Last Encore: The Final Days of an Aging Opera Troupe | 人间 · 英文版

With the sky dark due to the rain and the theater’s dim lights, you could hardly tell the time. A black ventilator stood by the door, while a memorial tablet for Emperor Xuanzong of Tang hung on the wall with a few burnt incense sticks. The legend has it that Xuanzong was a keen drum player and played the role of xiaohualian (小花脸) in Peking Opera. Legend said that he and his ministers would enjoy opera inside a pear garden, and thus “pear garden (梨园)” became a shorthand for the whole realm of Chinese opera.

Opposite the censer was a dim stage dressed in yellow silk that had been lifted to reveal the large red backdrop behind. On the stage, there was a table flanked by several chairs. The auditorium was a humble bench placed below. A sign on the wall had a call for donations in red and black characters.

The backstage area had somewhat better lighting, even if by means of a bunch of electric wires pulled at random. Particles of dust floated by the light of a naked light bulb hung beside the dressing table. An assortment of photographs from past performances was on display under a glass sheet on the table. The wall was lined with peeling cabinets piled with flower boxes. The oily scent of face powder and paint lingered in the air, and some clothes hung from a wire in front of the table. Several exhaust fans had been installed around the shed, and a white suspended ceiling hung from the roof. Two dead clocks hung on the wall, completing the scene.

On her third day of shooting, Zhang Fan met an elderly lady everyone called Zhou Ying. Pointing with a pen at a sheet of paper fixed to the wall, she was taking her sweet time giving the troupe instructions for the day’s performance, needing to sit down every now and then. It was only then that Zhang realized this energetic granny was the director of the troupe, who, at 82 years of age, still showed up at the front lines of production every day.

Zhou always carried a backpack, where she kept the opera scripts she’d penned herself. She would arrive an hour before curtain, fumble with a large pushpin to fix the instructions to the wall, and give everyone the information on the performance that day: what the punchlines were, who would play each role. No detail escaped her.

A corner on the right side of the stage was assigned to the band. The qin and erhu were packed in their bags, while the large and small hall drums were spread out to allow their surfaces to dry. Bells stood quietly aside. The musician would arrive, holding a blue plastic cup in his hand that he would sip from before leaving it on the edge of the stage and lighting himself a cigarette. The smoke coiled upwards around the music stand.

The actors dealt with the trembling of their old hands by picking up their hand mirrors and keeping them close as they put on their makeup. Just behind, a dusty framed poster in the style of the “Modern Girl” of the early 20th century seemed to stand witness against the ravages of time.

The audience trickled in. Some walked with canes, and many sported gray hairs. The performance was about to start.

When the program ended, 16-year-old Zhou briefly returned to her native Guilin before being relocated to Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, to join the provincial theater troupe. Li stayed in Liuzhou, where she worked for a while in a department store. She was in her 40s when she started joining opera performances again in Yufeng Park at night, at a time when the glory days of singing revolutionary “model operas” had passed and Gui Opera once again caught the attention of the public. This is how a bunch of retired actors made their comeback to folk theater under the banner of the Wenyuan Guicai Opera Troupe.

With the 1980s on China’s doorstep, youths were more than happy to dance to the rhythm of new trends, rocking flared trousers to the movies and listening to pop music. Liuzhou, too, continued on its path to modernity, though this was bad news for teahouses and traditional theaters. Lacking a permanent venue, the Wenyuan Troupe was lucky to rely on their supportive audience to come to help them carry their tables, chairs, and cabinets as they migrated from one dance hall to the next.

It was then that Li invited Zhou, now freshly retired from opera school, to join her troupe. Li held Zhou in great regard. “She used to be a national first-class actress who could handle any challenge onstage, so good at singing the xiaodan (young female lead). And she’s still in good health.”

After all, the theater was in Zhou’s blood. Her father, Zhou Wensheng, was dubbed the “King of Xiaosheng (小生),” famous for singing a male role in Chinese opera known as “little gentleman.” Her mother, Tao Hongju, was a famous socialite in Guilin. They mingled with the likes of Yan Jinyan, known by his stage name of Feng Huangming and famed in the 1920s as the first of the four famous dan opera singers in Guizhou Opera. It was under his expert tutelage that Young Zhou Ying started learning Kunqu opera at the tender age of 9. Her training would then continue with actor Liu Chuanheng.

