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the seventeenth century in the early Qing Dynasty and which flourished for over 300 years thereafter. It therefore predates Peking opera, which only appeared in the late eighteenth century and which was influenced by it, although today little about it is known by most people. It is surprising to read in her article that as late as the 1960s a good number of troupes of this form of opera were still active, but that they have almost vanished today. Su Qiqi, in what is a quite original approach, in her article compares the uneasy relationship of Zhang Yimou’s movies to the contemporary novels of major Chinese writers such as Mo Yan and Su Tong. She sees a major two-part development in Zhang’s films, in which the famous film director first adapted then abandoned these novels as a source of inspiration. Both the commercialisation of Zhang’s movies and the recent lack of public interest in Hanju opera appear as reflections of a kind of modern life in China and the West that has little time for depth in art.
César Guillén-Nuñez |
