Location info and some photos withheld. As of my last visit, this mural site is vulnerable to theft or destruction. I have withheld the location beneath the county level and any photographs (of steles, signs, scenery, etc.) that might identify the place. If you are an accredited scholar and you have a good reason to want to see this information, email me and we’ll talk about it.
Structure Type: Opera stage 戲台.
Location: Yu County, Hebei Province 河北省蔚縣. The opera stage was originally located across from a temple to Lord Guan 關公; this is now demolished and only the stage remains. The complex of temple and stage stood outside the west gate of the old village fort.
Period: Undated. Performers’ graffiti on the stage stretches back into the Guangxu Reign (1875-1908), which should mean the stage was erected and the murals painted sometime in the second half of the 19th century.
Artist: Unknown.
Mural Contents: The murals show Western-influenced cityscapes. On one side is the climactic scene of the novel/opera “Pavilion of Gazing in the Four Directions” 四望樓, in which a girl chases a monkey over a rooftop. On the other wall is a scene that I don’t recognize, in which a martial-arts match is taking place on a platform outside a city gate. The rear (back-stage) wall has images of actors.
Other Notes: One of the things that I still don’t understand about these stages is the practice of splashing ink on the backstage walls. Almost all of these stages have a small section in the rear where someone has Jackson-Pollocked long stripes of ink along the wall, often over-written with exorcistic formulae (i.e. “The Great Lord has arrived – all spirits return to your places” 太公在此，諸神退位). I’ve always assumed that this has to be some kind of consecration ritual for the stage or for individual performances, but nobody I spoke to locally has ever been able to explain it to me. If anybody who reads this knows what this is about, I’d be curious to learn.
Full Gallery
