The Mystery of Haiping Peking Opera

Author: Qian Jiuyuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: During its spread across China, Peking Opera did not form numerous regional styles with distinct artistic characteristics. Only the Shanghai-style Peking Opera, with its local features, possesses clear and stable artistic traits, truly deserving the title "school." The "Shanghai-style Peking Opera" referred to in this paper is the Peking Opera with Shanghai characteristics. The convergence of Chinese and Western cultures in modern Shanghai promoted the commercialization, marketization, and popularization of art, and the artistic features of Shanghai-style Peking Opera are the result of traditional Chinese opera being influenced, directly or indirectly, by Western culture. This paper also focuses on the nationalistic connotations of the mechanism sets in Shanghai-style Peking Opera and attempts to explore its position in the history of Chinese theater development from the perspective of cultural philosophy. Compared to traditional Chinese culture, which emphasizes the "spiritual" and focuses on spiritual expression with an aesthetic preference for elegance, Western culture is more "materialistic," inclined toward materialism, and favors popular aesthetics. Chinese and Western cultures exhibit strong complementarity, and their cultural exchange is of great significance. The emergence of the cultural phenomenon of "Shanghai-style Peking Opera" is a result of traditional Chinese theater moving closer to materialism under the backdrop of Sino-Western cultural exchange, shifting from a spirit-centricism to materialism. Shanghai-style Peking Opera is the product of the collision and integration of Eastern and Western civilizations. In today's era of further opening up, for Shanghai, which is committed to building an international metropolis, the study of Shanghai-style Peking Opera holds significant theoretical value.