The cause and effect of Liang Zhu's story
Butterfly lovers's love is comparable to the story of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Some people call it the pinnacle of China's classical tragedy, which perfectly expresses the pure and loyal feelings of oriental men and women. For hundreds of years, this position has been the mainstream of Liang Zhu's story interpretation.
The legend of Liang Zhu first appeared in Ten Tales and Xuan Shi in the Tang Dynasty. Although the text is relatively simple, the facial features and eyebrows have already taken shape. A more detailed account of its details is quoted from the Biography of Zhu Yingtai in Yu Yue's Four Chapters of Tea Room in Qing Dynasty. It tells us that there was a woman in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Zhu Yingtai, nicknamed nine niang, who was born in a wealthy family in Shangyu, Zhejiang. Her parents wanted to choose a spouse for her, but she refused, saying that she would let her daughter study abroad and find a real sage. So they disguised themselves as men's clothes and called themselves "nine officials" and wandered around the rivers and lakes. On the way, we got to know each other from Huiji (now Shaoxing) and appreciated each other, so we went to build a study under Bixianyan Mountain in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, studied hard and lived together for three years, but Liang didn't know that Zhu was a woman. When they parted, Zhu Yingtai told Liang Shanbo that he had to go home for an appointment on the appointed day. He will tell his parents that he wants to marry his sister "nine niang", which is actually an implicit promise.
However, Liang Shanbo was afraid to go because of poverty and inferiority, and put off the agreed date. So our parents married their daughter to the Ma family. Later, Liang Shanbo became the magistrate of Yinxian County, and he passed by Jia Zhu on his way to work to inquire about the "Nine Officials". The boy replied that there is only "nine niang" in the family, and there is no such person as "Nine Officials". Liang Shanbo was shocked by this, so he begged to meet on the grounds of classmate friendship. Yingtai covered her face with fan Luo and bowed, that's all. Liang Shanbo regretted it, missed it, and soon died in the office.
According to Historical Records, in the second year, Yingtai married the Ma family and ordered the sailors to detour to the cemetery to pay their respects. When we arrived, there was a strong wind and waves. Yingtai was in tears at the tomb of Shanbo. Suddenly, the earth cracked and Yingtai fell into the grave, leaving only her skirt outside, but it also flew away like a butterfly. Prime Minister Xie An heard this story and played it in the court. The emperor remembered Yingtai's loyal love and named her "adopted daughter". Now when azaleas are in full bloom on the mountain, there are often big disks that can't fly. According to legend, it is the soul of two people, so the world calls this big butterfly Zhu Yingtai. According to Chen's Collection of Books in the Ming Dynasty, in the second year of Jian Yuan in the Southern Qi Dynasty, the local people built a "Bixian Temple" on the old house where they studied, with the words "reading room" engraved on it to commemorate this extraordinary woman. At this point, Liang Zhu's tragedy has become tortuous, euphemistic and moving, and basically completed the development of its narrative structure.
The Legend of Liang Zhu in Gay Grammar
But butterfly lovers's emotional tragedy is inevitable, because this is not an ordinary "relationship between men and women". Although Zhu Yingtai's love for Liang Shanbo is indeed a traditional love for men, there is no need to make a fuss, but Liang Shanbo's feelings for Zhu Yingtai are quite strange and worth pondering. 15 years ago, I wrote an article pointing out that this is a disguised example of homosexuality, which shows the basic characteristics of homosexual culture and aesthetics in China. This long-standing tragedy in wuyue and even the Yangtze River Basin is also an example of discourse misreading (or covering up). From being colloquial and spread to being enlarged and stereotyped in Yue Opera, "Liang Zhu" has been interpreted by heterosexual discourse, so that its true meaning has been distorted for a long time and will continue to be distorted in the future.
The reason why Liang Zhu's story is misunderstood is that his main characters are a man and a woman. The way to eliminate this mistake is to reread the text with gay grammar.
We can clearly see that Liang Shanbo's handsome figure is standing at the entrance of the text of Liang Zhu. He walked alone on the way to visit school. At this moment, another dashing "man" (pretending to be Zhu Yingtai) who went out to visit the school appeared in his lonely vision. This "man" who met a stranger ignited the fire of Liang Shanbo's love with his beauty, shyness and gentleness, prompting him to walk with him in the name of "friendship" and even live in a house. They live in the same room, get along with each other day and night, and their feelings are getting deeper and deeper, while Liang is waiting for a suitable opportunity to carry out emotional attacks.
Zhu Yingtai's male image can be inspired by the Yue Opera Liangzhu. Zhu Yingtai, played by the actress, although dressed as a scribe, is still as beautiful as a fairy, full of spring, and exudes feminine charm from her bones. But the unusual sign is that this "sissy" not only did not arouse Liang Shanbo's disgust, but made him have an unusual "friendship" with the former.
