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: The stage is located on a small rise just south of the main gate of the fort, facing north towards a temple-building, now gutted and used as a shed. The village is up in the mountains, and extremely poor.
Period: Undated. The paintings within the stage seem to be from the late 19th centuries; there is graffiti on the walls from the late 19th to late 20th centuries.
Artist: Unknown.
Mural Contents: The rear wall of the stage, behind the now-vanished scaenae frons, shows the common theme of Qilin Gazing at the Moon 麒麟望月; the figure of an actor brandishing a sword is painted to the right, but this is now heavily damaged. The two side walls in the front-stage show images of the Mansions of the Western Seas 西洋樓 – “modern” images of exotic European-style city-scapes. It’s a shame that these are so damaged; the surviving fragments are very skilled, and in an artists’ hand found at several other villages around Yu County, unfortunately none very intact.
This stage is also interesting for the large amount of well-preserved graffiti, including the ink splashed Jackson-Pollock style on the wall, which seems to be a particular feature of stages in this area.
Full Gallery
