lu zhen she xi

Shaoxing is the hometown of opera, and Lu Xun, a native of Shaoxing, could not avoid this subject. He made a special introduction to the community opera in his novel "Community Opera", the essay "Impermanence" and the essay "Female Hanging", and mentioned the community opera in many essays such as "Wen Tan Outside the Door" and "Er Chou Art", as well as in letters and diaries, which shows the profound influence of community opera on Lu Xun. The word "she" in community opera originally refers to the god of land, so it was originally a play performed in spring and autumn in urban and rural areas of Shaoxing to worship the community god and pray for blessings. The spring is called "Spring Community", which is to pray for the prosperity of livestock and grains in the year; the autumn is called "Autumn Community", which celebrates the good weather and peace in the country. The day of worshiping the community is called "Community Day". Influenced by this, Shaoxing still retains village names such as "Ruanshe" and "Gushe". Like many local operas, the performance venues of community opera are generally divided into grass stage and temple stage. In the old days, every village or region had a "Bodhisattva Temple" and a birthday for the Bodhisattva, so you could often see community plays on these temples. Community plays usually required offerings to the gods, so Lu Xun said in his article "The Female Hanging": "What I know is that in Shaoxing forty years ago, there were no high-ranking officials, so there was no drama specifically for people (Tanghui). Every play always had a bit of "community play nature", offerings to the gods were the main purpose of watching the play, and people went to watch it just to take advantage of the show."