Gender, women's liberation, and the nation-state: A study of the Chinese opera 'The White-Haired Girl'

"Every time during the show, all seats were filled, both old and young people were much interested in watching it. On the roof and wall, there were people everywhere. The tragic story and stirring music excited everyone there: some cried, other moaned. Audiences were aflame with fury." This is the scene describing to what extent the White-haired Girl was made popular in China by a famous Chinese writer, Ding Ling.1 The White-haired Girl is one of the Chinese operas that touched the most people with the greatest influence in the latter half of 20th century. First produced in the 1940s, it was based on a folktale and achieved great success in Yan'an in 1940s. Because of its popularity and its particular political and cultural meaning, this story was further adapted to an opera in the 1940s and in the 1950s, to a ballet in the 1960s and it was also adapted to the model ballet The White-haired Girl in 1972 during the Cultural Revolution. By the late 1970s, tens of millions of people in China had memorized every word of the opera. It is one of the most significant cultural texts in 20th century history. This paper considers the development history and various versions of The White-Haired Girl as study objects, analyzing the gender construction and the development of women's liberation movement in the revising process of the story. Also this paper focuses on understanding women's policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their functions during the transformation of The White-haired Girl, especially from the late 19th century to the mid-1970s when the Cultural Revolution ended.;1 Dingling, "Yan'an Literature", Hunan Literature & Art Press, 1987.7. Print.