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Abstract
Noise as an element evocative of teahouse atmosphere was part of the voice of opera in China at the turn of the twentieth century. As such, Chinese listeners embraced the talking machine wholeheartedly from the very beginning and reckoned with its musical force within the paradigm of high-class arts. We find an opposition in the early reception of the phonograph in the Western context in which concert-hall or opera-house performances encouraged the serious spirit of nineteenth-century musical romanticism.
In this essay I list specific examples of teahouse theaters with phonographic musical accompaniment to early film. Such examples gleaned from newspapers do not appear consistently after the year 1910, suggesting that year may reasonably be considered a watershed in terms of the tentative endings of the symbiotic existence of phonographic music and live operatic performance. This special Chinese mindset paved the way for the gramophone to enter urban households as an “operatic singing machine.” I contend that the Chinese listening habit cultivated in the boisterous acoustic environment of teahouse theaters had prepared the Chinese opera buff to focus on the meaningful operatic voice against the sonic backdrop of the “ambient” noise, an aesthetic experience similar to listening to early opera records.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were first prepared for the 2015 DuPont Summer Workshop on “sound studies” held at the National Humanities Center, and then presented on a panel I organized at the 2016 meeting of CHINOPERL, which inspired this special issue. I would like to thank my fellow panelists including David Rolston, Catherine Yeh, Emily Wilcox, Norikazu Hirabayashi, and Anne Rebull. Further revision work was done during my tenure as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. I am very grateful to Charles McGovern, Delin Lai, Andrew Jones, Wen-Hsin Yeh, and Margaret Wan for their insights during different phases of this paper.
Notes
1 Scholars have considered the Full Courtyard of Fragrance Teahouse (Mantingfang 滿庭芳) that was open to the public in Shanghai in 1866 to be the first such theater. See Huang Wei 黃偉 and Shen Youzhu 沈有珠, Shanghai Yueju yanchu shigao 上海粵劇演出史稿 (Cantonese opera performance in Shanghai: A draft history; Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2007), pp. 3, 6, 18, and 34. Tanaka Issei 田仲一成 has traced the beginning of commercial theater back to the eighteenth century. See Tanaka Issei, Zhongguo xijushi 中國戲劇史 (A history of Chinese theater), trans. Yun Guibin 雲貴彬 and Yu Yun 于允 (Beijing: Beijing guangbo xueyuan chubanshe, 2002), pp. 391–410.
2 Jingju is the standard modern term that denotes a living theatrical tradition commonly considered to be the “national theater” of China. It combines vocal performance, music, dance, acrobatics and mime, but it is the music that differentiates it from other traditional theatrical forms. Its origins were allegedly related to the Qing court's celebration of the emperor's birthday in the late eighteenth century. The nineteenth century witnessed its rise to nationwide popularity among many social groups including literati, Manchu bannermen, and the commoners. At the turn of the twentieth century, it had replaced Kunqu 崑曲 to be the elite's most favored music genre, a phenomenon described in standard historiography as the victory of “variety” (huabu 花部) against the “elegant” (yabu 雅部). In the first half of the twentieth century, it produced a constellation of opera stars and masters, most of whom had their voices documented in commercial gramophone records.
3 See http://oldrecords.xikao.com. As of December 21, 2016, the website had last been updated in March 2016, and it has incorporated old records of other musical genres including Kunqu opera and Peking drum songs (Jingyun dagu 京韻大鼓). One of the two volunteers is He Yi 何毅, who pursued a Master's degree from the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts (Zhongguo xiqu xueyuan 中國戲曲學院).
4 By “new generation” I have in mind Wu Xiaoru 吳小如 (1922–2014), one of the pioneers in the study of Jingju records. See Wu Xiaoru, “Luo Liangsheng xiansheng yizuo ‘xiqu changpian shihua’ dingbu” 羅亮生先生遺作⟪戲曲唱片史話⟫訂補 (A supplement to Mr Luo Liangsheng's work A history of xiqu records) in Beijing shi zhengxie wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui 北京市政協文史資料委員會, ed., Jingju tanwanglu sanbian 京劇談往錄三編 (Talks about Jingju’s past, third compilation; Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1990), pp. 361–97.
5 In 2005, the videos of this TV program were released to the public in sets of VCDs entitled “Jingju jueban shangxi” 京劇絕版賞析 (Old Jingju records in old connoisseurship). The program continues and can now be accessed online at http://weibo.com/pihuangke?from=feed&loc=at&nick=绝版赏析&is_all=1. I admire Mr Chai's experimenting with his productions as a new venue for his solid historical scholarship.
