蒲剧 Puju

Last night when our cab pulled into 侯家庄村 we found the street that leads to the front of Guan Ai school blocked by a stage and an audience of dozens of villagers. An elderly member of a local family had passed away the night before, and to mark the occasion the family hired a troupe to perform 蒲剧 (pu2ju4), this region’s version of Chinese opera, outside of the house. It’s a part of this place’s culture, whose rhythms follow along with the natural syncopation of life and death. The show’s are free to the public, the performers are invited to the village on occasion of marriage and funeral. Sitting in the audience you can witness stories first written in ‘The War of Three Kingdoms’ over 500 years ago along with more modern comedies and dramas.

In the open air of the country street, the erhu, a two-stringed instrument played with a bow, takes on a lively air of the fiddle that one recognizes in blue-grass. This mixes with the click and rattle of drums and symbols, the raise and fall of the singers voice and a low tremor of an electric piano that has come to replace deeper toned string instruments to create something captivating to the eye, ear and heart.

I watched a scene in which the performer mourned for the recently departed family member. The heavy-set woman, standing elegantly dressed in traditional costume, white from head to toe, paid tribute to the deceased in song and gesture, constantly returning again and again to a table that displayed a solemn picture of the deceased in the center. Lighting incense. Throwing her long flowing sleeves out and then gathering them back with a quick flick of the wrists. Singing sometimes delicately in a mournful voice, sometimes in sonorous bursts of passion that definitely didn’t need the already loud sound system to carry them throughout the village.

Like several performances I’ve seen before, the audience was composed almost completely of elderly members of the village, some holding their grandchildren in their arms. Other children and young adults moved at the margins of the crowd. Like many traditional customs it seems that this is one kept alive by the oldest of the society. Several of them could be heard quietly singing along to the lyrics. At a recent 庙会 (miao4hui4), temple fair, I met an elderly man that had walked for hours up and down the hills that bordered the temple, just to catch that day’s performance.