{"id":408,"date":"2016-03-17T17:51:17","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T17:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/?p=408"},"modified":"2016-03-17T17:51:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T17:51:17","slug":"the-white-haired-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/the-white-haired-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"The White-Haired Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Share<\/a><\/p>\n

Written by Cassie Lin<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Arts and Entertainment section of our collection, I constantly came across these posters of “The White-Haired Girl”, a tale goes way back in China. The\u00a0story is originated from legends circulating in the border region of China’s northern provinces in early 1900s. It was later adapted into a musical play in 1945, when World War II was coming to an end. Artists from the Lu Xun Art Academy\u00a0in Yan’an (the ‘red capital’ of China’s Communist Party before 1949\u00a0) transformed\u00a0the folklore into a story with political overtone added in, and composed the first screenplay of\u00a0The White-Haired Girl<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The White-Haired Girl<\/em>\u00a0tells a story of the peasant girl Xi’er, daughter to Yang Bailao, a tenant farmer who owned a large amount of debt to the despotic\u00a0landlord Huang Shiren. On the eve of Chinese New Year, Huang forced Yang to give away Xi’er to be his concubine, as repayment\u00a0of Yang’s debt. Yang\u00a0was shot to death\u00a0during the fight\u00a0and Xi’er was taken away. Dachun, a young famer in the village,\u00a0was in love with Xi’er. He\u00a0tried to rescue her but failed. Xi’er couldn’t endure the slavery treatment in Huang’s household and managed to run away. She escaped to the mountains and lived in a cave for the following years. She had to gather offerings for food from a nearby temple and fought with\u00a0attacking beasts in the jungle. Her\u00a0hair\u00a0gradually\u00a0turned\u00a0white during those days away from civilisation. In the meantime, Dachun joined the Communist Red Army and fought in the Japanese invasion. He returned to the village when the war was over, and finally\u00a0found\u00a0Xi’er in the cave, rejoiced the girl with long white\u00a0hair.<\/span><\/p>\n

The play became extremely popular across the country, especially\u00a0among the Communist “Liberated Zones” during the civil war (1945-1949). It’s hard not to – excluding the political propaganda elements, “The White-Haired Girl” has all things general public enjoys as an art piece: revenge, romance, fantasy – we can totally make a Hollywood-like blockbuster out of it (with 3D effects).\u00a0\u00a0The White-Haired<\/em>\u00a0Girl movie did\u00a0come out\u00a0in 1950, directed by Shui Hua and Wang Bin, starring Tian Hua (as Xi’er), its first- run\u00a0attracted more than\u00a080 million audiences in Shanghai (a blockbuster indeed).\u00a0The White-Haired Girl<\/em>\u00a0movie caused a national effect in post war China, almost every single person knows the tune of the theme song “The Blowing North Wind”\u00a0at that time. It was Tian Hua’s first big screen experience,\u00a0she made an impression and\u00a0became the face of Xi’er.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"1246_big_0000_w412_h600_thumb\"Tian Hua as Xi’er in\u00a0The White-Haired Girl<\/em>\u00a0Movie, 1963<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am more fascinated by the other art form\u00a0The White-Haired Girl<\/em>\u00a0was adapted into – a\u00a0ballet show. Early Chinese ballet was mostly influenced and trained\u00a0in Russian style, Tchaikovsky’s\u00a0Swan Lake\u00a0<\/em>and several other classics were\u00a0brought to the stage\u00a0in the 50s. And, like many other interesting facts in modern China, the first two original Chinese\u00a0ballets were created under the purpose of communist propaganda –\u00a0The White-Haired Girl<\/em>\u00a0was one of them. Cheng DaiHui, one of the original choreographers, remembers the excitement they felt when being assigned the task. The show premiered in 1964. “Chairman Mao praised after watching it.” Cheng said. Lin YangYang, another choreographer, says the\u00a0show was breaking creative boundaries,\u00a0blending popular\u00a0music and traditional folk dance into the ballet, and was largely referenced by later Chinese ballet productions. During the\u00a0art and literature\u00a0restricted period of\u00a0Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), only eight model plays were permitted to be showed to\u00a0the public, including\u00a0The White-Haired Girl\u00a0<\/em>ballet. In that long and winding 10 year’s time,\u00a0\u00a0The White-Haired Girl\u00a0<\/em>was one of the very few entertainments in China, it became a collective memory for\u00a0a whole generation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"1233_big_0000_w600_h409_thumb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"1237_big_0000_w413_h600_thumb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"1252_big_0000_w600_h413_thumb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"1239_big_0000_w600_h412_thumb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Posters\u00a0of\u00a0‘The White-Haired Girl’<\/em>\u00a0Ballet, 1972<\/strong><\/p>\n

The White-Haired Girl\u00a0<\/em>was, and always will be an unique existence in China’s art and entertainment history. It’s an art piece only\u00a0able to\u00a0be produced in that specific historical spot. Some creative talents that involved in the production of the film and the ballet have already passed away, they contributed a great deal into this piece of collective intelligence, and created a generational memory. I still remember going to an exhibition of propaganda art in the British\u00a0Library in 2013, and spotted a poster from the\u00a0The White-Haired Girl\u00a0<\/em>ballet. I put on the\u00a0head phone placing next to the display, and the tune of “The Blowing North Wind”\u00a0came out, across half of a century’s time, stroke into my ears.<\/span><\/p>\n

*Some external info for those who might be\u00a0interested –\u00a0The White-Haired Girl<\/em>\u00a0Ballet extract:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u9769\u547d\u65f6\u4ee3\u7684\u82ad\u857e\u821e\u5267<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\n

Cassie Lin is a doctoral student at the University of Westminster. She previously worked as an archive assistant at the University of Westminster’s Chinese Poster Collection, now renamed the China Visual Arts Project Archive.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Cassie Lin In the Arts and Entertainment section of our collection, I constantly came across these posters of “The White-Haired Girl”, a tale goes way back in China. The\u00a0story is originated from legends circulating in the border region…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":248,"featured_media":257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china-visual-arts-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/contemporarychina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}