The Autumn River

Introduction

Grown out of the Farewell Chase scene of The Jade Hairpin, with only the nun and the boatman on stage

The Autumn River is a classic excerpt of the high-pitched gaoqiang style of Sichuan opera, drawn from The Jade Hairpin, a play written by Gao Lian in the Wanli reign of the Ming. The Sichuan scene grew on its own out of the Farewell Chase scene of the kunqu Jade Hairpin: the nun Chen Miaochang learns that Pan Bizheng has been sent off to sit the examinations and hurries to the river to hire a boat and follow him. Only two roles appear, Chen Miaochang and an old boatman, a playful figure who sees how anxious she is and slows her down with jokes. There is no real boat or water on stage; a single oar and the set footwork of the two actors show the fast current and the rocking of the little boat. The lines draw on the humour of Sichuan dialect, as when the boatman stops her from giving her surname Chen, because it sounds like the word for sinking. In the early 1950s the Peking opera clown Zhang Chunhua learned the piece from the Sichuan clown Zhou Qihe and carried it into Peking opera.