Guan Yu Fights Qin Qiong

Introduction

A crosstalk duet created by Zhang Jieyao that became a signature piece of the Hou school in Hou Baolin's version

Guan Yu Fights Qin Qiong is a crosstalk duet created by the Tianjin comic Zhang Jieyao, who drew it from a joke in his own printed collection The Sea of Laughter. Zhang, born in 1893 and died in 1971, composed or adapted many new routines of his own. In July 1961 he came to Beijing at the invitation of the Beijing Quyi Troupe and Hou Baolin and recorded eight routines for the Central People's Broadcasting Station, this one among them, with Hou Baolin and Liu Baorui as his straight men. In the early 1960s Hou recast the main figure as Han Fuju and performed the piece with his partner Guo Qiru, and this is the version best known today. In Hou's telling a troupe plays a birthday show in a Jinan household, and the old man celebrating will not accept the opera about Guan Yu and demands a duel between Guan Yu of the Three Kingdoms and Qin Qiong of the Sui and Tang. The two generals lived centuries apart, and the comedy comes entirely from forcing them onto one stage.

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