Zhou usually gave instructions to the Wenyuan Troupe from a corner near the stage’s edge. Once, she fell and rolled down the steps. She owed her crooked back to the mishap. She was not able to stand for long periods without her legs getting sore, but sitting down didn’t bring her much relief either. Eventually, a hospital examination revealed that she required surgery for three of her intervertebral disks just above her waist.

Zhou undertook strenuous daily practice, getting up bright and early in the morning to train her voice and stretch her muscles. She may have shed tears from the pain, but she wouldn’t ever cry out. The troupe staged each play for a total of three months, and Zhao Ying trudged along, refusing to tend to her back and worsening her old injuries.

In 2017, 80-year-old Zhou Ying was hospitalized six times in five months, including three rounds of surgery for her ailing back. The first operation concluded with a spell of ten days resting at home, but she ended up back in the hospital for further surgery. She got tearful visits from her audience, unable to hold back from reminiscing about the old times. “I still remember you onstage back then…”

She’d been an unstoppable force of nature for so many years, but not anymore. Now she was a rail-thin elderly woman who couldn’t even stand for five minutes. Her hair was falling out in handfuls, too.

“Stop recalling the past,” Zhou advised her visitors. “And don’t you cry. I’ll be just fine.”

Standing up was still out of the question even after the surgery, so her exercises were constrained to whatever she could do while holding on to the wall. Small slips she could handle, but she still sustained three serious falls. Pain was thwarting the willpower of the ever-stubborn Zhou to carry on. In the past, if you called “Principal Zhou” from downstairs of her apartment, you could see her dashing downstairs from her sixth floor, and then back up again, as though she flew rather than walked. Now, she dragged herself from floor to floor.

Zhou’s days on the stage were past. Instead, she focused on her work backstage, though working on scripts was no walk in the park either. She had to read plenty of books, do her research on TV dramas for inspiration, and pour over her outlines. When she was getting ready to leave the hospital, she’d rushed to stop her daughter Yu Fang from discarding a martial arts novel next to her pillow: “No! I still need it!”

She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and joint pain that had weakened her hands and made it a challenge to hold her pen as she burned the midnight oil to work on her scripts.

Then there was Gong Yaozhu, born to an operatic family and known by everyone as Third Sister. Her actual sister had been none other than Gong Yaoqin, a famous Gui Opera actress who died by suicide after being wronged during the Cultural Revolution. Third Sister moved to Liuzhou with her husband in her youth and started singing with Li Lizhu upon her retirement. She’d suffered several strokes and her hands and feet no longer fully obeyed her. When putting on her makeup, her hands shook so much that she couldn’t even draw her eyebrows right. But she still made it to every single performance.

That day she was acting as an imperial bodyguard. She put on her makeup while the rest of the troupe chitchatted about strokes. You’d think they were talking about the weather, and Third Sister recalled her own attack as she reached to her eyebrows: “It was a real mess when I was in the hospital. I couldn’t speak well.”

Li Lizhu chimed in, “Yeah, because your brain can no longer handle speaking.”

“In fact, my throat is worthless these days,” said Third Sister. Still, she started humming. Li, listening by her side, tilted her head and encouraged her. “Yes, that’s right. Why not sing louder and see how it goes?”

Third Sister cleared her throat and turned the volume up, trying to hide the burden of her advancing age in her rendition of an aria from The Legend of the White Snake (《白蛇传》): “With both their swords unsheathed, the monstrous duo of green and white snakes cast a death sentence on the bald-headed donkey.”

Li chimed in until she sighed with a guilty smile, “I’m out of breath.” Both women laughed together.

Li’s biggest struggle was troupe members not being available. They used to have a regular musician in the troupe, but he deserted them after a dispute. Li had to find a replacement, except that one too fell through, so she was forced to make up with the first guy.

However, she wasn’t always that lucky. With a dwindling number of actors, one person was often forced to play multiple roles. Such was the case of actor Zhong Nianying, who switched from a maid into a robber in one show, jumping from one costume to another half a dozen times. But those who stayed with the troupe were committed to it. Actors were known to have rushed out of the hospital with needles barely out of their veins to go back to the stage after a bout of fever.

Looking at these elderly ladies and gentlemen, director Zhang Fan often thought of Gong Er, the stubborn female lead in The Grandmaster (《一代宗师》). Much like her, they too lived in their own timeline along with their sparse but enthusiastic audience. Here, Gui Opera had carved itself a small shelter away from time. Zhang was a guest to these people and their drama, both on and off the stage. It was their show.

