Rain of Flowers Covers the Sky, Wonderful Dance and Music: Ancient Opera Stage of Huizhou

Author: Zhang Xiaoping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-09-01
Features: This is a magical land, the home of Confucian scholars and a land of etiquette. It has produced the illustrious Huizhou officials who held power for hundreds of years, nurtured the dazzling Huizhou opera troupes, and added brilliant splendor to Chinese culture. It has created magnificent and vibrant cultural heritage. It is precisely because of these past glories and brilliance that the unique and awe-inspiring Huizhou cultural history has been admired and praised by the world. Every time one enters Huizhou, a sense of reverence and wonder fills one’s heart. It is no wonder that the famous Ming Dynasty dramatist Tang Xianzu moved to compose emotionally: "In life, the most blissful place is where one never dreams of Huizhou." There are countless places in Huizhou that leave one lingering and yearning. Strolling under the ancient and mysterious cultural sky of Huizhou, one is sometimes stopped in thought, sometimes amazed, sometimes moved to expression, and sometimes filled with nostalgia for the past. Walking through Huizhou brings a wave of joy to one’s heart. As one walks and observes, a profound sense of reflection and admiration fills one’s soul. The rows of Ming and Qing Dynasty residential buildings with white walls and black tiles in the villages and hamlets allow one to clearly feel the atmosphere of Huizhou’s cultural heritage. The ancient bridges crisscrossing the Xin’an River system seem to show the path that countless Huizhou merchants walked, leading to the world. The imposing gate towers stand tall, telling the stories of historical changes, with both glory and traces of blood and tears. The solemn ancestral halls and branch halls preserve the authority of the noble families who moved from southern Jin. The schools and academies scattered on and around the mountains allow people to hear the sound of reading, as Huizhou was known as the "capital of culture," "the Shandong of the southeast," and "where in every village of ten households, reading was never abandoned." Entering Huizhou, stepping into the grand scroll of Huizhou’s cultural history, scenes and pictures flash vividly in people’s minds: ancient bridges, ancient roads, and in the autumn wind, the young red-capped merchant Hu Xuyuan, carrying a bundle and umbrella, walks out of the mountains with a determined stride, like a brave man on a journey, creating miracles; in the strict, isolated, and solemn Qingyi Hall, generation after generation of young and middle-aged women, with faces devoid of expression or full of hope or indifference, turn from black hair to white, from youth to old age; at the entrances, ancient roads, and streets of Tangyue, Xiongcun, Choushu, and Zhengcun, the magnificent, unique, blood-stained, or shocking gate towers from the Yuan to the Qing dynasties stand tall, telling their joys and sorrows to the world over the centuries, performing a series of tragic and joyful dramas; wandering in the academies of Ziyang, Zhushan, and Nanhu, the figure of Zhu Xi teaching Confucian classics and promoting his advocated philosophy comes to mind, revealing that it was during this prosperous era of literary culture that the Huizhou officials realized their dream of "father and son as ministers" and "brothers as academicians," protecting and safeguarding commerce; wandering through the villages of Xidi, Hongcun, and Tangmo, the Chengzhi Hall, Dafu Hall, and Lufu Hall’s small West Lake show the former glory, wealth, and splendor, while the architectural layouts and styles of Shuikou, Niuxing, and the "four waters returning to the hall" display the wisdom of the ancient Huizhou people; the carved beams, painted rafters, and the "three carvings" of wood, brick, and stone, like a folk symphony, resonate in the forests and lanes. This series of books will use the style of cultural essays to conduct a panoramic cultural scan of the ancient villages (including ancient residential buildings), ancient gate towers, ancient bridges, ancient academies, and ancient ancestral halls in Huizhou’s cultural history, accompanied by panoramic, individual, or partial landscape photographs, aiming to be intimate, elegant in writing, and accessible to both the refined and the popular.