Gathering Pig Fodder

Introduction

A short Huangmei opera in folk tunes, in which a village girl and a bamboo-shoot guard quarrel and make friends

Gathering Pig Fodder is a traditional short play of Huangmei opera, said to have been made by folk performers from a true incident in Susong county near Anqing. While cutting fodder, the village girl Tao Jinhua accidentally snaps a few bamboo shoots, and Jin Xiaomao, who guards the bamboo grove, takes her for a thief; after a quarrel they find it was all a misunderstanding, make friends and go home singing a flower duet. The duet opens with images of buckwheat and other everyday crops, and its plain words have made it one of the most widely sung Huangmei tunes. Huangmei opera uses its folk-song style huaqiang tunes mainly for short plays like this one, and the China Intangible Cultural Heritage site lists it among the most representative works of the form. At the 1952 East China opera festival in Shanghai, Yan Fengying made her name with this play and the meeting scene of The Fairy Couple.