Cheng Zhaocai's Life Experience

In 1891 (the 21st year of Guangxu reign), Cheng Zhaocai joined Zhao Xiaozhai's class in Weizhuang, Fengrun County, and performed in Tianjin for the first time with Erhe, Qingshun, Yishun and Yihe classes. That year, there was a famine in Luanzhou, followed by a plague. Cheng Zhaocai's father and mother died one after another, so he had to abandon his art and return home. However, because he couldn't make a living, his brother Cheng Zhaowen went to xifengkou to sing lotus flowers and beg. A few days later, his wife and two children died of illness, and Cheng Zhaocai was very sad and lonely. In order to make a living, he and his uncle Cheng Yongyu joined Zhao Xiaozhai and Cui Jiaban in Laoting County Temple to sing Lotus Falls. In addition to being actors, he sometimes served as a foreman and a box waiter. Since then, he has become a professional Lotus Falls artist. Because Cheng Zhaocai was diligent and eager to learn, he soon became a male Dan who was comparable to the famous artist "Xilaishun" on the West Road Lotus Fall, and was deeply loved by the people in Luanzhou rural market town, and won the stage name "Donglaishun".

In artistic practice, Cheng Zhaocai deeply felt that the program of Lotus Fall was monotonous, which could not meet the audience's appreciation requirements and the actors' artistic level. In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (19), he began to write scripts such as Wulongyuan, most of which were transplanted and adapted from other dramas, and his creative career began. His plays show some aspects of rural life in the late Qing Dynasty, and reflect the simple moral concept among farmers and their yearning for a beautiful, friendly and harmonious family, so they are welcomed by rural audiences. In the second year, Cheng Zhaocai and nine class clubs, such as Erhe, Qingshun and Yishun, re-entered Tianjin from Tangshan, and performed lotus drops in Tianfulou, Xiatianxian and Hujiafen in the French Concession, and were expelled from Tianjin by the governor of Zhili, Yang Zixiang, under the ban of "immorality, never doing anything". In the same year, Zhang, the stepfather, and his youngest son died, and Cheng Zhaocai's family was unfortunate, trapped in internal and external affairs, and plunged into misery. For several years, he did not perform in the city, but only intermittently performed in the countryside. During the closing period, he worked as a brewer, a porter, a day laborer, and also sold spices such as "purse" and gailian (pot cover). He experienced hardships, but he also accumulated rich life materials for his stage career and script creation.

In p>198 (the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu), Emperor Guangxu and Empress Dowager Cixi died one after another, and the people wore "dual-country filial piety". During this period, traditional Chinese opera activities were banned throughout the country, and the lotus drop classes disintegrated one after another, leaving the lotus drop artists in a desperate situation. In autumn, when it is a little loose, in order to strive for the survival and development of folk art, Cheng Zhaocai, Ren Lianhui, Du Zhiyi (Jin Juhua), Zhang Huawen, Zhang Deli, Hou Tiantai, Hualong Zhang, Liu Chunsheng and others gathered in Zhang Deli's home in Wujiatuo, Luanxian County, and made bold reforms on the removal of lotus flowers. Starting with the scripts, Cheng Zhaocai created large-scale scripts with the characteristics of this drama, such as Gao Jin Fan, Six In the snow, Ma Widow's Shop Opening, Qin Xuemei's Mourning, Liu Ling's Drunk Wine, etc. The emergence of big scripts has promoted the emergence of various professions (xiaosheng, xiaodan, laosheng, laodan, ugly, wusheng) and the reform of vocal music. He will also innovate the vocals of the same name actor Jin Juhua, and on the basis of maintaining the traditional style of Lotus Falls, he will absorb the traditional tunes of Shaanxi Opera, Laoting Drum and Luanzhou Shadow Play, so that different professions have their own vocal characteristics.

