戏台 "Blood Opera"

By April Liao

The first time I saw you, your face was etched in light like the sun, a leaking yolk, on an August morning of 1954. The gods had sewn gold thread into the clouds. But the musky scent of blood lingered, a sense of foreboding of what was to come.

I was sold to the Imperial Beijing Opera at five for a sack of rice. The only memory I hold of my mother is a flimsy touch of lips against cheekbone laced with mellow, balmy tenderness — an euphonic and foreign thing.

Those were the years when the wind itself smelled of hunger. In the late 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong at its head, had promised post-civil-war land and food reform, the dawn of a classless golden age. I did not witness the tens of millions of deaths from malnourishment and poverty during the subsequent Great Leap Forward. I only saw sun-browned faces stripped of fat to a skeleton, labourers whose thin backs were molded in permanent hunches from scything wheat, mothers trading off children in exchange for a bowl of watery starch soup.

To think of the past is to cast a net in an attempt to hone the portrait of the moon on a lake — it always slips through my fingers just so. Time slinks by, and I let it. Childhood left me few souvenirs. The days were gruelling, filled with training from dawn to dusk. When I bathe, my back boasts purple and blue bruises long browned, like withered peonies — the blessing of thick bamboo whips. The scuffing of cold gray stone against faces is no stranger, the drip of blood from beatings dulled to a lullaby-like presence. To make the child, first break the child. It is, after all, the crazing of fine porcelain china that catches the eye of the beholder.

You never told me how long you’d been in the opera. When I joined, you were seven. They called you the turtledove, and for good reason; your voice, evocative and rich with a twinge of melancholy, floated high above the rest — perfect for a sheng male role in Peking Opera. The rest of us were but chalky moons orbiting your luminary star.

I’m still unsure how this happened, but our bond strengthened steadily, like brother and sister, as the years unfolded. One could say we were each others’ only solace.

One clear night of 1960, when I was twelve and you were fourteen, you pointed out the stars Niulang and Zhinu: the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, a pair of lovers scattered across the Milky Way by the Mother of Heaven due to their forbidden love. The blinking specks of diamond against the dark, you explained, symbolized the union of mortal and deity. The two lovers have gazed at each other across the heavens for centuries, only to be reunited once a year across a bridge of magpies. Under the pale, throbbing gaze of a crescent moon, we linked young but calloused pinkies and promised that we, too, would always find each other, no matter what.

We would watch the seniors rehearse their plays. My favorite of all was Farewell My Concubine. This thousand-year-old play told the tale of Xiang Yu, a tragic warlord who, instead of fleeing across the Black River in cowardice, chose to meet his end standing against an onslaught of thousands of enemy troops. His lover Lady Yu, a legendary beauty, bids him farewell in ballads and dances, before seizing his sword and drawing it across her own throat as a symbol of their eternal love. It mesmerized, enthralled me — that the years of practice, of singing until my voice croaked, of balancing on beams and bending bodies, were for a purpose so ravishing.

Xiao Hu, a fellow apprentice, had attempted to escape the abuse of training a few years prior. They found his body frozen beneath the icy swirls of the Golden River, bloated blue lips parted in a final, enervated breath. I had not dared to go look at the corpse. I hung on. I hungered to be a part of it all, for the discipline to bring nirvana, for the pain to be alchemy.

You, we decided, would one day play Xiang Yu, and I would play Lady Yu, except the latter was a joke. You were a virtuoso, touched in the womb by the god of song. But me? They called me a swallow, for my jittery, high-strung enunciations.

“Swallows are good omens,” you used to tell me. “You know spring swallows? They return in pairs and nest every year. They represent harmony, good fortune, love and fidelity.” I rolled my eyes. As if harmony could save me from being thrown out on the streets.

In 1965, we celebrated your seventeenth birthday, my sixteenth, together in the summer heat: licking sticky fingers, drops of nectar from half-rotten yams chiming sweet harmonies that seldom graced the mouths of anyone in those days.

A few months prior, you were bestowed the role of Xiang Yu in Farewell My Concubine, to no one’s incredulity; I, the messenger soldier who informs him of his imminent defeat. For days, you lingered in a haphazard state of guilt, but I assured you I couldn’t be happier; and it was true, it really was.

Still, at night, I would run my fingers along the silky fabrics of Lady Yu’s costume, admiring the carefully embroidered birds and flowers, red upon gold upon cyan upon pink, and imagine myself delivering a perfect treble on the wooden stage. None of us knew we were on the brink of revolution.

History unfolded June 1966, when Mao officially inaugurated the Four Olds. These were the Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs and Old Habits. Any link to counter-revolutionary China that would “jeopardize the prosperity of our people” was marked for obliteration.

The Red Guard, a group of high school and college students supporting Mao, were mobilized to purge and eradicate all “counter-revolutionary” peoples and traditions. They moved fervently, with a zealous quality: marching through streets, orchestrating mass violence and public humiliations. As arduous as it was to erase thousands of years of rich cultural history, they did their best, leaving trails of blood-stained summer behind them that decayed and marinated in the sweltering heat.

