In the avenues and alleyways
New play about old hutong marks the first stage adaptation of classic Liu Xinwu novel, Chen Nan reports.
IWhen I was a child, the Bell and Drum Towers were simply buildings to me. Now, they are many things. The two towers are full of memories and, most importantly, it is about the people who lived in the neighborhood for generations. They took care of and supported one another in daily life.”
Liu Xinwu, author and scriptwriter
t is morning on Dec 12, 1982. A courtyard, hidden in a narrow hutong in downtown Beijing, is about to get busy.
It’s the day Xue Jiyue and Pan Xiuya are getting married. Xue’s mother, Auntie Xue, is determined to give her son a perfect wedding and tries to keep everything moving forward smoothly.
The wedding brings lots of guests to the party, however, small things seem to go wrong. The young couple is hardly a romantic ideal. At 25 years old, they both have the idea of what finding a “partner” means, but the word “love” never crosses their minds. The guests also have their own stories, especially those who cause the disturbance.
With the Xue family wedding as its fulcrum, Chinese writer Liu Xinwu paints a vivid picture of the lives of local residents in Beijing in the early 1980s in his award-winning novel, Zhong Gu Lou (Bell and Drum Towers).
A Chinese play Zhong Gu Lou, which premiered at Beijing’s Poly Theater on Nov 18, marks the first time the novel, first published in 1985, has been adapted for the stage.
The play was scheduled to be staged for three shows from Nov 18 to 20. However, due to the recent surge in COVID19 cases in the capital, the two later shows were, unfortunately, canceled.
Like the novel, which not only recounts events that take place in the courtyard throughout the day, the play also paints a touching, and sometimes hilarious, portrait of the people who are in attendance.
“I read the novel many years ago and I felt connected to it because I am also a Beijing native and grew up in a courtyard nearby Di’anmen, which, by bicycle, was about a 10-minute ride away from the Bell and Drum Towers,” says Huang Ying, director of the play.
“I still remember that my parents took me to a small restaurant in that area to have lamb skewers when I was a child.”
Huang, 43, graduated from China Agricultural University with a major in biochemistry and molecular biology. He decided to become a theater director after watching Antique, a classic play by Chinese director Lin Zhaohua.
At age 22, Huang was enrolled to study directing at the Central Academy of Drama and now, as one of the most successful theater directors in China, has over 50 plays under his belt.
With his latest effort, Zhong Gu Lou, Huang visited Liu several times to discuss his ideas for adapting the novel into a play. Huang narrowed down the number of characters — about 50 in the book — to 20. The original nine families involved in the novel were trimmed down to four families, making the play about 2 hours and 50 minutes.
Hidden inside Beijing’s traditional
hutong, a web of narrow alleys in the center of the city, the courtyards, or
siheyuan, are considered a symbol of old Beijing, since many have been replaced by modern skyscrapers. Huang also infused the play with his own memories of the hutong and courtyards of 1980s Beijing.
“The supporting characters, or the wedding guests, provide lots of laughs,” says Huang.
“I moved to Beijing when I was 8 years old in 1950 and I grew up in the area of the Bell and Drum Towers,” says Liu, 80, who was born in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Zhong Gu Lou won him the Mao Dun Literature Prize, a prestigious book award in China.
The novel was published in English with the name, The Wedding Party, in 2021 by Amazon Crossing, which was translated by Singaporean writer and editor, Jeremy Tiang.
“When I was a child, the Bell and Drum Towers were simply buildings to me. Now, they are many things. The two towers are full of memories and, most importantly, it is about the people who lived in the neighborhood for generations. They took care of and supported one another in daily life,” says Liu.
The writer named the novel after the iconic landmarks, which boast a history dating back to the Yuan Dynasty (12711368). Nowadays, it is known as part of the Beijing Central Axis — a 7.8-kilometer-long north-south line running through the center of the historical neighborhood of Beijing, which is seeking UNESCO World Heritage status at the World Heritage Committee in 2024.
“In the novel, there are many contradictions between history and reality, as well as tradition and innovation, since people were experiencing lifestyle changes following reform and openingup in 1978,” adds Liu.
“Through the wedding party, you can see what people back then thought about marriage and family relationships. You can also see the fashion and wedding traditions of the 1980s. For example, Xue’s family gives the bride a Swiss Rado watch as a wedding gift. All these have changed dramatically.”
Huang adds: “We made lots of effort to purchase props from the 1980s, such as furniture, daily necessities and clothes, to take the audience back to life as it was 40 years ago.”