In the first month of p>199 (the first year of Xuantong in Qing Dynasty), Lotus Falls appeared in the countryside of eastern Hebei with a new attitude. Cheng Zhaocai and others made their debut in Wujiatuo, Luanxian County, and performed such repertoires as "Gao Jin Fan" and "Liu Ling Drunk", which achieved great success. After five days and five nights of performance, there was a sea of people in front of the stage, and many people were moving, pressing their shoulders and overlapping their backs. Immediately, JD.COM Qingchun Class was established, with Cheng Zhaocai as the screenwriter and actor. This class entered Yongping House (now lulong county) from Luanxian County. Because the local government has repeatedly ordered the performance of Lotus Falls to be banned, in order to confuse the eyes and ears of the government, Qingchun Class performed three well-known repertoires, namely "Horse Widow Opens a Shop", "Wulongyuan" and "Ghost Legging" in Yongping House in the name of "Pingqiang Bangzi Opera", which won praise from the government and the people and opened the forbidden area of Yongping House. Under the influence of JD.COM Qingchun Class, Lotus Falling Class Societies dissolved during the period of "Double National Filial Piety" have been established one after another and become active again.

In April of the same year, Wang Yongfu, an enlightened gentleman, built Yongsheng Tea Garden in Tangshan Hill with the help of workers from Tangshan Railway Factory in order to meet the needs of the growing number of industrial workers and the cultural life of the bottom citizens. Cheng Zhaocai entered Tangshan from Yongping House with his class, and occupied Yongsheng Tea Garden to perform Lotus Falls. On the first day, the performance was stopped by the authorities. On the one hand, Cheng Zhaocai and others argued with the authorities, on the other hand, they paid off the police station, which was approved for the performance. There are new plays created by Cheng Zhaocai and outstanding actors such as Jin Juhua. The "Qingchun Class" played a red role in Tangshan, and its influence was expanding day by day. At this time, Lotus Falls were called Tangshan Luozi.

After Qingchun class gained a firm foothold in Tangshan, Cheng Zhaocai concentrated on writing the script. Cheng Zhaocai's early plays, limited by his self-cultivation and the times, are mostly about family trivia, joys and sorrows, with narrow themes and coarse performance styles, and some of them are even dross, such as Killing the Son and Huang's Woman Wandering in the Yin. However, after he entered the city, his later works had obvious changes, getting closer to life and the times. When the Revolution of 1911 broke out, Cheng Zhaocai was influenced by the democratic trend of thought, and constantly produced excellent works. He wrote a series of love plays that satirized the present with the help of ancient times, such as Flowers as Media, Du Shiniang, Wang Shaoan's Catch a Boat, and Zhan Huakui, which were well received by the audience. Among them, Flowers as Media is his early masterpiece, which is based on Parasitism in Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. It describes the love story between Wang Junqing, the son of Wang Shaoan, and Li Yuee, showing their pursuit of freedom of marriage, and endowing them with the characteristics of the times and the color of folk life. In the middle, when the author borrowed Zhang Wuke to go to the garden to look at Jia Junying, he wrote: "Look at my head, look at my feet, and say that I am stupid and ugly! I'm not ashamed of you saying that my feet are big. Nowadays, it's high to say that civilization is big. " Although this kind of writing is not good in art, it is a performance of pursuing progress in thought. The play has been playing for a long time and has become one of the traditional plays of Pingju, and it has been put on the screen after liberation.

From p>199 to 1912, Jin Juhua, Xiaojinlong and other famous actors left Qingchun class successively, and Cheng Zhaocai trained and boldly used young actors such as Ren Shanfeng, Cheng Guozhen and Jin Kaifang. Ren Shanfeng stirred up the beam with the stage name of "Moon Pearl" and became the first Danxing actor in the history of Pingju, who could perfectly express the typical image in Cheng Zhaocai's plays. With the Qingchun class singing red in Tangshan, the economic income increased, and a few actors appeared gambling, prostitution and complacency. Cheng Zhaocai insight into the unhealthy trend, set the ten clauses of class rules prejudice, stopped bad style, cast and crew. Other classes and clubs are also competing to follow suit, thus the unbiased method of drama evaluation is naturally formed. He also determined the * * * and class system, paying the garden rent and box rent from the performance income, leaving the provident fund, and distributing the rest to everyone according to the size of the head. The size of each part is evaluated by all the actors according to their artistic level, and adjusted at any time according to the development of the actors' art, so as to encourage the actors to strive for progress. These are important measures for the survival and development of Qingchun class.

In p>1913, JD.COM Qingchun Class was renamed JD.COM Yongsheng Heban. In the same year, I recruited a female artist Xiao Yufeng. The appearance of actresses has injected new blood into the development of Pingju. Xiao Yufeng is handsome in appearance, natural and unrestrained in action, serious in acting, and has great development prospects. However, due to many inconveniences in life, half a year later, she left the class, and since then, the class has rejected the actress.