By August of 1966, the violence flared like wildfire; five or six times a day I would see men in dunce hats, or weighed down by large signs hung around their necks, being paraded past. They were publicly humiliated to taunts of the roaring swarm of onlookers. Blindingly red characters proclaimed their names and derogatory crimes:

Pei Baihua: DOG-FACED counter-revolutionary!

Li Qiukui: ANTI-PARTY THUG！

More than twenty years prior, in 1942, Mao had famously stated that “there is no such thing as art for art’s sake.” Yet Opera was different — its soul whispered of centuries-old stories: a collage of the peoples’ protests against tyrants and evil monsters, a myriad of heroes preserved in verse. This was exactly what needed to be abolished.

Now, in 1963, Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, revised and produced a new set of operas that were “correct” to be performed, known as model operas. In contrast to the traditional stories steeped in centuries of culture, these operas featured proletarian protagonists and were meant to be revolutionary and contemporary. Though traditional opera was not outright banned yet, performing it had become dangerous territory by the beginning of the 1966 Cultural Revolution.

One day in late November of 1966, I was out bargaining for grain for the operahouse when I was caught in the midst of a struggle session. The sky was gray and dreary, the streets of Beijing ashen. I was swept into the parade, jostled by cheering men and women, toward a square lined with storefronts. The brick walls were plastered by aggressive flaps of paper — Maoist propaganda, denunciations of counter-revolutionaries, red upon red, like pinned butterflies yearning to take flight.

In Chinese, the idiom 人山人海 literally translates to a mountain and ocean of people. I squeezed my way amongst the crowd of jet-black heads until I saw the source of commotion: the opera master wobbling on a flimsy wooden stool, hands bound behind his back, a puppet of the winter wind.

The audience’s chants swelled to a storm as two Red Guard bludgeoned the back of the old man’s knees with thick sticks, causing him to fall face forward onto the cold stone tiles, blood mapping rivers across his cotton tunic. They beat him, made him do this again and again, until he fell to the wintery ground and could no longer get up.

A Red Guard stood beside him, voice rising high above the congregation of people. I stared at his stiff green jacket, the bright red armband emblazoned New Red Guard. He couldn't have been older than 17. The guard slammed his baton on the ground and cleared his throat, to a chorus of supportive roars.

“Comrades! Chairman Mao once said that evil fostered by anti-proletarian views have poisoned the peoples’ minds for thousands of years! Witness this man, this feudal and capitalist traitor, Jin Xiaohong, who propagated Old Culture by allowing his opera to perform counter-revolutionary works! Comrades, we must join together to eradicate the roots of the old society and overthrow the cultural establishment!”

The opera master lifted his head a fraction of an inch. His eyes, hollow and glazed, met mine and I think I saw his blood-tinged lips move numbly. Then the Red Guard brought his baton down onto his skull in one clean, arching sweep. Dirty red tinged the already dirty stone ground.

“Let us rejoice for our dear benefactory, Chairman Mao, our red sun, the Great Leader, Great Teacher, and Great General! More dear to us than father or mother!”

I watched in silence, held up by the surging masses. I was unable to look away. My teeth grit like bloody pomegranates leaking into raw gums; after my tongue regained consciousness, I tasted salt. Repugnance threatened a wave of nausea; the acrid smell of death burning my tongue.

“Whoa, steady there, comrade!” A gruff hand pulled me upright. The man gave me a yellow-toothed smile. My gaze hitched on the little red book clutched in his left hand, undoubtedly filled with Maoist propaganda. I pushed him away and vomited on the ground to the static noise of the dispersing horde, vomited until I saw blood.

The next day, a comrade told us in a stiffly fervent, autonomously passionate voice: “Comrades, you must have heard of the execution of Jin Xiaohong, a traitor to the people! Do not fear, for it is never too late to be cleansed of counter-revolutionary ideologies! You must make contributions to galvanize our historic crusade!”

She pulled out two thick, coarse paper booklets and thrust them in my trembling hands. “You must practice and perform these pieces from now on, to promote our glorious cause!”

I took the model opera playscripts wordlessly and handed them to you. We both knew what these were; you threw aside a copy of The Legend of the Red Lantern and returned to your face paint. I retrieved it from the dusty wooden floor and read: “We, like Father, all have a bright, red heart.”

I watched you continue to apply your makeup with a tremulous hand: accentuating the eyes and rouging the cheeks, balming the hair with elm syrup. With an ox-bristle pen you drew broad and heavy brows and a firm, wide, resolved mouth. Eyes, lined with black, slanted downwards, betraying hubris and tragedy: a perfect Xiang Yu.

There was an art in Lianpu, the facepaint of opera. Red for loyalty. White for traitors, depicted as a sign of treachery so commonplace in 脸谱 - but here, a symbol of fierceness, volatility and courage meddled with bittersweet sadness hinting at the character’s future.

