Research On The Legal Issues Of The Qing Dynasty Opera Actors

From the very beginning，there had a group of people with art creation andperformance as their profession in ancient Chinese. We call them "Yering", that is actorsor artists of today. Actors had their own unique class attributes and social status intraditional society, they and the general civilians were different, they were legal“pariah”. In Qing Dynasty, as the opera art development to peak condition, the actorsalso came to the golden age of the occupation. However, the Qing is also the dynastythat had the toughest and meticulous laws about actors, also the era that opera actorsbeing most popular and discriminated. This article is from the five sections to discussthe legal issues related to opera actors in the Qing Dynasty. The first part, this paperbriefly describes the "Yering" concept from the origin and the historical development,and to distinguish it between some similar words. The second part analyzes the generalsituation of the Qing Dynasty actor group, expounds the connotation of the QingDynasty actor and its specific categories. The third part discusses the legal regulation ofthe Qing Dynasty actors, including their legal status, pariah status standards andprofessional activities norms. The fourth part is the historical evaluation, including theevaluation of legislation and the status of the law enforcement, and to emphasize thefeatures of the Times. The fifth part is a conclusion.