Li Lizhu was in poor health herself. She’d suffered from gout and rheumatism for the last three decades, tossing and turning in bed at night from the unbearable pain. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t hold a thing. In fact, she couldn’t even write much nor put on her makeup. But her spirit still soared onstage.

“I don’t know just how much longer I can last” Li admitted. “So, I’ll just go on for as long as I can. As long as I live, I can’t stop singing.”

The troupe sang for 13 years at the Shuiren Machine Factory on Rongjun Road. Fifth Sister-in-Law, one of their most loyal spectators, found the venue. She lived far away and was bedridden twice after a stroke, but her love of theater had her drag herself to each and every performance. Sometimes, she’d wait alone at the bus stop in vain; drivers passed by without ever stopping at the sorry sight of her elderly frame leaning on her crutches. She’d leave her house at 11:30 and arrive at the theater at 2. She needed someone to assist her in walking, so this other lady, Ms. Lu, often sat next to her, and the pair helped each other out once the performance had finished.

Early on, the troupe had some invitations to perform in places where the organizer could only provide accommodation. So the actors relied on the audience to follow along and buy them groceries, even helping them cook.

The troupe performed in an old building prior to their move to Guangya Market. The theater was on the third floor, and the elderly crowd had to grip the stair rails tightly as if climbing up a rope. Random sofas and benches donated by different households were arranged in a row and the elderly audience plopped down on their seats. Some ate their boxed lunches, while others dozed off and some chatted. Yet others squinted their eyes and listened to the opera. One thing was for sure: swapping snacks came first for the audience. Their bags were like on-the-go grocery stores. They saved the steamed buns, zongzi, and tea eggs for the actors. With their old buddies, they’d share an assortment of walnuts, red dates, rice crackers, and melon seeds.

Fifth Sister-in-Law would sometimes call Li Lizhu before arriving: “Sis, how many people are there today?” She wanted to know so that she could buy enough zongzi for the troupe.

“Enough that everyone does get their share,” Li would reply, laughing.

And so, Fifth Sister-in-Law would always get proper acknowledgment before each performance: “Our gratitude today goes to Fifth Sister-in-Law, our rice dumpling supplier.” Li recalled, “We knew they’d feel flattered by this small courtesy.”

In fact, the whole audience took turns buying food for the troupe, as though they’d made a promise to keep the actors fed. And with full bellies, the troupe always made sure to thank their benefactors onstage.

Zhou Ying attested to their audience’s loyalty: “They just keep coming, no matter the weather.”

It rained an awful lot in Liuzhou. It had been raining non-stop since April. That summer, the rain was heavier than normal, often alternating with thunder and lightning. The sky darkened and seemed to be torn apart, and it felt like a river was pouring from a hole onto the earth. Once, during the downpour that made the theater roof crackle, the troupe arrived for work shaking the wind and rain off their bodies before walking inside. Only some seven or eight spectators awaited them.

The actors asked Li Lizhu whether they’d still stage a performance that day.

“Even if only two people come and don’t pay, we sure as hell will,” she said.

Many felt that Li was going too far with her insistence that the show must go on. “Why, be our guest and starve yourself onstage, you old stubborn mule! Just don’t drag us with you.”

Li could not care less. “Nonsense. So you lot really plan on sending your audience back home empty-handed after coming all the way down here?”

Zhou Ying seconded her just as firmly. “Quit the whining already! These old folks came here with their walking sticks under the heavy rain and you all got the nerve to try and cancel the show? Do you truly cherish Gui Opera? And you want to let them down? Shame on you.”

With that, Zhou went out and reassured their scarce audience. “Sit down, please. Your seats are booked. The two plays today are on the house, as long as you remember your date with us tomorrow.”

The rain was only getting heavier.

The theater’s manager was Zhu Mingtian. He was in charge of booking venues, folding costumes, boiling tea, and just about anything else you can think of. He was a tall and loud man in his 70s, and when he talked onstage, his voice boomed all over. “Ladies and gentlemen, the grand finale of the Legend of the Three Sisters is about to start.” Zhu would briefly pause here to count heads before bellowing again: “Just some eight or nine people today!” Then, he’d slip backstage again.

Slowly but steadily, the audience showed up and the troupe ended up selling over 60 tickets that day.

Li was pleased. “They just keep flocking here the more it rains. We must be some fun after all.”

