When a zephyr past her has blown;
Red and naked she shows herself,
When she is sure of being alone.
This review of the two sides of the poetic technique, regarding its treatment of
scenery (ching] and emotion (ch' ing), enables us to understand the spirit of Chinese
poetry and its cultural value to the nation. This cultural value is twofold,
corresponding to the broad classification of Chinese poetry into the two types: (i)
haofang poetry, or poetry of romantic abandonment, carefree, given to a life of
emotion, and expressing a revolt against the restraints of society and teaching a
profound love of nature, and (2) wanyiieh poetry, or poetry of artistic restraint, tender,
resigned, sad and yet without anger, teaching a lesson of contentment and the love of
one's fellowmen, especially the poor and down-trodden, and inculcating a hatred of
war.
Among the first type may be classified Gh'u Yuan (343-290 B.C.), the pastoral poets
like T'ao Yuanming, Hsieh Lmgyiin, Wang Wei, Meng Haojan (689?40), the crazy
monk Hanshan (around the year 900), while nearer Tu Fu are Tu Mu (803?852), Po
Chuyi, Yuan Chen (779-831) and the greatest poetess of China, Li Ch' ingchao
(1081-1141?). No strict classification is, of course, possible, but there was a third group of sentimental poets, like Li Ho (Li Ch'angchi, 790-^816), LI Shangyin
(813-858) and his contemporary Wen T*iogyun, Ch'en Houchu (ruler of Ch'en,
553-604) and Nalan Hsingteh (a Manchu, 1655-1685), most distinguished for their
love lyrics.
The first type is best represented by Li Po, of whom Tu Fu says:
With ajar of wine, Li makes a hundred poems,
He sleeps in an inn of Ch'angan city.
The Emperor sent for him and he'd not move,
Saying, "I'm the God of Wine, Your Majesty!"
Li Po is China's prince of vagabond poets, with his drink, his dread of officialdom, his
companionship with the moon, his love of high mountain scenery, and his constant
aspiration:
Oh, could I but hold a celestial sword
And stab a whale across the seas!
Li Po's romanticism ended finally in his death from reaching for the shadow of the
moon in the water in a drunken fit and falling overboard. Good, infinitely good, that
the staid and apparently unfeeling Chinese could sometimes reach for the shadow of
the moon and die such a poetic death!
Well it is that the Chinese had this love of nature which constituted the poetry of their
existence, and which overflowed from the fullness of their hearts into literature. It
taught the Chinese a more widespread love of birds and flowers than is usual among
the common folk of other nations. I have seen a Chinese crowd get excited at the sight
of a bird in a cage, which made them childish and good-humoured again, made them
share a common feeling of gay irresponsibility and broke down the barriers of
hostility among strangers, as only an object of common delight could. The worship of
the pastoral life has coloured the whole Chinese culture, and to-day officials or
scholars speak of "going back to the farm" as the most elegant, the most refined and
most sophisticated ambition in life they can think of. The vogue is so great that even
the deepest-dyed scoundrel of a politician will pretend that he has something of Li
Po's romanticism in his nature. Actually I suspect even he is capable of such feelings,
because after all he is a Chinese. As a Chinese, he knows how much life is worth, and
at midnight, gazing through his window at the stars, the lines he learned at childhood
come back to him:
I was drunk, half asleep, through the whole livelong day.
Hearing spring'd soon be gone, I hurried on my way. In a bamboo courtyard I chatted with a monk,
And so leisurely passed one more half-day away.
To him, it is a prayer.
The second type is best represented by Tu Fu, with his quiet
humour, his restraint, his tenderness toward the poor and
oppressed, and his unconcealed hatred of war.
Well it is, too, that the Chinese have poets like Tu Fu and
Po Chiiyi, who portray our sorrows ' in beauty and beget in us
a sense of compassion for mankind. Tu Fu lived in times of
political chaos and banditry and soldiery and famine like our
own, and wrote:
Meats and wines are rotting in the mansions,
And human bones are rotting outside their doors,
A similar note was struck in the Song of the Mulberry Maiden by
Hsieh Fangteh:
When cuckoos cried fourth watch in the dead of the night,
Then I rose, lest the worms, short of leaves, hunger might.
Who'd think that those dames weren't yet through with
their dance?
The pale moon shone through willows o'er their windows bright.
Note the peculiarly Chinese ending, where instead of driving home a socialistic
thought, the poet contents himself with drawing a picture. Even then, this poem is a
little too rebellious for the average Chinese poetry. The usual note is one of sadness
and resignation, as in so many of Tu Fu's poems, describing the harassing effects of
war, of which the following, The Bailiff of Shihhao, is a good example:
I came to Shihhao village and stayed that eve.
A bailiff came for press-gang in the night.
The old man, hearing this, climbed o'er the wall,
And the old woman saw the bailiff at the door.
Oh, why was the bailiff's voice so terrible,
And why the woman's plaint so soft and low?
"I have three sons all at the Niehch'eng post.
And one just wrote a letter home to say
The other two had in the battle died.
Let those who live live on as best they can,
For those who've died are dead for evermore.
Now in the house there's only grandson left;
For him his mother still remains 梬 ithout
A decent patticoat to go about.
Although my strength is ebbing weak and low,
I' ll go with you, bailiff, in the front to serve.
For I can cook congee for the army, and
To-morrow I' ll march and hurry to the Hoyang front."
桽o spake the woman, and in the night, the voice
Became so low it broke into a whimper.
And in the morning with the army she went;
Alone she said good-bye to her old man.