6 For the influence of this newspaper on the history of theater in Shanghai, see Yao Xiao'ou 姚小歐 and Chen Bo 陳波, “Shenbao yu jindai Shanghai juchang” 申報與近代上海劇場 (The Shanghai Daily and modern Shanghai theaters) in Zhengzhou Daxue xuebao 鄭州大學學報 (Journal of Zhengzhou University) 2004.37: 51–54.
7 Wilt L. Idema, “Guanyu Zhongguo wenxueshi zhong wuzhixing de sikao” 關於中國文學史中物質性的思考 (Material Technology and the Periodization of Chinese Literary History), trans. Ding Han 丁涵, in Zhongzheng Hanxue yanjiu 中正漢學研究 (Zhongzheng Sinology research) 2013.1: 8.
8 For a brief history of the term and its earlier variations, see Ge Tao 葛濤, Changpian yu jindai Shanghai shehui shenghuo 唱片與近代上海社會生活 (Records and modern social life in Shanghai; Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2009), pp. 14–39. For the best source for Jingju discography, see Chai Junwei, Jingju da xikao 京劇大戲考 (Comprehensive collection of Jingju lyrics; Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 2004).
9 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Wen-Hsin Yeh, ed., Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).
10 See, for example, Chapters 1–5 in Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008). I thank Andrew Jones for calling this book to my attention.
11 Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001); Andreas Steen, Zwischen Unterhaltung und Revolution: Grammophone, Schallplatten und die Anfänge der Musikindustrie in Shanghai, 1878–1937 (Between entertainment and revolution: The gramophone, phonograph records, and the beginnings of the music industry in Shanghai, 1878–1937; Wiesbaden: Harassowitz-Verlag, 2006). For a Chinese translation, see Wang Weijiang 王維江 and Lü Shu 呂澍, trans., Zai yule yu geming zhijian: Liushengji, changpian he Shanghai yinyue gongye de chuqi (1878–1937) 在娛樂與革命之間: 留聲機、唱片和上海的音樂工業的初期 (1878–1937) (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2015). Meanwhile, Sai Shing Yung 容世誠 is pioneering the study of Cantonese opera and its relation to the early gramophone industry. See Sai Shing Yung, Yueyun liusheng: Changpian gongye yu Guangdong quyi (1903–1953) 粵韻留聲：唱片工業與廣東曲藝 (Cantonese songs recorded: The record industry and Cantonese indigenous performance arts; Hong Kong: Institute for the Research of Humanities, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Cosmos Press, 2006); and also Sai Shing Yung, Xunmi Yueju shengying: Cong hongchuan dao shuiyindeng 尋覓粵劇聲影: 從紅船到水銀燈 (Searching for the sounds and shadows of Cantonese opera: From the red boat to the mercury lamp; Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2012).
12 See Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, 1877–1977, Second Revised Edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., and London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1977), pp. 114–29.
13 For an early example, see the description of phonograph showman Lyman H. Howe's opening night on March 10, 1890, in Pennsylvania in Charles Musser and Carol Nelson, High-Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880–1920 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 26–27.
14 “Mei xun” 梅訊 (42) (Mei Lanfang newsletter) in Shenbao 申報, May 26, 1920.
15 The painting, preserved in the Capital Library in Beijing, has been reprinted in English scholarship at least three times as evidence to support different arguments about China's social and cultural development toward modernity. See Joshua Goldstein, “From Teahouse to Playhouse: Theaters as Social Texts in Early-Twentieth-Century China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 62.3 (August 2003): 762; Laikwan Pang, Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005), p. 140; and Andrea Goldman, Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770–1900 (Stanford: Stanford University, 2013), p. 80.
16 Pang, Distorting Mirror, p. 140.
17 See Chapter 3, “Peking Opera, From Listening to Watching,” in Pang, Distorting Mirror, pp. 133–63. I disagree with the statement of this chapter that the visual aspect of teahouse theater staging was generally weak. Rather, one can argue that the painted stage, with its crowdedness and vibrant colors, projects outward to the extent that an illusion of a larger-than-life stage is achieved.
18 Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 3.
19 R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1992), p. 272.
20 Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theater: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 388–89.