I didn't realize the special meaning implied by Liang's "friendship". She has a crush on Liang, thinking that as long as she returns to female makeup, Liang will be doubly happy and marry her. When leaving, she implicitly sent a grand invitation to Liang Shanbo, hoping that he could go home on time to meet her sister (one of her own code names) "nine niang". This is an old woman's ambiguous and touching appeal to a man.
However, Liang Shanbo didn't keep the appointment as scheduled. He later explained to people that because his family was poor, he had no money to buy bride price and wedding ceremony. This is obviously an evasive remark. A more logical inference is that he is not interested in marrying a woman. He just loves his brother's Do Officer. In order to avoid the "trouble" brought by "marriage", he suppressed his strong desire to meet Zhu Yingtai again. His plan is to delay the engagement of the betrothal gift first, so that the marriage can't be carried out, and then visit at home, so as to forget the infinite thoughts of Zhu Yingtai. But this move dealt a heavy blow to Zhu Yingtai. Her parents refused to allow their daughter to continue spending her youth on a poor apprentice and decided to betroth her to a rich Ma family. Zhu Yingtai can't find any reason to prevaricate, so she can only accept the orders of her parents.
Butterfly lovers's Awakening
Since then, things have become more and more dramatic. When I made a special visit to Ningbo as an official, my children said that only nine niang had no "nine officials", which made Liang suddenly realize that he had made the most serious mistake in his life-falling in love with a real woman. Shocked, he asked to see Zhu himself to confirm his story. Zhu Yingtai covered his face and cheeks with a fan and came out to curl up and bowed to him. Liang was surprised and angry, thinking that he had been greatly deceived-this woman actually pretended to be a man to deceive him and regarded him as a plaything of feelings! This once again confirms the sinister nature of women in the world. However, Zhu's charming image continues to haunt and torment Liang, making him unable to get rid of the sweet memories and cruel reality of the past. Although serving as a county magistrate accords with his ideal of helping the poor, the fatal mental pain eventually pushed him to illness, pain and death.
Hearing the bad news of Liang Shanbo's death, Zhu Yingtai's first reaction was unspeakable sadness and regret. She took Liang's surprise and anger when she saw her "real body" as evidence of Liang's love and regret. She regretted not revealing her gender in time, which caused an irreparable fatal blow to his mind. But at this time, some news about Liang Shanbo's homosexuality may have come intermittently. She was dubious, sad and upset, and embarked on the road of marriage with mixed feelings.
In order to confirm the folk rumors, she ordered the boatman to detour around Qingdao Mountain, stop the boat ashore on the grounds of too much wind and waves, and then go to sweep Liang's grave alone. From then on, until she committed suicide, something indescribable must have happened, which made her finally realize the true nature of Liang Shanbo's feelings for her. She realized that she had been greatly deceived and humiliated: her love for Liang Shanbo was just a game of self-deception.
At the end of the Liang Zhu incident, Zhu Yingtai must have left us in the form of "missing". In despair, she left her embroidered skirt and changed into a man's suit, and fled to a place we couldn't know. Since then, she has been anonymous and her whereabouts are unknown.
In order to find a reasonable explanation for his disappearance, Ma Jia, a local rich man, made great efforts. They fabricated the story that the earth (tomb) was cracked, wishing Taiwan Province to fall into the plot of martyrdom, so as to deceive the world. Even state officials and emperors were convinced of this. In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, where true and false miracles are mixed, people can believe all strange things. I don't want to talk about it. To my surprise, although this case is full of loopholes, after nearly a thousand years of inquiry and explanation, no one has raised necessary objections to it so far.
Butterfly lovers or butterfly lovers?
At the end of Liang Zhu's tragedy, a big butterfly appeared. According to Feng Menglong's love story, after Zhu Yingtai's death, her family burned her clothes in front of the tomb, and the clothes turned into butterflies in the flame. The locals call Huang Die Liang Shanbo and the black butterfly Zhu Yingtai. This once again shows us the homosexual meaning of the story of "Liang Zhu".
According to the Records of Foreign Bodies in Lingnan, there is a giant butterfly as big as a sail in the South China Sea. Excluding wings and feet, it weighs 80 pounds and tastes extremely delicious. This super fleshy butterfly has long since disappeared. The butterfly people see is just a delicate and beautiful LEPIDOPTERA insect, symbolizing human freedom and joy, as well as greed for beautiful things. It is also a strange code for male love. Besides, butterflies and flowers ("recent love") are double symbols of love between men and women.
