The Kuo Kuang Chinese Opera Company is a bastion of Taiwan's embattled Beijing opera scene and with its most recent work, Wang Shi Fong: The Most Scheming Woman in Dreams of the Red Chamber (
Wang Shi Fong was originally scheduled to hit the boards earlier this year, but was one of many victims of the SARS epidemic. The wait has done it no harm, and the presence of Beijing opera star Wei Haimin (
The Dream of the Red Chamber, from which the story is taken, is an undisputed classic of Chinese literature and has provided material for presentation in many other media, from comic books to opera.
The character Wang Shi-fong makes for brilliant drama and the opera has many aspects akin to a social drama, making it unusually easy to watch, especially for those unaccustomed to the ponderous tragedy that dominates Beijing opera plots. Caught inside the machinations of a huge extended family, Wang fights for survival using any tools available -- most notably a sharp tongue, a wily, not to say manipulative nature, and the ability to practice the art of flattery with a flagrance and shamelessness that stuns those around her.
Wang is one of the great characters of Chinese literature, a tough woman among dissolute and weak-willed men who nevertheless control the levers of power. In a world of petty cruelty and deceit, she is unafraid to be truly evil, blighting the lives of her enemies with a masculine determination that awes the many men in her life. She is Chinese literature's super bitch, drawn by Cao Hsue-chin (曹雪芹), the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, with such incredible detail and shading that one is never allowed to forget beneath all the guile and wickedness, there is a woman fighting for her life, keeping her head above water while weaker sisters fall victim to a male dominated world.
Wei Haiming does a splendid job of interpreting Wang, walking a fine line between the formalized conventions of Beijing opera and more informal character acting. The blend is appealing and makes Wang Shi Fong a great introduction to Chinese opera. Artistic director Wang An-hsin (
Wang Shi Fong will be at the Novell Hall today and tomorrow at 7:30pm, with a 2:30pm matinee on Sunday. Tickets are NT$300 to NT$1,200 and are available from ERA ticketing and from the venue.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby