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Opera Stage at South Well Village (Nan jingtou cun xitai 南井頭村戲台)

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

South Well (Nan jing南井) is a tiny and remote hamlet in the hills of eastern Yangyuan County 陽原縣, in Hebei Province 河北, China. The opera stage sits outside the south-east corner of what would have been the old walled village (Image 01, Image 03). The stage faces a building to the north that once held shrines to the Dragon Kings (Longwang 龍王), the Goddesses (Nainai 奶奶), and the Jade Emperor (Yuhuang 玉皇); this building is now empty and in ruin (Image 02). The two side walls of the front-stage area once showed images of palatial buildings rising amongst trees; these are now unfortunately damaged (Image 04, Image 05, Image 06, Image 07). The central (south) backstage wall, behind the now-vanished stage walls, shows an image of Qilin gazing at the moon (Qilin wang yue 麒麟望月 (Image 08); beside this is a life-sized image of an actor brandishing two scimitars, or swords (Image 09). The entire backstage space is richly covered in nineteenth- and twentieth-century actors’ graffiti (Images: 10 to 22).

Hebei Sheng (China); Yangyuan Xian (China); 40.190751; 114.730513

chi

North China Mural Survey

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0438432

Non UBC

Graduate

DSpace