That is characteristic of the art of restraint and the feeling of sadness in Chinese
poetry. It gives a picture, expresses a sentiment, and leaves the rest to the reader's
imagination.
IX. DRAMA
The Chinese drama occupies a mean position between classical literature and that
body of literature which is nearer what the Western people mean by the term, namely,
literature of the imagination. The latter, including the dramas and novels, was written
in the pehkua or vernacular language, and consequently was least ridden with
classical standards, and constantly grew and profited from that freedom. Because
Chinese dramatic composition happened to be largely poetry, it was accepted as
literature on a higher level than the novels, and almost on a par with the T'ang lyrics.
Scholars were less ashamed to be known as writing dramatic works than writing
novels. On the whole, the authorship of dramas was not anonymous or subject to
debate like the authorship of novels.
From now on we shall see how that body of imaginative literature constantly grew in
beauty and importance until it compelled recognition in modern times on its own
merits, and exerted an influence over the people as no classical literature ever
succeeded in doing.
This hybrid character of the Chinese drama accounts for its peculiar composition and
also for its great popular influence. The Chinese drama is a combination of dialogues
in the spoken language, which on the whole is readily intelligible to the populace, and
songs which are sung and often partake of a high poetic quality. Its nature is therefore
entirely different from that of the conventional English play. The songs come in at
short intervals and are more in prominence than the spoken parts. As is natural, the
comic plays are more in dialogue, while the tragedies or dramas of human loves and sorrows more often burst out into songs. Actually, the theatre is attended, from the
point of view of the Chinese theatre-goer, more for its singing than for its acting. One
speaks of going to "listen*' to a play, rather than to "see" it. It would seem, therefore,
that the translation of the Chinese word hsi as "drama" is misleading, and it would be
more proper to speak of it as Chinese "opera."
Only by understanding the Chinese hsi as a form of opera will its wide appeal to the
people, as well as the peculiarities of its composition, be truly understood. For the
appeal of the drama梕specially of the modern English drama梚 s largely an appeal to
the understanding, while the opera makes a combined appeal to the senses of colour,
voice, atmosphere and emotion. The medium of the drama is the spoken language, but
that of the opera is music and the song, A theatre-goer who attends a play expects to
follow a story which pleases him by its conflicts of character and its surprises and
novelty of action, and an opera-goer is prepared to spend an evening during which his
intellect is appropriately benumbed and his senses soothed by music and colour and
song.
This accounts for the fact that most dramatic performances are not worth attending a
second time, although people go to the same operas for the fiftieth time without losing
the edge of their keen enjoyment. Thus it is with the Chinese theatre. The so-called
chinghsi ("Peking plays") has a general repertoire of less than a hundred pieces which
are played over and over again without losing their popularity. And the people
applaud by shouting "Hao!" invariably at the arias which have the most intense or
intricate musical appeal. Music is therefore the soul of the Chinese drama, and acting
is merely an accessory to the technique of the opera-singer, and remains on essentially
the same level as that of Western prima donnas.
The Chinese opera-goer, therefore, appraises the Chinese actor under the two
categories of his "singing" (cKang} and his "acting" (chuo). But this so-called
"acting" is often purely technical and consists of certain conventional ways of
expressing emotions梚 n the West, what is to us the shockingly inartistic heaving and
swelling of the prima donna's chest, and in the East, what is to Occidentals the
ludicrous wiping of a tearless eye by a long sleeve. If the actor has personal charm
and beauty and a good voice, this modicum of acting is always enough to satisfy the
audience. But when well done, every gesture may be beautiful and every pose a
perfect tableau. In this sense, the popular appreciation of Mei Lanfang by
Americans is essentially correct, although how much of his singing is
appreciated as singing may be questioned. One marvels at his beautiful poses and
gestures, his graceful, white fingers, Ms long black eyebrows, his feminine gait, his
flirtatious side glances and the whole outfit of his fake sex-appeal梩 he same fake
sex-appeal which ingratiates him with the Chinese audience and is at the
back of his tremendous popularity in China. When done by so great an artist, this
appeal is universal, for it speaks the language of gestures, which is international as
music and dancing are international. So far as real acting in the modern sense of the word is concerned, Mei Lanfang may appropriately learn the ABCs from Norma
Shearer or Ruth Ghatterton. When he holds a whip and pretends to be riding on
horseback or when he plays at paddling a boat, his acting is neither better nor worse
than that of my five-year-old daughter who plays at horse-riding by trailing a bamboo
stick between her thighs.
If we study the construction of the Yiian and subsequent dramas, we shall find that the
plot, as with Western operas, is often of the flimsiest character, the dialogue
unimportant, while the songs occupy the centre of the play. In actual performances,
very often popular selections from the operas, rather than the entire plays, are given,
in the same manner that operatic selections are rendered in Western musical conceits.
The audience knows the stories by heart, and the characters are recognized by their
conventional masks and costumes rather than by the contents of the dialogue. The first
Yiian dramas, as we see them in extant works of the masters, consisted, with a few
exceptions, of four acts. The songs in each act were sung to a definite set of tunes in a
well -known musical suite. The dialogues were unimportant, and in many existing
copies they are left out, which is probably because the dialogue part was largely
spoken extempore.
In the so-called "northern dramas" the songs in each act were sung by the same person,
although many actors took part in the acting and the spoken dialogue (a limitatio n
probably due to the scarcity of singing talent). In the "southern dramas" the
limitations of dramatic technique were much less rigid; there was a great deal more
freedom, and from these dramas were evolved the longer plays which in the Ming
Dynasty were known as cKuanchi. The number of acts (corresponding in length to the
"scenes" in English plays) was no longer limited to four, different rhymes could be
