A few days ago, the post-2000 inheritors of Chenhe Mulian Opera in Xupu County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province came to Fengxiang Yaozhai Scenic Area in Xuefeng Mountain to carry out special activities for intangible cultural heritage opera and performed "Blessings from Heavenly Officials" for tourists in the scenic area. Repertoires such as "Lion Tower", "Five Meats" and "Ancient Wind" attracted tourists to pick up their mobile phones to take photos and record videos.
"The performance of Chenhe Mulian Opera in the scenic spot not only improves the popularity and reputation of the scenic spot, but also brings higher popularity and considerable economic income." Chen Liming, head of Hunan Xuefengshan Ecological Culture Tourism Co., Ltd. said, "We We are currently negotiating on the introduction of intangible cultural heritage into scenic spots, hoping to organically combine intangible cultural heritage with tourism, which will not only contribute to the inheritance and protection of intangible cultural heritage, but also promote the high-quality development of the cultural tourism industry."
Chenhe Mulian Opera is one of the few existing large-scale folk sacrificial operas in China, and is known as the "living fossil" of Chinese opera.
In 2006, Chenhe Mulian Opera was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists.
Chenhe Mulian Opera has a total of 203 tunes and 73 gong and drum tunes. Its repertoire is so large that it is known as the "forty-eight series of operas".
The main content of Chenhe Mulian Opera is the story of Moggallian saving his mother in history. It is mainly popular in Yuanshui and the upper reaches of the river.
The inheritance and development of Chenhe Mulian Opera once encountered a bottleneck, and there was a gap in talent.
In recent years, Xupu County has launched rescue and conservation work and established the Chenhe Mulian Opera Inheritance and Protection Center.
In 2017, Xupu County allocated 2.1 million yuan in special funds for intangible cultural heritage to open a Chenhe Mulian Opera "intangible cultural heritage class" at the county vocational secondary school, and trained 29 post-00 students.
Nowadays, they have become a new force in the protection and inheritance of Chenhe Opera. They play the leading role and take the lead, and there are successors to Chenhe Mulian Opera.
Intangible cultural heritage must be "live", "moved" and "used".
In 2018, the Xupu County Chenhe Mulian Opera Inheritance and Protection Center renovated the "Liyuan Teahouse" and restored a small theater that can accommodate about 120 audiences.
Now, middle-aged and elderly theater fans from the county and surrounding villages come to the teahouse every day to listen to operas. It has become a local cultural business card. The people of Xupu watch theater every day, making their cultural life more colorful.
The center also organizes performance teams to send plays to the countryside for tours.
Since 2019, the center has organized and carried out cultural and artistic activities going to the countryside, with more than 1,200 performances in 25 towns and more than 200 villages across the county, benefiting more than 200,000 farmer audiences.
Almost every time during the tour, the villagers set off firecrackers to transport the actors into and out of the village, which was touching.
On the basis of inheriting the traditional repertoire of Chenhe Mulian Opera, Xupu County Chenhe Mulian Opera Inheritance and Protection Center also created some new works and tried new singing of traditional operas.
In recent years, the big play "Sun Xuechen" and the small play "Spring Promise" created and edited have been loved by the audience.
In addition, the center also promotes Mulian opera to break out of the limitations of the opera stage and show its style on the social stage, leading the upgrade of business formats through "intangible cultural heritage + tourism" and other methods, and boosting the development of the local cultural tourism industry.
(The author is the director of the Chenhe Mulian Opera Inheritance and Protection Center in Xupu County, Huaihua City, Hunan Province)
Zheng Liping (Source: People’s Daily Overseas Edition)