21 Hairpins and skirts (zanju 簪裾) refer to fully-adorned women. Evidence gleaned from other newspaper essays of the same time agree with the one quoted here on the possibility that women's seating sections existed in urban teahouse theaters. Women may have gained entrance into public theaters in Shanghai earlier than in Beijing. According to Andrea Goldman, the new practice of sex-segregation in teahouse theaters was first established in Shanghai in the latter part of the nineteenth century and then was introduced into Beijing in 1907, when the Civilization Teahouse (Wenming chayuan 文明茶園) was open to both men and women. See Goldman, Opera and the City, p. 87 and note 94. For a controversy in Beijing after 1908 about women being seated in segregated areas, see Joshua Goldstein, Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Recreation of Peking Opera, 1870–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 83–85.
22 “Huisheng huiying” 繪聲繪影 (Depicting the sound, Depicting the shadow), Shenbao, February 18, 1898.
23 Rick Alman, “The Silence of the Silents,” The Musical Quarterly 80.4 (1996): 663.
24 Musser and Nelson, High-Class Moving Pictures, 4; Calvin Pryluck, “The Itinerant Movie Show and the Development of the Film Industry,” Journal of the University Film and Video Association 35.4 (Fall 1983): pp. 12–13.
25 “Huisheng huiying,” Shenbao, February 18, 1898.
26 “Yingxi qiguan” 影戲奇觀 (Spectacular Shadow Plays), Shenbao, June 17, 1898.
27 “Qunxian chayuan jianyan yingxi” 群仙茶園兼演影戲 (Various Immortals Teahouse Theater Combines [Live Performances with] Shadow Plays), Shenbao, December 3, 1901.
28 “Xin dao Meiguo yingxi” 新到美國影戲 (Newly Arrived American Shadow Plays), Shenbao, April 2, 1908. It may have been a special gramophone model with an extra-large horn for use in theaters.
29 Ibid.
30 Siyuan Liu, Performing Hybridity in Colonial Modern China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
31 Wang Weijiang and Lü Shuyi trans., Zai yule yu geming zhijian, p. 86.
32 This teahouse was very likely named after a Jingju play of the same title, which is notorious for its lascivious acting and lyrics. For the script of the play, see Xikao daquan 戲考大全 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1990), vol. 3, pp. 386–96.
33 See Xu Liren 許立仁, “Zhongguo dianying bainian lishi qidian Daguanlou” 中國電影百年歷史起點大觀樓 (The starting point of a century of film in China, Grandview Bower), in Zhang Wenhua 張文華, ed., Xuanwu wenshi 宣武文史 (A history of culture in the Xuanwu area [of Beijing]; Beijing: Zhengxie Beijingshi Xuanwuqu, 2005), p. 39. According to Xu, the first western movie shown in Beijing in 1896 was called “Black Guys Eating Watermelons” (Heiren chigua 黑人吃瓜); the venue was Civilization Teahouse (Wenming chayuan). This film is probably “Watermelon Eating Contest,” an Edison production made in 1896 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu2-4a_QXIE) and reprised in 1900 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRO2Dd55nCc). For Civilization Teahouse, see also notes 21 and 34.
34 Civilization Teahouse, said to be the venue for the first western movie in Beijing, also pioneered the showing of the first Chinese movies made by Ren Jingfeng by hanging a banner that read “Beijing Movie” (Beijing dianying 北京電影). See Wenhua shenghuo xiaobaike: yingshi 文化生活小百科·: 影視 (A concise encyclopedia of cultural life: film and television; Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 1992), p. 36.
35 Wang Yue 王越, “Zhongguo dianying de yaolan: Beijing Fengtai zhaoxiangguan paishe dianying fangwen zhuiji” 中國電影的搖籃：北京豐泰照相館拍攝電影訪問追記 (The cradle of Chinese film: Interviews regarding the films made at the Beijing Fengtai photography studio), in Yingshi wenhua 影視文化 (Film and television culture), No. 1 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1988), 298. Also see Gao Xiaojian 高小健, Zhongguo xiqu dianying shi 中國戲曲電影史 (A history of xiqu film; Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2005), pp. 42–47.
36 Ge Tao, Changpian yu jindai Shanghai shehui shenghuo, pp. 14–39.
37 For coin-operated cylinder phonographs being an attraction in marketplaces or streets, see Chapter 2 “The Gramophone in China,” in Andrew Jones, Yellow Music, pp. 53–72.
38 Christine Ehardt, “Phones, Horns, and ‘Audio Hoods’ as Media of Attraction: Early Sound Histories in Vienna between 1883 and 1933,” in Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe, ed. Daniel Morat (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), pp. 101–28.
