Shanghai Yueju

According to the 2018 China national survey, there are over 300 different regional Chinese opera forms, Shanghai has five: Huju, (all-female) Yueju, Huaiju, Kunqu and Jingju. Shanghai Yueju remains one of the most popular form in Shanghai and across China.

From humble beginnings as a fishing village, Shanghai was developed into a naval port, when the capital was moved to nearby Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), but commenced its transformation to a modern cosmopolitan city when it became a British Treaty Port in 1842. The British developed its concession area along the Huangpu River and instigated the construction of a textile industry in Shanghai. Migrant workers from neighbouring Zhejiang province flooded into Shanghai to staff the mills and dyeworks. In 1895, just as the Western-owned mills were preparing to open, the population of Shanghai was an estimated 411,000, by 1900 the population was 1,000,000 and by 1930 it had increased to over 3,000,000 (Honig, 1986: 30-31). Zhejiang female workers formed the main labour force of the Shanghai textile factories and rose to become China's first female working class.

The female migrant workers brought with them to Shanghai a popular Zhejiang regional sing-song form, Shaoxinxi. In the early 20th century, when female labour became sought after through urban industrialization and modernization, Zhejiang females had three routes to work: first, to marry a baby boy (usually to assist a widowed mother-in-law to bring up her toddler 'husband' until marriage age), second, to work in a textile mill in Shanghai, and third to sing Shaoxinxi in Shanghai. With capital in hand, the Shanghai female textile workers became the main patrons of Shaoxinxi and assisted their home town sisters to enter Shanghai to produce love stories, featuring females as the main protagonists, and to have the latest new productions staged in modern Shanghai theatres. It was in 1938 that the name Shanghai Yueju first appeared in Shanghai newspapers, referenced initially by playwright Cai Yuxing in Theatre World (Ma, 2015: 25). Whilst the word Xi places performance with traditional staging and content, Ju places emphasis on modernity and innovation, such as Huaju (spoken drama) and Jingju (Beijing opera). By the late 1940s, the name Shanghai Yueju was firmly attached to the all-female modern music theatre form which had been created by and for the newly rising female urban consumers.

Under Mao's era (1949-1976), Shanghai Yueju and the working class became the new elites of the socialist society. Not only were the factories state managed, but art forms, such as Yueju, were institutionalised. Iconic films were made during this era, including Love of the Butterfly (梁祝) and Dream of the Red Mansion (红楼梦), which gained Shanghai Yueju both national and international fame. However, the party-state funded and institutionalised opera troupes gradually evolved, from the 1940s small scaled modern theatre productions, to state-funded high art: text-based, orchestra-focused grand pieces that were slow to produce and costly to stage. By the 1980s, both state owned enterprises and art institutions, such as Shanghai Yueju Opera House, became slow in responding to Deng Xiaoping's new era of China marketization.

In the 1990s China’s nationwide state-owned enterprise worker redundancy programme manually transformed China from an industrial to post-industrial economy. Shanghai textile workers were retrained to enter the service industry, under government initiated programmes, landmarking the beginning of China Creative Industries. In 2001, M50, a Shanghai textile mill turned contemporary art cluster was opened, symbolising the new era of China creative industries.

This research takes Shanghai Yueju as a case study, examining the position and value of in/tangible heritage in the contemporary digital era; the class definition and their associated entertainment in the transitional period from an industrial to post-industrial cultural and digital economy. We ask questions on the role of migrants and the intimate links between rural and urban areas, the continued evolving artistic forms between modern and tradition, in particular the challenges and opportunities in digital global connectivity.

Shanghai Yueju immersive performance Fate of Love (再生缘）, 2019

Reference:

Honig, E., 1992. Sisters and strangers: Women in the Shanghai cotton mills, 1919-1949. Stanford University Press.

Ma, H., 2016. Urban Politics and Cultural Capital: The Case of Chinese Opera. Routledge.