However, two hours later, the rain had yet to stop. Zhou Ying was less optimistic: “Very endearing, but we’re in a real pickle now.”

Backstage, actors left one after another as soon as they’d removed their makeup. Manager Zhu passed something to Li across the table, but her hand couldn’t make contact. It took the pair a couple of seconds to realize their hands were still far apart.

“Rats, I just really can’t see a thing with this blind eye of mine,” Li Lizhu lamented.

Zhu asked, “So what business do you have to sing when you’re blind already?”

“Well, I’m not singing with my eyes, now, am I?” Li glanced at Yu Yulian, still busy removing her make-up. “Now look at Yulian’s bulging eyes. Don’t they stand out? The girl got the best eyes in the troupe.”

Yu smiled at Li’s teasing. Zhu’s sharp tongue did not miss a beat. “Why don’t you buy yourself some carp eyes for a snack? Nine hundred yuan a catty.”

“Reckon I’ll go for pearls,” Li Lizhu took off her wig. “Now, you take care of this.”

Three years ago, Zhou received a letter from an old couple who had once briefly visited Liuzhou, and recently heard that the three major theaters—Liuzhou, Dongfeng, and Red Star—were gone.

Long time no see, comrade Zhou Ying! We’re an old couple in our eighties, and there’s no hope for us to return to Liuzhou. But we did come here on the occasion of our retirement, over two decades ago, to watch Gui Opera. This joy has now also been taken away from us, as we’ve learned that the three major theaters have closed their doors. We’ve heard that you are still alive, though some of the old actors have already passed. It’s our hope that this letter will convey our wishes for your good health.”

Saddened, Zhou Ying burned the letter.

Many elders visited Zhou to drink tea and lament over the old days. But Zhou always cut them off. “No use in talking like that.”

Zhou was of the opinion that a person can only keep on going if they leave behind the past. Back in the day, people would line up to buy tickets for the Lunar New Year performances, which played over the whole month, and peddlers hummed the tunes as they rode their tricycles down the street.

Back then, the cultural workers’ compound where Zhou lived was always lively. There were four rehearsal halls, each assigned to a different genre—Gui Opera, Cantonese Opera, Caidiao, and the Song and Dance Troupe. The bell rang in the courtyard at 8 in the morning, sending actors out of their homes and toward their rehearsal spaces. Gongs and drums echoed from the rooms onto the courtyard, where you could always find someone warming up their voice next to someone stretching their legs, while others danced with batons and practiced somersaults without ever disturbing one another. The noon hour was invariably serenaded by classic Gui Opera arias played on the radio, and evenings were reserved for performances.

“Now I sit at home and it’s always a wild guess with the rehearsal space. Sometimes they’re busy, sometimes empty; sometimes lively, sometimes quiet.” Zhou was a little disappointed. “Actors from Guilin want to come here to perform because it’s all over for them there. And soon enough it’ll be over for us here, too.”

So this is how Zhou went about her memories. The letter was burned, the photos were given to Zhang Fan, and if it were up to her, none of her scripts would survive her either.

Every time Zhang came to shoot, she witnessed Zhou working on her scripts and discarding them as she wrote. Min Wu sometimes stopped her: “No, don’t burn that one. Just put it over there.”

Zhang, too, would sometimes rescue some discarded script from the trashcan whenever Zhou Ying wasn’t paying attention. Gradually, she grew attached to these elders. Even after her filming officially came to an end in April 2019, she still returned three times to Liuzhou that very same year—this time, to record more footage for the sake of the elders themselves.

In July 2019, Zhou Ying was busy writing a script for Untying the Red Silk Knot Back-Handed (《背解红罗》) to honor the promise she’d made to Fifth Sister-in-Law, who longed to see this drama onstage. She got as far as the fifth volume before another fall during an exercise session at home landed her right back in the hospital.

Then came two bouts of pneumonia in September. Zhou had to stay in the hospital during the first bout, and sent her regrets to Fifth Sister-in-Law via Min Wu, though she was resolute: “As long as the troupe still stands, you will get your play, even if I am not there.” She doubled down on her message through Li, too: “Will you tell Fifth-Sister-in-Law that I am really sorry?”

One day, Zhou waited for a long time, wheelchair-bound, outside the clinic where she was meant to undergo an examination. When the doors finally opened, Zhou went in and found none other than Li Lizhu, checking in herself. Li had arrived at the clinic just a day after Zhou. Now, their beds were next to each other. Later, Li recalled the fun of it all: “What a coincidence it was.”