39 Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, p. 110.
40 Ibid, 113. The late 1890s witnessed Bettini's small-scale specialty business of duplicating wax cylinders of “High-Grade Records, High-Class Music, and only by Leading Performers and World-Famed Artists.” Ibid, pp. 78–79. Whereas the Russian gramophone discs were sold for the equivalent of $5 each, prices of Bettini's cylinders ranged from $2 to $6 each.
41 Including Pathé, Odeon, Victor, Beka, and Gramophone.
42 Luo Liangsheng, “Xiqu changpian shihua” 戲曲唱片史話 (A history of xiqu records), in Jingju tanwanglu sanbian, pp. 397–416; Wang Weijiang and Lü Shuyi, trans., Zai yule yu geming zhijian, p. 141.
43 Wang Weijiang and Lü Shuyi, trans., Zai yule yu geming zhijian, pp. 144–61. The three catalogues on which Steen bases his research are: Gramophone & Typewriter: Catalogue of Chinese Gramophone Records, 1904; Victor/Moutrie & Co.: Yicuo gongsi Zhongguo qudiao gongsi: Beijing yin, Guangdong shengcheng yin, Xiamen yin, Fuzhou yin, Shantou yin 役挫公司中國曲調公司: 北京音，廣東省城音，廈門音，福州音，汕頭音 (Victor Records China Song Company: Mandarin, Cantonese, Amoy, Foochow and Swatow Dialects), ca. 1913; and Pathé-Orient: Fashang xi mulu: Baidai jiqi zhuanpan, Beijing, Guangdong 法商戲目錄：百代機器轉盤，北京，廣東 (The French Company's Catalogue of Recorded Plays, for Pathé Gramophone machines, Beijing, Canton), 1908–1910.
44 Timothy Day, A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 34–35 and 38–40. According to Day, the next generation of producers changed their aesthetic standard and aimed to hear “in the best seat in an acoustically perfect hall.”
45 I thank the Chinese expert Chai Junwei for inspiring conversations on this topic.
46 “Sun Juxian,” in Xu Muyun 徐慕雲, ed., Liyuan yingshi (Photographs and matters of the pear garden; Shanghai: Dadong shuju?, 1933).
47 See Rick Altman, “Sound Space,” in Sound Theory, Sound Practice, ed. Rick Altman (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 46–64; James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 132–42, 195–98; Neil Verma, Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 35–40.
48 Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 1.
49 This is corroborated by not only a great amount of anecdotal evidence but also by early recordings.
50 Luo Deyin 羅德胤 and Qin Youguo 秦佑國, “Yiheyuan Deheyuan da xilou yinzhi ceding ji chubu fenxi” 頤和園德和園大戲樓音質測定及初步分析 (A preliminary analysis of the results of acoustic analysis of the Deheyuan Grand Theater in the Summer Palace), in Zhang Fuhe 張復和, ed., Jianzhushi lunwenji 建築史論文集 (Collected essays on the history of architecture), No. 13, (Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe, 2000), pp. 133–38. I thank Delin Lai for calling this article to my attention.
51 May-bo Ching, “A Preliminary Study of the Theatres Built by Cantonese Merchants in the Late Qing,” Frontiers of History in China 5.2 (2010): 275.
52 Liao Ben 廖奔, Zhongguo gudai juchangshi 中國古代劇場史 (A history of traditional Chinese theaters; Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1997), pp. 92–97; also see Goldman, Opera and the City, p. 81. I would add that it makes perfect acoustic sense to identify such seats as the best.
53 Schafer, The Soundscape, p. 272.
54 Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity, p. 1.
55 Goldman, Opera and the City, pp. 81–82.
56 E. C. D., “In a Chinese Theatre,” The Stage, July 21, 1910.
57 Ibid.
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Peng Xu
Peng Xu is an assistant professor of premodern Chinese literature at Swarthmore College. Her articles on late Ming music and voice have appeared in T'oung Pao and Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. She is completing her book manuscript on late sixteenth-century Chinese elite theater from the perspectives of gender studies and performance studies. More recent projects include studies on late Ming drama publishing and on Chinese scroll painting as a prop in theater. She is planning a book on the new spatialities and acoustic experiences associated with modern media, of which the current paper is an initial piece. In addition to her scholarly focus on theater and performance, as an award-winning singer, she has delivered many lecture-demonstrations of Jingju and Kunqu at American colleges and universities.