It was not easy for the gods to create a Hualian, and just as hard for them to create a Qingyi. Xiao Yanqiu was one of the Qingyi rarities; Chunlai was another.
Xiao Yanqiu saw hope when Chunlai appeared, for the girl was all the reason anyone needed for Chang’e to exist. Like a grieving widow clinging to her only child, Xiao Yanqiu knew that her legacy would live on so long as there was a Chunlai. That was her final compensation from the gods, the last comfort they held out for her. Chunlai had just passed her seventeenth birthday and was, strictly speaking, still a girl. But she had never really been a girl. In a way she had been born a woman, an enchanting woman, a bewitching woman, a woman who could plunge you into bottomless sorrow with a single look. That is not to say she was precocious. She was just born that way. Chunlai entered the golden age of the Qingyi in her seventeenth summer, with a figure that had all the things it should have had and none it shouldn’t. Her waist was graced with a natural glamour that lent her a bewitching quality. A unique and wondrous light sparkled in her eyes. She did not just look at something, she cast a glance—a sidelong one here, a wistful one there. Her eyes embodied the ideal of expressing a reluctant parting and a coquettish sadness of unknown origin. When they were in motion, one would think that she was expressing herself on stage, for she was endowed with a talent to bring the most dramatic pattern down to the level of daily life and the special ability to elevate quotidian movement to the stage. For Chunlai, the adolescent change of voice occurred so smoothly that no one even noticed. For some performers, this change is the gate of hell, a career-ending barrier. They are in perfect singing form at their evening bath, only to discover upon awakening the next morning that demons have stolen their voices.
Good fortune smiled on Chunlai; everything, it seemed, had been prepared for her beforehand. She may have been a Chang’e understudy, but no one could deny that the spiritual light of the Erlang deity shone brightly down on her.
5
Songs are the primary element of Peking Opera. To speak the lyrics is commonly called narrating an opera. The performer atomizes the narrative, turns it into countless fragments and details and transforms the character’s emotion, be that anger, happiness, pain, or melancholy into a word, a smile, glance, or a flinging of the water sleeves, and then folds these all back into the performance as a monologue, an aria, a recitation, or a stylized gesture. Only after these have been reassembled and molded into alternating spoken and sung lines can the actual rehearsals begin. First comes the ensemble rehearsal. An opera is not the work of one person alone; it is, first and foremost, a study in interpersonal relations. With so many performers crowded onto a stage, they must learn to communicate, to cooperate, to exchange ideas, and to take others into consideration. This carefully conducted process is the ensemble rehearsal. But it does not end there. The performers also need to develop a connection with the orchestra, with the gongs, the drums, and other instruments. How could anything called “opera” exist without the winds, the strings, and the percussions? Bring all the instruments together, and you have what is called the sound rehearsal. But there is yet more, the dress rehearsal, which approaches an actual public performance, as the actors play to a virtual audience. The headdress must be worn, the face must be painted, and everyone plays a part as if it were a real performance. Only when that is done can the curtain for the big show be raised.
Nearly everyone noticed that from the first day of opera narration, Xiao Yanqiu appeared to be trying a bit too hard, working too much. She had kept up with her routine, but she was, after all, a forty-year-old woman who had been away from the stage for two decades. Her unyielding work ethic, in contrast to the rashness of the young, was like a river, flowing east in the spring and displaying defiance and dignity. Yet it was hopelessly clumsy, with giant eddies and swirls that fought to turn back at the moment of merging with the ocean. It was an exhausting struggle, presenting the illusion of swimming against the tide, an involuntary downward slide, an unstoppable flow. Truly the passage of time is like water seeking lower ground; no matter how hard you try, the sad reality is that spilled water cannot be recovered. You strain to drag the ox by the tail, only to end up having it pull you into the water.
By the time of the opera narration, Xiao Yanqiu had successfully shed ten pounds. She was not losing weight so much as clawing it off, with earnestness and considerable pain. It was a battle of stealth, devoid of gunpowder, but producing significant casualties nonetheless. Her body was now her enemy, and she carpet-bombed it with an avenging madness, all the while closely monitoring the situation. During those days, she was not only a bomber jet, but also an accomplished sniper, as, rifle in hand, she watched her body closely. It was her ultimate target, and she unflinchingly pulled the trigger whenever the slightest movement caught her attention. She stepped on the scales each night to see if she had met the strict, self-imposed demand of daily weight loss. She was determined to claw off twenty-five pounds, returning to her weight of twenty years before, for she was convinced that, so long as she shed those twenty-five pounds, her life of that period would return. The morning light of those days would once again cast her peerless figure onto the earth.
It was a long, cruel battle. Liquids, sugar, lying down, and hot foods are the four enemies of weight loss. For Yanqiu eating and sleeping were the magic words. She tackled sleep first, allowing herself only five hours a night; beyond that, she neither slept nor sat. Then she attended to what she put into her mouth. Neither rice nor water was allowed, especially hot water. All she ate were fruits and vegetables. Beyond that, like the insatiable Chang’e, she swallowed large quantities of pills.
Results were easy to come by at first. Her weight plummeted like stocks in a bear market. She lost the fat, but gained skin, which, like a found purse, hung from her body limply. This extra skin gave the illusion that she was more form than content. It was a strange impression, one both comical and loathsome. Worst of all, it showed most in her face. It gave her a widow’s mien; staring at her reflection in the mirror, she felt every bit as dejected and despairing as a widow might.
But the true despair was yet to come. Once she began to see the results of her weight loss regimen, she suffered from lightheadedness, a clear sign of malnutrition. She was becoming lethargic, was often dizzy and fatigued, grew anxious, and suffered from nausea and a lack of energy. With all this came a notable weakening of her voice. After the opera narration was behind them, preparations entered the dry-run stage, which meant an even greater depletion of energy. Her voice lost its power and sounded less steady, a bit shaky. As her breathing faltered, she had to tighten her vocal cords and, as a result, she sounded less and less like Xiao Yanqiu.