In p>1915, Cheng Zhaocai performed in Tianjin for the third time. "Pingqiang Bangzi Opera" won the praise of people from all walks of life in Tianjin with its artistic characteristics of rich life flavor and fluent voice, punishing evil, promoting good and alerting the world. The audience starred in Cheng Zhaocai's plays "Kaiti", "Ma Widow Opens a Shop", "Flowers as a Medium" and "Zhanhuakui". Tickets rose from 3 coppers to 1 coppers. At this time, Cheng Zhaocai's plays and the singing of the Moon Pearl are a perfect match, enjoying a great reputation.

Cheng Zhaocai is a screenwriter, director and actor. In performance, he tried to overcome the shortcomings of being tall and having a bad voice, practiced his acting skills hard and had solid basic skills. His "runner" is as fast as running water, and his "five-share heart-turning" is like Youlong. His acting career is becoming wider and wider, and he has acted as Pu Xian (Little Face) in The Whirlwind Case, Li Jinshi (Caidan) in Li Guixiang Firewood, Zhang Yi (Old Student) in Dog Repaying Man, and Cai Mu (Laodan) in Six In the snow. He is also good at experiencing life. In order to play the blind well, he invited the fortune-teller to his home, and paid close attention to how the blind man walked through the threshold, how to treat people and how to judge things. He learned the characteristics of the blind man's actions and successfully created some images of blind people with different personalities, such as Zhang Tiezui in Peach Blossom Election, Hu Banxian in Ten Golden Pills, Kylie Wong He in Double Marriage, and some of them were loyal. These characters are still talked about by the predecessors of Pingju until today.

In p>1917, Cheng Zhaocai had reached middle age, and his career was in full swing. This year, he went to Tianjin to perform again. At that time, Nansun Class, Beisun Class and Mahu Pavilion Class performed in Jinmen. These lotus classes are still in the stage of "matching" or "dismantling". Yongsheng's large-scale stage drama opened their eyes and followed suit. Nan Sunban asked Cheng Zhaocai to tell them a story, and Cheng Zhaocai always gave them a generous answer. Finally, the scripts of four plays, Du Shiniang, Beating a Dog to Persuade a Husband, Causal Beauty, and Return of the Defeated Son, were given to Nan Sunban. In the second year, Yongsheng joined the class to perform in Shanhaiguan, and was suggested by a local celebrity, Kui Xudong, to change the class name to "Tangshan's First Warning Society". In 1919, Tangshan initiated the Jingshi Drama Club to perform in Yingkou, and then toured Fengtian (now Shenyang), Changchun, Harbin and other places, and became famous in the vast areas of Northeast China. Cheng Zhaocai's masterpieces, such as "Bao Longshan", "Yang Sanjie's Complaining" and "Stealing the Golden Brick", are all masterpieces.

After the May 4th Movement, influenced by the democratic trend of thought, Cheng Zhaocai completed the masterpiece "Yang Sanjie complained" according to the true story that Gao Zhanying, a landlord and capitalist's son of Gaojia Gouzhuang in Luanxian County, Zhili Province (now Luannan County, Hebei Province), murdered his wife in 1918, and Yang Guohua (Yang Sanjie), a peasant woman, was not afraid of power and complained for her second sister, exposing the greed, fornication, decay and cruelty of the landlord class. The whole drama has created 52 characters with different status and personalities, and each character, regardless of primary or secondary, has its own obvious characteristics of the times, class and personality. For example, Yang Er, who is considerate, honest and kind; Gao Zhanying, who said, "Don't talk about human relations and do what you want in order to steal an affair"; Niu Cheng, who is "no matter how wronged or wronged, as long as there is foreign money"; The noble chapter of "prospering the family business by craftiness, and not getting rich without conscience"; Pei, who was born with a love affair since childhood and was unrestrained and free, and so on. In particular, Yang Sanjie, the main character, is more successful. She has a distinctive personality and a full image, which is a typical peasant image in the early years of the country under feudal thought. Her wisdom, courage and indomitable will run through her every appearance, which aroused a strong buzz from the audience. The play is rough, bold, provocative and lively in art, with strong local flavor and national characteristics. It has been performed on the stage for more than 6 years and has been put on the screen.

