Peking Opera Cats: “Changbanpo” and Peking Opera Script Appreciation

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Cov­er of Peking Opera Cats’ “Chang­ban­po”
Peking Opera Cats: Sto­ry of Chang­ban­po
   
On the night of the full moon, after three o’clock in the morn­ing, all the idle peo­ple dis­persed.
   
A group of wild cats qui­et­ly arrived at the the­ater. It turned out they were all “Peking Opera fans”! Those born with facial pat­terns became actors with­out the need for make­up; those born with­out facial pat­terns were free to play sup­port­ing roles or just sit in the audi­ence and watch the show.
   
“Clang! clang! clang!” With the blast of a gong, the extra cat som­er­sault­ed around. The announc­er cat came on stage and announced that today’s play was “Chang­ban­po.”
 
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It seems that cats are the most suit­able for play­ing sup­port­ing roles, they are very pro­fes­sion­al!
 
   
The Peking Opera “Chang­ban­po” depicts the Three King­doms peri­od, dur­ing which Cao Cao led thou­sands of gen­er­als and a mil­lion-strong army to destroy Liu Bei. With his out­num­bered troops and gen­er­als, Liu Bei fled Xinye and fled to Fancheng, tak­ing tens of thou­sands of civil­ians with him. Despite the fierce attack of Cao’s cav­al­ry, Liu Bei bare­ly escaped, but his wife and chil­dren were nowhere to be found. Des­per­ate to find Liu Bei’s wife and chil­dren, Zhao Yun fought his way into Cao’s army, in and out of it sev­en times, res­cu­ing Lady Gan, Jian Yong, and Mi Zhu. He then killed Xia­hou En, Cao Cao’s sword-bear­ing offi­cer, and seized the Qing­guang sword. Final­ly, he found Lady Mi, wound­ed by an arrow, hold­ing the young lord, Adou. After entrust­ing Adou to Zhao Yun, Lady Mi jumped into a well and died. Over­whelmed with grief and indig­na­tion, Zhao Yun, car­ry­ing Adou in his arms, remount­ed his horse, and charged for­ward with both spear and sword. Cao’s sol­diers and gen­er­als sur­round­ed Zhao Yun, but with the secret help of Xu Shu, whose heart remained with the Han, Zhao Yun final­ly broke through the encir­clement and reached the Chang­ban Bridge.
   
On the Chang­ban Bridge, Liu Bei’s third broth­er, Zhang Fei, let Zhao Yun pass and remained behind. Zhang Yide imme­di­ate­ly rode his horse, spear drawn, and stood alone at the bridge­head. A crude yet metic­u­lous man, Zhang Fei had already arranged for twen­ty mil­i­tary offi­cers to drag branch­es back and forth in the woods behind the bridge, rais­ing dust and cre­at­ing a false alarm. As expect­ed, the Cao army and gen­er­als who had pur­sued them were hes­i­tant and dared not advance. Cao Cao per­son­al­ly approached to see what was hap­pen­ing and was also intim­i­dat­ed by Zhang Fei’s pres­ence. Fear­ing anoth­er ambush by Kong Ming, he hes­i­tat­ed to advance. Zhang Fei shout­ed three times, fright­en­ing Xia­hou Jie, who was beside Cao Cao, so much so that he fell off his horse and died, send­ing Cao’s army into a pan­icked retreat. Zhang Fei laughed hearti­ly, ordered the mil­i­tary offi­cers to cut down the Chang­ban Bridge, and then fol­lowed Liu Bei.
 
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Zhang Yide’s first shout
 

   
Tonight, the Peking Opera cats are per­form­ing the final scene, “Zhang Fei Drinks Through the Chang­ban Bridge.” These cats are nat­ur­al actors, their lines, singing, expres­sions, and body move­ments all excel. Zhang Fei is as fierce as the God of Thun­der, Cao Cao reveals his treach­er­ous nature, and the most hilar­i­ous per­for­mance is Xia­hou Jie, who is incred­i­bly fun­ny and enter­tain­ing. The audi­ence can’t help but cheer, and even the mice emerge from their holes to watch the fun. But just then, a sleepy old woman mis­tak­en­ly enters the the­ater, and the cats scram­ble for cov­er. After the false alarm, the troupe resumes. While Cao Cao’s ner­vous deliv­ery is not a prob­lem, Zhang Fei’s trem­bling voice is unbe­liev­able, and the unim­pressed audi­ence mem­bers leave in droves. The announc­er quick­ly announces: The show con­tin­ues tomor­row at mid­night at the Cat The­ater!
 
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Zhang Yide’s sec­ond roar is the cli­max of the whole play.
 
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How could the audi­ence not applaud! Pay atten­tion to the upper right cor­ner, what is that?
 
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It’s a pity that such a good show was ruined by this lady :)
 
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See­ing these audi­ences leav­ing the the­ater remind­ed me of a film review I read a long time ago.
There’s a line in it that goes like this: “The blue sky and white clouds, cou­pled with the rag­ing waves, only made the audi­ence so angry that they left the the­ater in droves…”
 
【Sto­ry­teller Aji­ayun】
   
Just a few words: I par­tic­u­lar­ly like Peking Opera Cats’ “Chang­ban­po” because it’s the first orig­i­nal pic­ture book I’ve used to tell a sto­ry that actu­al­ly man­aged to keep the audi­ence amused, which is no small feat. How­ev­er, I felt the end­ing was­n’t quite sat­is­fy­ing enough; it seemed to end abrupt­ly. The sto­ry begins with a wild cat on a moon­lit night. Can it ever return to that mys­te­ri­ous moon­lit night? Of course, this is just my own spec­u­la­tion.