Philosophical thinking about butterflies first appeared in Zhuang Zhou's fables. It was the first time that Taoist revealed the close relationship between this insect and human beings. They can transform each other in the unconscious state of dreams. Zhuang Zhou's Butterfly Dream expresses the dissolution of the boundary between things. The first mysterious case of become a butterfly in China recorded in Searching for the Gods (quoted from Taiping Universe) took place in Qi during the Warring States Period. At that time, the bad king Song Kangwang occupied the wife of his official Han Ping. Han Ping committed suicide in a rage, and his wife also committed suicide by jumping off Qinglingtai (now Yuncheng, Shandong Province). King Kang Song's bodyguard hurried to pull her dress, only to find that the fragments had turned into beautiful butterflies.
The story seems to be an extension of Stanley Ho's tragedy, but its semantics are quite different. We found that the pupation process of butterflies is meaningful. It emerges from the cylindrical or spindle-shaped pupa, suggesting that "woman" (caterpillar in larval stage) has become "man". Butterfly (masculine) is undoubtedly an emotional commitment to Zhu, that is, Zhu finally realized his extraordinary love for Liang after the change of sexual orientation. This is the great moment that gay men look forward to. Butterflies stand out at that moment, covered with rainbow-like patterns, dancing among the flowers, becoming graceful and radiant. In the last stage of life form, it showed us its most brilliant appearance.
The relationship between butterflies and flowers is a metaphor of men's love for women, but the relationship between a pair of butterflies is completely different and can only be explained as the love between two men. This kind of emotion is undoubtedly hard to say. Although "gay men" were popular among the court and scholar-officials in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, in an era of increasingly prosperous Confucianism, rhetorical techniques such as metonymy, pun and metonymy must still be used to complete its narrative. Its semantic meaning is implicitly written in "Butterflies flying with me", which has become a secret riddle to be interpreted in the intelligent world.
This is the core value of Becoming a Butterfly in Liang Zhu's whole narrative. I don't know whose masterpiece this perfect ending is, but it is undoubtedly the crowning touch of the whole legend. It is hidden at the end of the story and reveals the true face of the whole tragedy to us.
"Lesbian Aesthetics" of Yue Opera
On the premise that the structure and elements are not damaged in any way, we only need to change a password to get a brand-new version of the story about Liang Zhu. This is not so much an unconventional explanation as a semantic restoration of Liang Zhu's story. It is this kind of folk discourse that provides an immortal source for modern opera, which makes it full of some vague and abnormal emotional sentiment and eclipses those ordinary emotional texts.
Despite the emergence of various pear garden styles, such as Peking Opera ("Anti-marriage between Ying and Taiwan") and Sichuan Opera ("The Story of Liu Yin"), Yue Opera is the best music to tell the tragedy of Liang Zhu, which is located in the hometown of homosexuals in the south of the Yangtze River. 1945, Yuan Xuefen and Fan Ruijuan performed "Liang Zhu's Funeral History" for the first time, and then rearranged it. Won the script award, the first prize of performance and the first prize of actor at the 1952 national opera viewing and performance conference. 1953, the drama was made into the first domestic colorful opera art film, which completely established the authoritative position of Yue Opera in interpreting Liang Zhu.
The relationship between Liang Zhu's story and Yue Opera is also because its actors are all women. From Worship on the Grass Bridge, Seeing the 18th National Congress, Meeting on the Terrace to Qi Fei in the Butterfly Lovers, a group of beautiful women interpret the infatuation stories of men and women, with mellow and euphemistic dances, soft and sweet songs and melodious music, transforming the stage surrounded by water towns into a pure girl country. The "Cultural Revolution" tried to transform Yue Opera and forced it to include actors, but the result was exactly the same ―― all the actors exuded the brilliance of women. Even the violin concerto "butterfly lovers" is irresistibly permeated with the delicate and feminine sentiment of women.
The "redeeming feature" of Yue Opera lies in transforming Liang Zhu's story from a secret angle, and quietly replacing this "gay" lament with a "lesbian" emotional drama. Liang Shanbo doesn't look like a man, but more like a thong that plays an active role in "lesbians". He transcends the boundaries of patriarchal culture and writes a magnificent chapter in the aesthetics of national homosexuality. With the full support of former Premier Zhou Enlai, Yue Opera has been close to the core of this aesthetics through its tireless creations such as A Dream of Red Mansions, The West Chamber, The Legend of the White Snake, Detective, Catch Fish, and The Record of the Jade Hairpin.
However, what really matters may not be on the stage, but around it. On the one hand, the words of opera actors affect the audience's way of speaking (listening), on the other hand, the audience has a strong setting of opera words. This dialogue around the stage has no boundary and no end, but the ultimate hand that dominates opera grammar is definitely not the performers, but the people with their faces hidden in the dark, and their interests dominate the opera. Under the guidance of the people, Yue Opera triumphed in the direction of homosexuality and reached its climax in the middle of last century. (Author: Zhu, originally published in Southern Metropolis Daily)
(Note: This article originated from 199 1 and was published in various media with several different versions. This article has been adjusted and supplemented on the original basis. )