RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g
43

THE PEKING OPERA

D.H. LIU

It may sound strange to many that the Peking Opera originated, not from Peking, as it is generally believed, but from the obscure county towns of Huang Po (黄陂) and Huang Kong (黄冈) in the Hupeh Province on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. From its early beginning as local, folk song amusement of surrounding areas, it gradually gained popularity and traveled beyond the provincial boundary to Peking where it settled down and prospered during the reign of Emperor Chien Lung (A.D. 1751-1795)

As the troupe travelled on its way to Peking, it absorbed many of the methods and techniques of different theatrical groups, notably, the K'un Chu (昆曲) and the Hwei Ban (徽班) with one sole dogma it has persistently adhered to the original dialect of the Hupeh Province in its performance up to the present day.

The Stage in the Early Times:

At the beginning, the stage was a very simple structure with no proper sitting arrangement for the audience. People would sit around a square-shaped table with two persons on each side. I remember that, when I was a boy, the first theatre we had in Yienta (烟台) where I was born, was called the Tan Kwei Tea House (谭家祠茶馆). People went there to watch the opera and at the same time, enjoy a cup of tea. Why not? People were out to enjoy themselves. I still remember how people would enter the theatre and leave it at will. You sat at the table watching the play, drinking Chinese tea and cracking melon seeds, all at the same time. You will say that this would divert the attention of the audience from what was going on on the stage. Why worry? If the actor or actress was good, the audience, of course, would automatically stop drinking tea and pay close attention to the stage!

I still remember that, in those happy days, the theatre waiters would throw a hot towel to you from a distance of ten feet to wake you up when you were tired. What a wonderful idea!

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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390
111

very close down her side. When it got near it would suddenly put the helm over, with the apparent intention of being run down, in a sort of suicide action but with the real object of passing as close as it could under the steamer's bows. The reason for this apparently suicidal manoeuvre, I was told, was this.

Every junk, every morning, started off on its day's journey with a malevolent devil hanging on to its rudder whose object was to slow it down, and if possible run it onto a sandbank. But if the junk succeeded in passing very close under a steamer's bow the devil would be cut off from its precarious hold and would drown. On days of heavy traffic, when we often saw as many as fifty junks in a mile of river, it became a bit nerve-wracking to see scores of the craft scuttling across our bows like mad, hoping to have their devils cut off.'"

With overnight stops on passage our ship spent the night of 3rd September 1931 off Kiukiang, some 493 miles from the Fairway Buoy at the mouth of the River. Here it was noted that the current flowed at from three to four knots, a powerful stream and gigantic mass of water. Debris in the river included the swollen bodies of humans, and of cattle and other animals, tree branches and trunks, pieces of wood, and any other manner of flotsam.

Continuing upstream the following day guns' crews and machine gunners were closed up in case of fire being received from parties of bandits ashore.

At 1500 hours on Saturday, 5th September HERMES anchored off Hankow, one of the three cities forming Wuhan in Hupeh Province, 636 miles from the Fairway Buoy. Wuhan is the home of the successful revolution of 1911.

Conflict ashore between various warlords, groups of mere bandits, and the Nationalists, it sometimes being impossible to tell the difference between such groups, had resulted in there being some danger on the River. This in addition to the high and hazardous waters. It was not only relatively large warships such as HERMES who had to guard against random fire from the river banks. The small river steamers were a far more obvious target. Consequently from Monday, the 7th, parties of armed guards constantly were being sent away from the ship to escort
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