Top Graduate Zhang Xie
張協狀元
CONTENTS
You can find modules that analyze various adaptations of Top Graduate Zhang Xie at the links below. To get a sense of the main themes and historical import of the original Top Graduate Zhang Xie, please consult the "General Background" below.- Top Graduate Zhang Xie 张协状元 (2017)
- "Humorous Techniques," a module on a Yongjia Style Kunqu live stage adaptation of Top Graduate Zhang Xie.
GENERAL BACKGROUND
Top Graduate Zhang Xie (Zhang Xie zhuangyuan 張協狀元, 1408) is a play unlike any other in the early Chinese theatrical corpus (see HTRCD, chap. 7). The story about an irascible ingrate and the devoted women in his life straddles the sensibilities of farce (e.g., violent horseplay, exaggeration, absurdity, improbability) with those of domestic drama (e.g., moral dilemmas, the chastening of anger and pride, a happy ending), marking an inflection point between the slapstick of Song and Yuan farces (yuanben 院本) and the ethical ruminations of mature Ming drama (chuanqi 傳奇).Top Graduate’s humorous spoofs are embedded in what is the most common theme among early Southern family dramas (nanxi 南戲), that is, the question of what happens when a newly wedded scholar goes to the capital and successfully passes the examination (see also The Lute Pipa ji 琵琶記). The perennial issues that these early plays address include the following: What is the nature of the relationship between the aspiring scholar and the young woman in the countryside? Once he goes to the capital and passes the exam as the top graduate, will he marry the daughter of the prime minister? Will he then abandon the first wife and/or the supportive courtesan? How will the second wife respond to the prospect of a marriage and the knowledge of a first wife? How will the parents-in-law in the countryside fare during the son’s protracted absence? How will the prime minister and his wife treat their own daughter? If the first wife ventures into the capital to find the husband after he fails to send word, what happens to her? With all these tensions between husbands and wives and between the older and younger generations, how can a happy ending be found? Within this framework, each play skillfully weaves together a different set of variables.
Top Graduate features the eponymous scholar Zhang Xie 張協 in the role of the young male (sheng 生). However, contrary to the romantic heroes in later chuanqi drama (see The Peony Pavilion, Mudanting 牡丹亭), Zhang veers closer to the crass and haughty opportunists of the now lost farces (yuanben). Zhang’s country wife is the long-suffering Poorlass (Pinnü 貧女 in the role of young female, dan 旦). Being the sole survivor of a well-to-do family who had fallen on hard times, she gets by living at a dilapidated temple, where Grandpa Li (Li dagong 李大公，cast as an additional male, mo 末) and Grandma Li (Li dapo 李大婆 cast as a comic jing 淨) provide her with sustenance. When Zhang Xie is robbed on his way from Sichuan to the capital, he seeks refuge at this temple. Poorlass kindly nurses him back to health, whereupon he insists on marrying her. In a wedding ceremony replete with comic asides, they become husband and wife, singing songs about their respective fidelity to one another. However, no sooner has Zhang Xie set out for the capital, does he have second thoughts about this match. Once he successfully passes the exams, his indifference to a proposed match with the prime minister’s daughter precipitates the daughter’s demise from a mix of shame and lovelonging. Meanwhile, after finding out that Zhang had passed the examinations, Poorlass sets out for the capital to be reunited with him. Once she arrives at his mansion, far from acknowledging her help in his success, he expresses unbridled contempt for her poverty and has his assistants beat her and drive her out. Indeed, so incensed is he by her appearance that on his way to his first official post, he seeks out her temple and when she tries to reason with him, he slashes her with his sword and leaves her for dead. Meanwhile, heartbroken over the death of his daughter, the prime minister (cast as a clown, chou 丑) decides to get even with Zhang Xie and requests to be sent to the same location as Zhang Xie’s post. In an improbable turn of events, the prime minister and his wife (cast as a supporting senior role, wai 外) come upon Poorlass’s temple, adopt her on account of her resemblance to their deceased daughter, and eventually, after having chastened Zhang Xie, agree to a marriage between him and Poorlass at the behest of a family friend.