Overcome by sudden emotion, I ran over and seized your hands; they were cold as ice. Other members of the operahouse were watching in trepidation. “We must perform these pieces! You don’t understand how bloody it was, please! You’re the star, we’ll all follow you!”

Your eyes met mine. Under the sunlight, they were freckled brown and gold; I realized that we were no longer children, but teenagers touching adulthood. This terrified me for reasons I didn't understand. I looked down at my feet, ashamed — but was I really wrong? Instead, I helped you into your yellow brocade robe and headdress of the Hegemon King.

The last time I ever saw you, you were a drowning moon, a watery sliver of fingernail. I opened my window, unscathed by your sharp luminescence, and you illuminated the dark bowels of the street. I wanted to shout, for you to leave its hollow gluttony, or to take me with you.

“Liqiang?”

You looked around, startled by voice, and ran across the street up to my window. There it was again: me and you, the swallow and the turtledove. An euphony in reminiscence.

I spilled kerosene over the musty wooden windowsill, fingers fumbling to pull open worn curtains. “What are you doing?”

You teetered on tiptoes like a mouse hiding from the jaws of an advancing cat. Your thin cotton shirt was plastered by sweat against your body, betraying an underfed, thin frame. I could count your ribs. Your faded cloth shoes gave way to grimy toes; you were going to catch a cold in that breeze.

“I’m leaving,” you whispered, voice shaking.

“Where?” I had expected this.

You shrugged. “I don’t know. Will you come with me?”

I laughed, but it came out as a scoff. “You think you can escape the redness? Look around, it’s everywhere.”

You gave me a sad smile. “So be it.”

The next day, I took the coins you forced into my pocket and meandered through the hutongs, wandering from shop to shop aimlessly. The snow was bright, painfully so, and I couldn’t tell if the redness that lingered behind my retinas came from the posters plastered on the walls, or the upside-down 福 characters on doors — a common decoration during the encroaching New Year.

It was when I passed a stand of candied hawthorns that I heard the standowner gossiping with a straggly old man.

“Did you hear? They found a body under the Golden Bridge. A youngster.”

“A girl or a boy?”

“A girl, maybe — I don’t know, it could’ve just as easily been a boy. Not like it matters now, with all those deaths.”

A girl, maybe. My heart leapt back into my chest, my breath coming out in incoherent gasps of smoky white, congealing in the frosty air. It was true — famine and starvation weighed down the skies like clouds, and people had been falling like raindrops for a long while now. Still, I was too scared to go see who the corpse was. What if? . . .

By the winter of 1968, plays such as Farewell My Concubine were prohibited. Instead, I sang praises of our leader in an unnatural, high-pitched and perfunctory voice to muttered applause from a steadily thinning crowd.

Still, that December night, I smelled the smoke from three hutongs away. The entire city must have heard the creaking of joints as the operahouse folded upon itself and collapsed within a heap of disassembled wooden limbs. With the groan of a dragon, smoke spiralled into the air, its last, fiery breath.

I was no longer surprised; this was a generation meant to be consumed by fire. Burning was their fate.

In Farewell My Concubine, Lady Yu tells Xiang Yu, “The Han army has conquered our land; laments of Chu ring all around. My lord, your spirit is spent — how can your servant continue to live?” I thought, as I stared, mesmerised, that that finally made sense now. Life is but an opera play. An opera play is life.

In 1976, with the death of Chairman Mao, the decade-long cultural reform was over, leaving a mass of destruction in its wake. The country finally began to breathe, but I no longer sang. My voice had long withered in the flames of revolution.

The flow of time, as written by Song Dynasty poet Jiang Jie, forsakes us with ease; we delight at the cherries reddening and the plantains greening, yet fail to realise the frost creeping through our own hair.

I write this in the winter of 2025. I now live in North America, 美洲, the Beautiful Continent, with my daughter, her husband, and their grandchild, a baby boy who would go on to enjoy a chaste childhood and go to university.

I have always cherished and will always love my homeland, but it holds too many memories, both sweet and harrowing.

This year, I am seventy-seven years old. In the Analects, Confucius states that seventy is a year of following your heart’s desire, and my deepest desire is this: for history to never repeat itself.

I must say I have lived a decent life. You will, of course, call me a coward if ever we meet again, though I believe that interaction will not occur in this lifetime. I never sacrificed for dignity or justice — yet I was never fit for the role of Lady Yu anyway, to harmonize with your exquisite tune.

Sometimes, I look into the crippled sunset bleeding into the horizon and hear your voice, sweet as a turtledove, echoing faintly, singing Xiang Yu’s song — an elegy, a requiem:

力拔山兮氣蓋世，時不利兮騅不逝。騅不逝兮可奈何，虞兮虞兮奈若何! *

And sometimes, just sometimes, I look up at the stars and wonder — did you ever reach your magpie bridge?

The End

*The song of Gaixia:

戏台/ Crimson Opera