Open Collections

Opera Stage in Xiapingyou Village (Xiapingyou cun xitai 下平油村戲台)

From the Ground Up: Buddhism & East Asian Religions (FROGBEAR Project)

The stage faces north to a ruined temple complex on the top of the hill, which originally contained shrines to the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha (Dizangwang pusa 地藏王菩薩) and the Goddesses (Niangniang 娘娘). Traces of paint on the walls indicate that these temples were originally finely decorated with perspectival scenes of European architecture, but the murals overall are too heavily damaged to be reconstructed. The stage has been repaired recently and is now kept boarded up against thieves and the elements. No inscriptions remain that give a precise year of construction for the stage, but none of the dated graffiti inside is earlier than about 1900, which roughly matches the style of the murals. Inside, a wooden scaenae frons or ‘screen wall’ (geshan qiang 隔扇牆) divides the front-stage from the back-stage areas. The front stage murals depict life-sized folding screens, with performers in costume peering around each end, including one woman with bound feet. The clearly fake beard on one figure indicates that these are images of actors, not of characters in dramas, further heightening the sense of playful ‘meta-image’ and trompe-l’œil. The rear of the stage contains a large amount of actors’ graffiti, including records of early-20th century performances, drawings of masks, ink splatters which may have some consecratory function, and a great deal of explicit sexual material. Monochrome ink paintings in the ceiling panels show a number of rather whimsical themes of unknown origin, including a man buying ducks, another figure selling potted plants, and several other hard-to-identify scenes. Overall, the images and graffiti emphasize the opera stage as a site of playful illusion and erotic fascination within the village world.

Hebei Sheng (China); Yu Xian (Hebei Sheng, China); 39.903727; 114.608794

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North China Mural Survey

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0406622

Non UBC

Graduate

DSpace