Sound, Gender, And Performance: Research On Gender Phenomenons Regarding Women Playing Young Men In Yue Opera

Nu xiaosheng, women playing young men, in Yue opera is a representative cross-gender artistic phenomenon of Chinese traditional opera, originated from the development of Women’s Yue opera in Shanghai in 1930s and evolved till now. Focusing on Women’s Yue opera’s actuality and meaning in urban area is an important perspective of feminism musicology and urban ethnomusicology. Therefore, this paper attempts to focus on how nil xiaosheng’s gender meaning constructed a structure of sound, actress and audience in Yue opera.Firstly, this paper focus on gender performance experience of actresses who playing men in Yue opera, based on in-depth fieldwork, using Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance to analysis experiential paradox between actresses’ stage and life and further explore the social gender order behind it. Secondly, through comparing nu xiaosheng and huadan’s music in Butterfly Lovers and Stage Sisters, from liquid gender power perspective this paper attempts to explain how gender orders are constructed in music. Thirdly, this paper concerns musical society consisted of female audiences of Yue opera and divide into life field, soundscape, and symbol field to discuss how different audiences construct nu xiaosheng. Through ethnographical writing, this paper comes to conclusion:First, the reasons behind nu xiaosheng’s career choice are not trying to challenge binary gender order and heterosexuality discourse, the paradox of gender performance in stage and life reflects that actresses comply with privative gender order and heterosexuality discourse.Secondly, there are various gender orders in Yue opera’s music, different musical genres slap and collapse the privative gender order, nu xiaosheng musical genres have a distinguishing feature of rigid and soft which makes the variety gender discourses in Yue opera, which also provide the possibility of constructing nu xiaosheng’s gender in audiences.Thirdly, female audiences of Yue opera consist a musical society; they express their identity and love to nu xiaosheng through sound and action in life filed, soundscape, and symbol field. Since the founding of new China female audiences witnesses the development of media and enriches their daily life; Soundscape, as a collective ritual activity, connects audiences’feeling with nu xiaosheng actresses and nu xiaosheng’s musical genres plays an important role; Through ritual expression in soundscape, female audiences identify and construct nu xiaosheng’s gender in symbol filed, these identities again blend in audiences’daily life and become their daily practice.Fourth, female audiences, both heterosexual and homosexual, construct nu xiaosheng’s various genders through responding to obey, resist, and transcend mainstream gender order. There are many similarities in two groups despite there are internal diversity in two groups, in fact there are not clear boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual.The researches and interprets in this paper are to provide a vivid information to Yue opera’s status quo, and contribute China’s experience to feminism musical study in ethnomusicology. At the mean time, following ethnomusicology’s conceptions of discipline, this paper tries to listen and understand different people and groups in a respectful and tolerant perspective to explore how they own a common emotion and humanity.