Television
China's first television drama, One Piece of Cake 一口菜饼子, was broadcast on June 15th 1958, just months after Chinese television first went on the air, but it reached small audiences because television sets were expensive commodities that only elites had access to. Unlike Chinese film, whose origin story is tied closely to traditional Chinese drama performance, One Piece of Cake was not an adaptation of traditional Chinese theater. However, early television programming did resemble theatrical performance. Although audiences were not in the same place as the stage, direct broadcast television (1958-66) preserved the "live" element of watching a theater because the drama was broadcast as it was being performed. Celluloid film was sometimes used to supplement broadcasts, but the prohibitive cost of film limited its use in early TV production. Early television's theatrical element was attenuated when video recording equipment that allowed post-production editing went into use in 1967. The first drama series to be shot entirely on location, however, was not made till 1978 because television production was severely curtailed during the intervening years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
Throughout the Cultural Revolution period, access to televisions remained relatively low. Nicole Huang has shown, however, that by the mid 1970s, in urban centers, communal TV rooms "became miniature theaters that repeatedly showcased dozens of revolutionary feature films and model films" (180). "Model films" refers here to the Cultural Revolution of "model operas," revolutionary musical pieces that were filmed for cinematic distribution. The coincidence of this genre's popularity with the emergence of television culture in China is significant, because it ties the medium of television to the tradition of Chinese theater. The model works are of course not the classic Chinese plays analyzed on CTC, but they are syncretic objects that combined revolutionary elements with the aesthetic and performative traditions of the Chinese stage. Throughout the 1970s, amateur productions of model works were staged in urban courtyards, and audiences were schooled in rehearsing revolutionary music and thus publicly performing their revolutionary politics. When such operas appeared on televisions newly arrived in residential compounds, Huang argues that residents continued to actively engage with the new medium, much as an audience at a traditional Chinese opera performance would participate in the performative atmosphere of the event. TV was therefore introduced to China as a mass medium in the guise of an electronic theater.
During the 1980s, the communal nature of television changed. Owning your own television set (ideally, a big color TV) became a domestic ideal and the Chinese television industry developed quickly to produce monitors of a quality competitive with foreign electronics; many urban families could afford such color domestic monitors by the late 80s and early 90s. The diversity, quality, and volume of television content also grew sharply in these decades. In terms of Chinese opera, the format of television adaptations varied. For example, a four episode "yue opera television series" 越剧电视连续剧 of The Western Wing was produced in 1987 by the Shanghai TV station; in 1988 a "huangmei opera music television series" 黄梅戏音乐电视连续剧 of The Western Wing aired on China's main television station, CCTV. This 1988 version is one of several huangmei opera series that the authors of The Development of Chinese Television Art 中国电视艺术发展史 criticize for bearing little resemblance to true huangmei opera beyond borrowing and modernizing the musical style of the performance tradition (287). The 1995 Western Wing "television series" 电视连续剧 made no pretense at being an opera. It is a narrative television series whose story is adapted from Wang Shifu's play. As these examples show, television adaptations of Chinese theater, like film versions, take different approaches to their source material, more or less "authentic" to the original performance context. The variety of such productions has only increased in recent years.
In addition to the adaptation of whole plays, Chinese television programming also includes compilations of opera arias and scenes recorded on stage for television broadcast. The "The Essence of Lip-synced Chinese Peking Opera" project 中國京劇音配像精粹 (1985-2006), for example, staged and recorded opera pieces using audio records of the so-called "old masters" paired with performing bodies of their disciples. These pieces were broadcast on television and can now be found streaming online on the CCTV website. They, along with many other recorded performances, documentary programs, cultural bulletins, and television dramas, are part CCTV's Chinese drama programming on CCTV 11 戏曲 (CCTV 11 Opera), a television channel devoted to Chinese theater that began broadcast in 2001. A free live stream of the channel is available on the CCTV website.
MODULES ON TELEVISION
- The Return of the Soul at the Peony Pavilion 牡丹亭還魂记 (2009)
- "The Expression of Qing in the Hybrid Medium of Yue Opera TV Drama," a module about a televisual adaptation of The Peony Pavilion by CCTV.
- The Ink and Vermillion Edition of The Orphan of Zhao (2011)
- "Stage as a Narrator," a module on a TV recording of the "Ink and Vermilion" edition adapted by Wang Peiyu 王珮瑜.
- A Dream of Splendor 梦华录 (2022)
- "Dramatic Irony through Editing and Character Addition," a module on the mainland Chinese television series adaptation of Saving a Courtesan.
WORKS CONSULTED: CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE
Huang, Nicole. "Sun-Facing Courtyards: Urban Communal Culture in Mid-1970s Shanghai." East Asian History no. 25/26 (2003): 161-182.
Zhong Yibing & Huang Wangnan 钟艺兵、黄望南. 中国电视艺术发展史 (The Development of Chinese Television Art) Hangzhou: Zhejiang People's Publishing House, 1994.