The Inheritance Significance of Tea-picking Drama

If there is no tea picking, there will be no tea picking and dancing; If there were no tea-picking songs and events, there would be no tea-picking drama widely popular in many provinces and regions in southern China. Therefore, tea-picking drama is not only related to tea, but also a brilliant culture formed by the derivation of tea culture in the field of opera or the absorption of tea culture by opera culture.

The formation of tea-picking drama is not only prominent in tea-picking songs and tea events, but also very similar to the style of lantern drama and ancient painting drama, and forms an interactive relationship with it. Lantern Opera is the general name of the types of Lantern Opera popular in Yunnan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hubei, Jiangxi and other provinces. Yunnan lanterns are the most popular. It came into being a little later than tea-picking opera and flower drum opera, and most of them were formed in the late Qing Dynasty. Huagu Opera is the most popular in Hubei and Hunan provinces, and its formation time is roughly the same as that of tea-picking opera. These two kinds of operas also originated from folk songs and folk dances. Because of the similarity in origin, formation and development time and style of tea-picking drama, lantern drama and flower drum drama, there is naturally a cross relationship of mutual absorption and mutual nutrition between them.

The influence of tea on operas not only directly produces tea-picking operas, but also affects all operas. Playwrights, actors and audiences all like drinking tea. It is tea culture that permeates all aspects of people's lives, making drama inseparable from tea for a moment. For example, there was an artistic school in China's script creation in Ming Dynasty, which was called "Tang Yuming School" (also called Linchuan School) because the great dramatist Tang Xianzu loved tea and named his Linchuan residence "Tang Yuming". Tang Xianzu's plays pay attention to expressing characters' feelings and rhetoric. After the publication of Four Dreams of Tang Yuming, it had an immeasurable influence on the drama creation at that time and later generations. At this point, tea makes Tang Xianzu's role in the history of China drama not limited to the name of a genre.

For another example, I used to play not only singing, cross talk, drumming and storytelling. Most of them are performed in teahouses, but there are also theaters with various theatrical performances. These theaters are all engaged in selling tea or used to be in teahouses. Therefore, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, all commercial places where theatrical performances were performed were generally called "tea gardens" or "teahouses". Because of this, the income of opera actors was paid by teahouses earlier. In other words, the income of early theaters or theaters was mainly selling tea; Only charge for tea, not for theater tickets. The performance is to entertain and attract tea customers. At the end of the last century, the most famous tea houses in Beijing, Guanghe Teahouse, Dangui Tea Garden and Tianxian Tea Garden in Shanghai were all performance places. This kind of tea garden or teahouse is usually built in the middle of a wall. The ground in front of it is called a "pool", and there are balconies on three sides, with tea tables and chairs for the audience to watch the play while drinking tea. Professional theaters only appeared before and after the Revolution of 1911, when they were specially named "New Drama Tide" or "Theater Garden" and "Theater Hall". The words "garden" and "pavilion" come from tea gardens and teahouses. Therefore, some people vividly said: "Opera is an art watered with tea juice in China." In addition, since the production, trade and consumption of tea have become an important aspect of social production, social culture and social life, it is naturally impossible not to be absorbed and reflected by drama. Therefore, many famous dramas in ancient and modern China and abroad not only have the contents and scenes of tea affairs, but some even take tea affairs as the background and theme. For example, the opening words of China's traditional drama "West Garden" include "Buy lanling wine and cook new tea in Yangxian County", which leads the audience to a specific local customs.