The Contemporary World in Republican-era Adaptations of Old Themes in Traditional Genres of Performative Literature: The Newest Version of the Complete Song of the Mutual Accusations of the Cat and The Mouse

Abstract

THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD IN REPUBLICAN-ERA ADAPTATIONS OF OLD THEMES IN TRADITIONAL GENRES OF PERFORMATIVE LITERATURE: THE NEWEST VERSION OF THE COMPLETE SONG OF THE MUTUAL ACCUSATIONS OF THE CAT AND THE MOUSE WILT L. IDEMA Harvard University In her recent monograph on the bannermen tales (zidishu 子弟書) of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Elena Chiu discusses how the title heroine of Pu Songling’s 蒲松齡 (1640–1715) classical tale The Girl in the Green Dress (Lüyi nü 綠衣女) is turned into a young Manchu woman in terms of dress and hairstyle when the tale was adapted as a bannermen tale by one Zhuchuang 竹窗.1 Such changes are of course only to be expected when a story is reworked for performance at a later date, at a different place, and for a different audience. Some of such changes will be made inadvertently, but others will have been introduced on purpose to achieve a certain humorous effect by introducing anachronistic or otherwise outof -place persons, objects, or terminology. This is perhaps even more clearly demonstrated in a rewriting of Pu Songling’s The Painted Skin (Huapi 畫皮) as a danxian paiziqu 單線牌子曲 by Ye Shuting 葉 樹亭 of the early years of the twentieth century.2 In this well-known tale a young man while walking outside meets an attractive young woman and takes her home with him, where he installs her in his study, unbeknownst to his wife. The young man has a passionate affair with the woman, until he discovers she actually is an ugly demon dressed in a human skin—he observes her as she has taken off her skin and is touching it up. In Ye Shuting’s version the young girl at their first meeting is described as a typical high school student of those days: 1 Elena Suet-Ying Chiu, Bannermen Tales (Zidishu): Manchu Storytelling and Cultural Hybridity in the Qing Dynasty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018), pp. 183–92. 2 For the Chinese text of Ye Shuting’s version see Guan Dedong 關得棟 and Li Wanpeng 李萬 鵬, eds., Liaozhai Zhiyi shuochang ji 聊齋志異說唱集 (A collection of prosimetric versions of [stories from] Liaozhai’s Records of the Strange; Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1983), pp. 82–91. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 37. 1 (July 2018): 42–56© The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2018 DOI 10.1080/01937774.2018.1526468 She was all dressed up according to the latest fashion, She had close-cropped hair, which wasn’t covered; Her close-fitting clothes gave off a heavy perfume, Her high-heeled leather shoes made a click-clack sound. 周身打扮俱是時裝 梳著蓬頭戴著淨光 衣服瘦小陣陣放香 高根底皮鞋咯答咯答響 No wonder the young man thinks to himself, “This is quite a pretty modern girl (weixin nüzi 維新女子),” and when he addresses her, he says with a bow, “You look quite familiar to me, Could it be that you have been a female principal in a girls’ school? For what reason are you here walking all alone late at night?” 我看著你很面熟 彷彿在女子學校裏當過女校長 卻因何夙夜獨行所為那樁 The young woman thereupon answers him in a “civilized fashion” (tantu wenming 談吐文明). For a traditional urban audience of the first decade of the Republic in Beijing, presenting the young woman as a student or even a teacher will have provided an plausible reason for her unaccompanied presence out on the street, but may also have made her fair game for the sexual designs of the young man as such modern women were only too often believed to have abandoned all morals.3 The modern terminology on women’s fashion and activities will have been perceived as incongruous in the conventional language of the genre, and therefore as humorous. It is not my intention here to attempt an overview of descriptions of modern aspects of social life in the early decades of the twentieth century in works of traditional performative literature.4 I would rather like to introduce one text in particular in which this combination of incongruous elements is taken to extremes. The text concerned is the Minnanese ballad The Newest Version of the Complete Song of the Mutual Accusations of the Cat and the Mouse (Zuixin Mao shu xianggao quange 最 新貓鼠相告全歌) of the early 1920s.5 This is an adaptation of the story of the 3 Cf...