The four monumental works of Classical Chinese drama — The Story of The Western Wing 西廂記 (ca. 1250-1300), Peony Pavilion 牡丹亭 (1598), Peach Blossom Fan 桃花扇 (1699), and Palace of Lasting Life 長生殿 (1688) — have had hundreds of years of performance history since their creation. This production is an original adaptation by Helen He ’26 of the four plays through a feminist lens by highlighting the female protagonists’ perspectives and creativity. It excerpts four scenes across the four plays that center on female self-representation through the making of an artistic self-portrait, taking the form of a letter, a painting, a fan, and a musical score. This performance blends opera singing and Classical Chinese dance, accompanied by piano. Performers include Alicia Chu '28, Helen He '26, Henry Ma '27, Ziyu Qiu (Master's Student), Iris Sung '27, Yafan Wang '26, Isabel Xue '26, and Linda Zhang '26. Supported by the East Asian Studies concentration.

This event will be livestreamed on the HarvardArts YouTube channel.

See full Performance Fair schedule.

Portrait: A Dance-Opera

Act 1: The Story of The Western Wing

As a gentry daughter who is not supposed to have any contact with a young scholar temporarily residing in her household, Cui Yingying expresses her feelings towards Scholar Zhang through a letter with a poem on it. The letter is a material symbol of female talent and self-representation derived from the hand of its maker.

Act 2: The Peony Pavilion

Daughter of a magistrate, the protagonist Du Liniang visits a beautiful garden and takes a nap in it. In her dream, she falls in love with a scholar, Liu Mengmei, whom she avidly devotes herself to. Losing her lover after waking her and knowing that she would soon die from lovesickness, Liniang paints a self-portrait to memorialize her beauty and love for posterity, attaching to it a poem inscription of her own composition. 

Lyrics

原來姹紫嫣紅開遍

Most flowers already bloom in a riot of bright purple and vivid scarlet.

似這般都付與斷井頹垣

Yet to dilapidated well and crumbling walls, all such splendor is abandoned.

良辰美景奈何天

How to enjoy myself for a good time in this glorious scene garden?

便賞心樂事誰家院

In whose yard where are sounds of joy and delights?

Act 3: The Peach Blossom Fan

A famous courtesan in the Qinhuai pleasure quarters in Nanjing, Li Xiangjun “marries” the scholar Hou Fangyu, and at their wedding, Hou gives her a fan inscribed with a love poem as a gift. Li Xiangjun holds onto the fan and her love tenaciously even after her forced separation from Hou until a central heroic gesture that gives the play its name — Li spatters her fan with blood as she struggles against being forcibly taken to Tian Yang, a Southern Ming minister, as a concubine. The bloodstains on the fan, a love token from Hou, are transformed into peach blossoms by a painter Yang Wencong. Li Xiangjun believes in the fan as her “peach blossom portrait.”

Lyrics:

我为他曾把花容绽

For him I once let my flower-face bloom;

也为他敢把花容残

For him I also dared let my flower-face wither.

摩挲多情诗扇

I stroke this fan of passionate love-poems,

守住冰雪一片

And preserve a heart pure as ice and snow.

千般相思

A thousand kinds of longing—

不知怎样上笔毫

I do not know how to set them to brush-tip.

万种哀愁

Ten thousand sorts of sorrow—

日夜不歇萦心梢

Day and night, without rest, they wind around the tip of my heart.

看点点血溅透冰绡

Look: drop by drop, blood spatters through the ice-silk,

如一株桃花正妖娆

Like a peach blossom, just then in enchanting bloom.

添一缕细枝

Add one slender spray,

连起桃之夭夭

Joining it to the peach boughs’ young luxuriance.

他可记得

Can he still remember

春风佳人含笑

The beauty in the spring breeze, smiling softly?

画一瓣桃叶

Paint one peach petal,

衬着枝头更娇

Set against the branch-tip, all the more delicate.

他可知道

Does he know

楼头烟尘缭绕

That smoke and dust coil around the tower?

定情诗外再无字

Beyond the love-token poem there are no further words;

斑斑泪痕扇底抛

Speckled tear-marks are cast beneath the fan.

手帕儿细包

The handkerchief, wrapped fine;

丝线儿轻绕

The silk threads, lightly wound—

这是奴一生写照

This is the portrait of my entire life,

一生写照

The portrait of my entire life.

Act 4: The Palace of Lasting Life

The female protagonist Lady Yang hears a divine music named “Rainbow Skirts” in a dream of visiting the Moon Palace, and after she awakes, she transcribes the music from memory and fashions a score of the same name. The “Rainbow Skirts” becomes her signature dance in cultural memory, just like a self-portrait.