Abstract
This article discusses the relationships among folk entertainers and audience members, theater, and popular performances. It also explores the opera reform and its impact. Entertainment in Chengdu was mainly concentrated in teahouses, where people could watch folk performances and local operas while sipping tea, and teahouses became the most important location for leisure pursuits, although they were also multifunctional. This study argues that popular entertainment was a powerful educational tool; many people, especially those who had little or no formal instruction, learned about history, literature and traditional values and virtues from local operas and storytellers. Reformist elites and government officials believed operas could provide enlightenment, enhance civilized discourse, and boost morale. The government used this forum for public entertainment to spread orthodox ideologies and influence the minds of ordinary people, while enacting regulations to control what people watched. In this article, we find that as a part of their control of entertainment, reformist elites and local government sought to reform local opera, which imposed a political agenda onto popular entertainment.
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