In Li’s case, it had been a sudden heart illness. Her heart could seemingly no longer beat by itself; her chest was tight and her breathing cut short whenever she tried to talk too much. An electrocardiogram revealed her blood was no longer dense enough in nutrients to nourish her heart. The doctor, alarmed that Li could be at grave risk without supervision, ordered her immediate hospitalization.

Unfortunately, nine days later, Li couldn’t claim to feel any better. Not only did her chest still hurt, her heart rate couldn’t go back up and her back had started tormenting her again at night. She had to go back to the hospital, and that’s how she found Zhou Ying there, with both her hands already bruised from needles for her treatment.

On the evening of September 28, a shivering Zhou Ying had sat in her living room area. By 3 a.m., she was soaked in her own sweat and her throat raged. The nanny in charge of her care had left, so Zhou could only stay in bed, half gone already until the couple across the hall took her to the hospital.

As it turned out, Zhou Ying had a habit of circling days off on her calendar. The circle she drew on September 28 was almost her last one.

When Director Zhang returned to Liuzhou to visit Zhou Ying, she found her lying on her hospital bed, shrunken to skin and bones. Zhang wanted to take a picture with her before leaving, but Zhou refused. “Just leave. I won’t take a picture with you.”

Still, Zhou Ying had it in her to comfort Li at the hospital. Li was anxious about the future of the troupe. In autumn, Second Sister called her: “No performances yet? It’s getting cold.” From May to October, the sweltering weather forced the troupe to suspend their performances, though rent was still due by the end of that year.

Li kept tossing options in her mind. Should the troupe stay at their current venue, or move again? With Zhou offstage due to her waning health, how could she handle both the scripting of the plays and tending to the actors? She herself wasn’t the picture of vitality.

Upon her discharge, Li set out immediately to contact her fellow actors.

Fifth-Sister-in-Law acknowledged the troupe’s predicament: “All of that just to bring some solace to some elderly folks, even if just for a few days. They sang for us daily, not that they were ever paid to do it.”

Fifth Sister-in-Law and other loyal spectators reached out through the grapevine to the city council, trying to secure a new home for the troupe. Some other members of the audience made inquiries themselves and Min Wu trekked just about everywhere to check out venues. Fifth Sister-in-Law knew that Zhang Fan came from Beijing, and looked at her with pleading, innocent eyes full of hope: “Please help us get the word out…thousands of years of history, you see.”

Li wanted to hold a meeting with everyone. Both she and Zhou were sick, and the actors weren’t getting any younger either, nor could most of their audience walk anymore. Their lease at Guangya was about to expire—should they keep on going, or disband the troupe?

A pair of iron tongs did away with the red and yellow cloths that had brightened up the ugly shed. Gone were the costumes that once lingered on the hangers, and the two broken clocks were also dismantled.

Min Wu had his own farewell words to Li before parting ways: “Aunt Li, please take care of yourself until we meet onstage again.”

“Don’t worry,” said Li. “I’ll be waiting for your good news about a new venue.”

And so, the Wenyuan Guicai Opera Troupe temporarily disbanded. But Li couldn’t stay idle. Without the stage, it felt as though a part of her was missing. Her audience yearned too for the return of the troupe. In May 2020, she joined forces with several actors to form the Baili Liujiang Drama Troupe. Her heart condition had improved some, and with great effort, she made it back onstage, though not without taking her medication. Once, before going on stage, she fished a bottle from her bag and shook it, until she realized it was empty. From a second bottle, she took two pills.

The new troupe pooled their resources to rent an 80-square-metre space at 4,000 yuan a month. The audience here was even smaller, sometimes just three or four people. Li, now on ticket duty whenever she was offstage, disclosed that they were now performing every day.

In November 2020, the income of the troupe plummeted, and conflicts ensued. They were supposed to keep performing until the end of 2021 but called it quits by the end of that month.

On the day the troupe disbanded for good, Zhang Fan pleasantly surprised Li Lizhu by flying in from Beijing. “You really do have a heart. A ride or die type, right here.”

“This isn’t the end,” Zhang Fan tried to offer some comfort. “There will be more shows. The day will come.”

“Perhaps that’ll be the case,” Li Lizhu conceded with a laugh. “But I surely won’t be onstage for it.”

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