   
Last year, when Mr. Nao Mat­sui vis­it­ed Bei­jing, we asked him to review the book “Jingju Cats.” Despite his age, he was sur­pris­ing­ly humor­ous. He perked up when he saw Jingju Cats, say­ing he could­n’t under­stand the Chi­nese, but speak­ing of the illus­tra­tions, if there were an illus­tra­tion award, he’d def­i­nite­ly vote for it. After learn­ing about the book’s sto­ry, Mat­sui explained his long-held ambi­tion to illus­trate Japan­ese Noh the­ater through pic­ture books, as he him­self loved the the­ater. How­ev­er, he’d nev­er had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ize his idea. He believed that when illus­trat­ing a play through a pic­ture book, the key was to ensure the sto­ry’s rhythm matched that of the play. As he flipped through the book, the old man nod­ded in approval, feel­ing he’d found the rhyth­mic qual­i­ty of the play.

   
Putting aside Mat­sui Nao’s eval­u­a­tion, I think he pro­vides a good per­spec­tive: when we want to eval­u­ate pic­ture books depict­ing Peking Opera, it is best to find the orig­i­nal Peking Opera for com­par­i­son. Isn’t it?

   
So I found a clas­sic ver­sion of “Chang­ban­po,” per­formed by Li Shaochun (as Zhao Yun) and Yuan Shi­hai (as Cao Cao). The sound was record­ed from a 1962 per­for­mance, and the stage char­ac­ters’ per­for­mances were metic­u­lous­ly coor­di­nat­ed by lat­er gen­er­a­tions under the artis­tic guid­ance of the vet­er­an per­form­ers. I select­ed a sec­tion that cor­re­sponds to the pic­ture book “Chang­ban­po,” in which the main char­ac­ters are Zhang Fei, Cao Cao, and Xia­hou Jie.
 

 
Play Appre­ci­a­tion (Excerpt from “Li Shaochun and Yuan Shi­hai’s Per­for­mance”)
 
open 
Fei: [He arranged his troops in the woods, and stood alone at the bridge­head, let­ting Zhao Yun, who was car­ry­ing Adou, pass.]
        
[Cao Cao’s troops catch up.]
Xia­hou Jie: Your Excel­len­cy, there’s a gen­er­al stand­ing at the bridge­head. He’s tall and strong, and he’s a big guy too. The oth­er gen­er­als are a lit­tle scared, and I’m a lit­tle scared too.
Cao Cao: Yes, I have.
Zhang Fei: Hey! Lis­ten up, fel­low Cao sol­diers! Who among you is not afraid of death? Fight with me to the death!
Cao Cao: Remove the umbrel­la. Come on—
Xia­hou Jie: Yes.
Cao Cao: The gen­er­al on the bridge, come over and ask your name.
Xia­hou Jie: Yep. [Steps for­ward] Hey! You deserve to die.
Zhang Fei: The Yan peo­ple, Yide Zhang——
Xia­hou Jie: [Falls to the ground and dies from fright]
Cao Cao: Hehe, put it down, put it down.
       
 [The offi­cers come for­ward and car­ry Xia Hou­jie away.]
Cao Cao: Oh, wait a minute. The offi­cer on the bridge yelled so loud­ly that I, a gen­er­al, was fright­ened to death.
        
In the past, Guan Gong said to me at Baima Slope: His third broth­er Zhang Yide took the head of a gen­er­al in the army of ten thou­sand hors­es.

         It was like tak­ing some­thing out of a bag. But I was afraid of for­get­ting it, so I wrote it down under the lapel of my robe.

       
[Look­ing up] 
Cao Cao: Alas! Look at the smoke and dust ris­ing behind the bridge. There must be an ambush. You must be care­ful. You must be cau­tious.
Zhang Fei: Hey! You want to fight but you don’t fight, and you want to retreat but you don’t retreat. What’s the log­ic behind this?
Cao Cao: Oh! Retreat, retreat, retreat…
       
Oops! [Cao Cao’s troops retreat in pan­ic]
Zhang Fei: Hey! Those Cao sol­diers are ridicu­lous. They were scared away by my yell.
        
The three armies
Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my: (Inner voice) Yes—
Zhang Fei: Cut down the bridge to pre­vent Cao’s troops from pur­su­ing us.
Mil­i­tary cadets: (inter­nal voice) Ah——
         
[Zhang Fei exits]

Sev­er­al main actors in the play:

          
Zhao Yun and Li Shaochun (record­ings) and Wang Lijun (illus­tra­tion)
          
Cao Cao and Yuan Shi­hai (record­ing) and Wu Yuzhang (illus­tra­tion)
          
Liu Bei and Li Shilin (record­ing) and Tan Xiaozeng (illus­tra­tion)
          
Zhang Fei and Liu Yuan­han (record­ing) and Luo Changde (illus­tra­tion)
 
Stills from the play (you can com­pare them with the pic­ture book)
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Zhang Fei stood at the Chang­ban Bridge in Dan­gyang, glar­ing and hold­ing his spear.
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Cao Cao’s army arrived at Chang­ban Bridge and con­front­ed Zhang Fei
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Cao Cao sent Xia Hou­jie to ask for his name.
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Zhang Fei roared: “Yan­ren Yide Zhang——”
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Xia­hou Jie fell down due to a bro­ken heart
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Xia­hou Jie fell to the ground, Cao Cao and his gen­er­als stood there in shock
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Cao Mengde in pan­ic and hes­i­ta­tion
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With a sound like thun­der, he sin­gle-hand­ed­ly drove back mil­lions of Cao’s sol­diers.