad.
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