In p>1922, Yue Mingzhu, who was only 24 years old, died from overwork in Shenyang. Cheng Zhaocai's single-handedly cultivated pearl fell to another country, and he and all the actors returned home with uncontrollable sadness. Then, Cheng Zhaocai took Jin Kaifang, who he had trained for many years, as the leading role, so that the first class of the once-disbanded Jingshi Drama Club rallied, returned to Tangshan in 1923, and performed in Tianjin. In Tianjin, on the suggestion of Lv Haihuan, Pingqiang Bangzi was changed to Pingju, which means "commenting on the past and discussing the present", hence the name Pingju. Soon, Cheng Zhaocai's "Shoot the Camel Dragon" came out. Because of the role assignment, the contradictions in the class intensified, and Cheng Zhaocai and Cheng Guozhen left the first class to join the third class of Jingshi Drama Club. Based on the news that Korean national hero An Tonggen assassinated Japanese Prime Minister Ito Bowen, he created a large-scale modern pingju "An Tonggen assassinated Ito Bowen", which was not released due to the interference of local reactionary authorities.

in p>1927, at the invitation of his old friend Sun Hongkui, Cheng Zhaocai joined Beisun Class-Zhenxing Drama Club as a teacher and screenwriter of literary drama. At that time, Beisunban was playing against Li Jinshun, who was known as the "Queen of Pingju" in Harbin, and business was short. After Cheng Zhaocai arrived, he tried his best to write a play "Stealing the Golden Brick" within a few days. The whole class rushed to the row overnight and immediately staged it. The audience was so full that the theater where Li Jinshun performed was deserted and forced to return to play for half a month.

Sun Hongkui admires Cheng Zhaocai's talent, while Cheng Zhaocai appreciates Sun Hongkui's organizational skills. They are like-minded, and they discuss how to develop the art of pingju all day long. Cheng Zhaocai's three years in Beisun Class is the golden age of the class, with a huge performance lineup and endless new plays. The front of the theater is full of traffic, and the sign of full house is often hung. It is considered a great honor to buy a theater ticket. Cheng Zhaocai, who is over 5 years old, insisted on performing on stage and played Duan Qishan in "Black Cat Complaining"; Ma Hongyuan in Gao Cheng's Borrowing Sister-in-law; Gao Guaizi in Yang Sanjie's Complaining; Easy-going people in Baolong Mountain. In 1928, she received Yunzhu, a female apprentice. Sun Yunzhu, who is only 5 years old, is Sun Hongkui's adopted granddaughter. She is naive, lively, smart and lovely. She learned four plays, such as "Sending Rice in Peace", in one year, and became famous at the age of 6, so she took the stage name "Six-year-old Red".

Just when Beisunban had greater hopes for Cheng Zhaocai, Cheng Zhaocai unfortunately fell ill in Jilin Dangui Theater. During my illness, I wrote two plays, Father in the Bridal Room and Return of a Martyr to the Sun. After returning home, he died in his hometown on February 8, 1929 at the age of 55.

Cheng Zhaocai struggled for folk art all his life, leaving at least 12 plays. In the summer of his death, Anton (now Dandong) Chengxin Bookstore published one to six episodes of Grand View of Pingju, which included some of Cheng Zhaocai's plays. After liberation, China Drama Publishing House published Selected Plays of Cheng Zhaocai Pingju.

Cheng Zhaocai's plays are bold, unrestrained, complex and changeable in conception, and the content is timely and harmful, which can arouse the audience's * * *. His masterpieces have been performed on the stage, and after liberation, some plays have been put on the screen and are well received by the audience. As Mei Lanfang said: "We can see that the flower of Pingju is so flourishing today, which is inseparable from Mr. Cheng's hard work. A predecessor who is loyal to art and has creative achievements like Mr. Cheng is worthy of respect and commemoration."

To commemorate Cheng Zhaocai, the Tangshan Municipal Government and Luannan County People's Government built the "Cheng Zhaocai Memorial Hall" in Shucheng, and Vice Minister of Culture Gao Zhanxiang personally wrote a plaque for the memorial hall. The Epitaph in front of Cheng Zhaocai's tomb describes his life achievements.