【1】Different landscapes shape different customs, and different customs breed different forms of drama. Just as people differ in appearance, so do the tunes of their theater. Prominent among dozens of opera genres are Peking, Yu, Jin, Yue, Huangmei, Erhuang, and Sichuan Gaoqiang, each with its own rhythm and character. If you ask which boasts the longest history, best preserves its traditions of stage combat,singing, and storytelling, or conveys the clearest moral message, our answer is: Qinqiang. Its perceived strengths are as striking as its perceived weaknesses. Its admirers love it to death, while its detractors detest it to the bone. People outside its birthplace, especially those from the Yangtze River Basin who pride themselves on their refined taste, find Qinqiang's thunderous intensity too overwhelming. The gentlest critics blame its raucousness, while more blunt comments dismiss it as no more than "shouting and yelling". You'll find frail-looking women who have somehow ventured into such a show have their ears stuffed with cotton wads. You'll even hear an angry parent threaten a bratty kid by saying: "If you don't behave, I'll take you to a Qinqiang show tonight!" For some, watching Qinqiang has indeed become synonymous with receiving a punishment.
While other dramatic traditions may spread elsewhere, Qinqiang clings stubbornly to its home, just like the salt-of-the-earth folks inhabiting this northwestern swath of land. Its deep local roots defy any temptation to travel far. Having found its way into a few neighboring communities,albeit in altered forms, it has never wandered southward or eastward be yond the Tong Pass--an ancient mountain pass in eastern Shaanxi.
【2】Yet, for hundreds of years, Qinqiang has refused to be elimi.nated or to fade into oblivion. This puzzles many. But you can find the explanation right here in Shaanxi.
If you're a southerner and travel north by train, clattering along across the Yellow River, and entering its western bank, you'll be amazed at the vast expanse of yellow-brown earth stretching across the horizon. This is the Guanzhong Plain. There, earthen houses with foot-thick walls and wooden beams, rustic and unadorned, stand solemnly; poplars, chinaberries, and sophoras shoot into the sky, their trunks as thick as barrels but their leaves as tiny as coins flipping and rustling in the wind... It suddenly dawns on you that the geographic features of this land sync seamlessly with the elemental cadence of Qinqiang!
Then, go and meet the local people, and you'd wonder if they are liv.ing replicas of the terra-cotta warriors: tall, with thick eyebrows, wide-set eyes, and large hands and feet, their torsos slightly longer than their legs.They carry heavy triangular iron ploughshares on their backs. They drive herds of hulking oxen that resemble groups of hillocks. They hold pottery bowls the size of their heads. They squat on stone rollersfarming tools used for threshingwhile biting into beef-soaked flatbread, a signature Shaanxi meal. This imagery packs a raw and visceral punch, so powerful that it challenges how you see the world. Ah, what a vast land this is! It's a land empty of frippery and pretense, where rough-hewn, unpretentious,and unyielding people battle harsh, unrelenting natural forces.
At dusk, the evening glow sets the sky ablaze, and the sun lingers on the horizon as if gripped by the pain of hesitation over whether to set. Vil lages and towns are scattered miles apart. Qinqiang melodies from loudspeakers converge and clash in the air. More than an art form, Qingiang is in truth the chorus of the heavens, the earth, and humanity reverberating across this plain. At such a moment, don't you feel that southern dramas,for all their elegance and refinement, lack the brutal power Qin-giang possesses? Don't you realize why Qinqiang came into being, and why it has endured and claimed its rightful place in China's cultural space?
