Performers › Dramatists and Directors
Shao Jianghai
Gezai opera performer and playwright who created the zasui tune and the reformed melodies, known in Taiwan as the Duma tune, and laid the foundations of Xiangju
In a workshop, one person sits with their back turned at a long table, pointing a thin rod at a model stage with painted scenery; scripts bound in cord and a brush pot lie in the foreground, a ring of white dots marks the floor, and two drums and hanging cloths stand at the right.
Shao Jianghai, whose family came from Longhai in Zhangzhou prefecture, was born in Xiamen and took up Gezai opera at twelve, studying its music with the Taiwanese performer Wen Hongtu and others. When the Zhangzhou authorities banned Taiwanese Gezai opera and its instruments from 1938, he and Lin Wenxiang switched to a six-sided fiddle, sanxian and end-blown flute and created reformed melodies built on the zasui tune, performed as 'reformed opera'; carried to Taiwan, the zasui tune became the Duma tune. He wrote more than thirty scripts, among them Snow in June, Li Miaohui and The White Fan. From 1958 he taught Xiangju at the Zhangzhou Art School, where his students included Zheng Xiuqin. He died in 1980.
Life and times
Dates 1913 CE–1980 CE