Xue Dingshan's Western Campaign

Introduction

A long-running war story of Anshun ground opera; a troupe that performs it plays this one story alone

Xue Dingshan's Western Campaign is a regular play of the ground opera of Anshun in Guizhou, one of the long-running war stories along with the Investiture of the Gods, the Three Kingdoms, Xue Rengui's Eastern Campaign and Luo Tong Sweeps the North. Its hero is a fictional Tang general of opera and folk tales, modelled on Xue Ne, the son of Xue Rengui, and a Qing novel of the same title by the Rulian Jushi tells the same story. Ground opera is organised by troupes, each of which plays a single story, and most villages of the Tunpu settlements keep one troupe. Performances fall in the middle of the seventh lunar month and at the Spring Festival, and the actors wear carved wooden masks. When Su Jinlian loses her duel with Chen Jinding, the actor takes off the mask, lays it on the ground and leaves, and the audience knows she has been killed. The scripts belong to the sung storytelling tradition, and Anshun ground opera entered the first national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2006.