Among these early domestic plays, despite the eventual reconciliation, Top Graduate stands out for the tenor of the incessant quarreling and mutual humiliation among many actual and prospective husband and wife pairings (Zhang Xie’s parents; Grandpa Li and Grandma Li; Poorlass and Xiao’er; Zhang Xie and Xiao’er, Zhang Xie and Shenghua, the exception being the prime minister and his wife). In a Yuan-dynasty song about theatrical performance, we learn about the physical slapstick involved in a kerfuffle between a suitor and a reluctant young woman: “She made the elder move forward, while he did not dare to move backward, kicking up his left leg, but not daring to lift his right leg 教太公忘前那不敢往後那，擡左腳不敢右腳 (Du, “Zhuangjia bushi goulan,” vol. 1, 32). Top Graduate gives us a sense of what the comic dialogues surrounding such a hullabaloo evolved into. In Act 12, even the most upright character in the play, Poorlass, spits, chides and then hits Xiao’er, the good-for-nothing son of her benefactors, when he pressures her to marry him: “You scoundrel! You ignorant stupid fool, insulting me like this! Take that, you bastard! 打脊！不曉事底呆子，來傷觸人。打個貧胎!” , proceeding to dress him down as someone who still has breast milk dribbling down from the corners of his mouth, his advanced age of forty notwithstanding (Llamas, Top Graduate, 156; Qian, Zhang Xie, 67). Meanwhile, in Act 20, in a crescendo of ever crasser forms of unwarranted anger and gratuitous violence, the socially ambitious Zhang Xie heaps abuse on Poorlass: “Poorlass, that low-bred! I’ll beat her more dead than alive. If it wasn’t for the terrible plight I was in, I would have never gone near her 貧女那賤人， 十人打底九人沒下！自家因災禍，誰肯近傍你每 (Llamas, Top Graduate, 202; Qian, Zhang Xie, 104). Whatever decorum might be expected of the main roles, this play taps into an aesthetic of cursing and physical altercation as a source of amusement (see HTRCD, chap. 3).
Language use is not the only audience expectation to be foiled. In terms of the setting, many key scenes of the play take place in a temple (Act 3, Act 6, Act 7-12, 14, 16, 18-20, 23, 26, 30, 33, 41, 45). From textual and visual sources, we know that theatrical performances regularly took place in temples on special occasions such as New Year’s or the birthday of the resident deity (see Fig. 2). We hear echoes of these practices in the song alluded to above where a peasant ruminates about the theater that he is familiar with: “Even though it is not a day where the gods are welcomed to the village community [with theatricals], there is a constant beating of drums and the sounding of gongs” 又不是迎神賽社，不住的擂鼓篩鑼 (Du, “Zhuangjia bushi goulan,” vol. 1, 31). In a ritual context, such theatrical offerings were designed to expel noxious influences and invite blessings from the gods. In an echo of such practices, multiple spirits appear in Top Graduate. The Local God and the Divine Judge (both cast as additional male, mo 末) resonate with these kinds of beneficent deities (Acts 9 and 10), but two others, a Mountain God (cast as a comic, jing 淨) and a Little Demon (cast as a clown, chou 丑), defy any notion of awe inspiring divine presences. Not only do they turn the temple into a site of constant artful bickering among the spirits and the human beings, but the Mountain God and the Little Demon time and again reveal themselves to be greedy gluttons who cannot wait to gobble up all the food and wine offered to them (Act 10 and 16, see HTRCDIC, L03).
The play’s constant reminders that actors are operating within a system of role conventions (jiaose 角色) are another source of humor. In total, Top Graduate features seven role types that impersonate close to forty different characters (Llamas, Top Graduate, 359-360). The young male and the young female are restricted to one character, that is, Zhang Xie and Poorlass respectively; even there, however, upon his first appearance, the young male does something unusual (Act 2). He provides a prologue in the manner of an announcer (fumo 副末) and then concludes by saying “That’s enough! I shall assume the likeness of Top Graduate Zhang Xie” 罷！學個張狀元似像 (Llamas, Top Graduate, 96; Qian, Zhang Xie, 13). Hence from the outset, we are aware that we are watching a role play a character. When it comes to the comic roles (comic, jing 淨; clown, chou 丑), who together play over twenty different characters (Llamas, “Introduction,” 54-61), other comic possibilities open up. In Act 11, Grandmother Li ask her good-for-nothing son named Xiao’er 小二 to take wine and food to Poorlass (Llamas, Top Graduate, 148-49; Qian, Zhang Xie, 63), an order he refuses, thus punning on the secondary meaning of his name, that is, the designation for the role of a waiter in zaju drama (dian xiao’er 店小二). In Act 33, in a dialogue with the Mountain God, when Poorlass announces that she will say goodbye to Grandma Li, the Mountain God quips, “No need, I’m your Grandma” 不須去，我便是亞婆, alluding to the fact that the same comic role (jing 淨)—and likely the same actor-- performed both of these parts, a remark followed by the wisecrack “Don’t give away our trade secrets” 休說破 (Llamas, Top Graduate, 271; Qian, Zhang Xie, 157). In Act 35, when Poorlass shows up at Zhang Xie’s yamen gate where women are not allowed to enter, one of the gatekeepers jokes that “Oh, it’s just a fake female” 且是假夫人 (Llamas, Top Graduate, 274; Qian, Zhang Xie, 160), hinting at the fact that men played female roles. Thus time and again, the play exploits the audience’s familiarity with theatrical practices to elicit laughter.
Finally, Chinese theater is known to be sparing in its use of stage design and props. What might be depicted as a set in modern-style theater is often described in words instead or expressed through actions. What props there are, are few and far between (see for example the fans in Fig. 2). However, Top Graduate contains many instances of “human props”—not only do human beings become part of stage sets and act as props, but the play repeatedly draws attention to this novel convention. For instance, in Act 10, before student Zhang Xie’s arrival at the Mountain God’s dilapidated temple, the latter muses together with the Divine Judge: “The door outside is broken and looks bad. Call that little demon to come over here and both of you turn into a pair of doors” 外面門粕弗好看，叫小鬼來， 你兩個權化作兩片門 (Llamas, Top Graduate Zhang Xie, 137; Qian, Zhang Xie, 55). Later in that same scene, after Zhang passes through the “door,” the Small Demon talks, whereupon the following exchange between the Mountain God and the Small Demon ensues: “Quiet! How can doors speak!” 低聲！門也會說話。Small Demon: “Quiet! How can gods sing arias!” 低聲！神也會唱曲。(Llamas, Top Graduate, 141; Qian, Zhang Xie, 56).
In modern renditions of Top Graduate, these metatheatrical features continue to be of paramount importance.
WORKS CONSULTED: CLICK TO EXPAND
Du Renjie 杜仁傑. ““Zhuangjia bushi goulan” 莊家不識勾闌. In Sui Shusen 隋樹森, ed. Quan Yuan sanqu 全元散曲, vol. 1, 31-32. Rev. ed. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989.
Llamas Regina. "Top Graduate Zhang Xie and The Lute: Scholar, Family, and State." In How To Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology, edited by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, 171-190.
Llamas, Regina. “Introduction.” In her Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play, 1-88. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
Llamas, Regina, trans. and intro. Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.
Qian Nanyang 錢南揚 ed. and ann. Zhang Xie zhuangyuan 張協狀元. In his Yongle dadian xiwen sanzhong jiaozhu 永樂大典戲文三種校注, 1-217. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979.