Chapter 33 Section 5 ventriloquist
Oral skills are an extremely ancient skill. According to Sima Qian's "Historical Records", oral skills have been preliminarily formed as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.However, at that time, ventriloquism was not used in performances, but only as a practical skill. For example, when Qi Xiangguo Meng Changjun was trapped in Qin State, one of his followers knew ventriloquist, "chicken crowing and crowing pass", and made people near Hangu Pass pass. All the roosters crowed, and the soldiers guarding the gate thought it was dawn, so they opened the city gate and let them out, which saved them from danger.At the end of the Qin Dynasty, before Chen Sheng and Wu Guang revolted in Daze Township, they first wrote the three characters "Chen Sheng Wang" on a silk strip with cinnabar and stuffed it into the belly of a fish. Said "Great Chu Xing, King Chen Sheng", in order to launch an uprising of the guards and soldiers to resist the tyranny of Qin.The book "Yan Danzi" written by people in the Han Dynasty also recorded ventriloquist, Yan Taizi Dan wanted to escape from Qin State:
According to the fourth volume of "Xijing Miscellaneous Notes" by Ge Hong in the Jin Dynasty, there was a man named Dongfang Sheng in the Han Dynasty, "He was good at howling, and every time he screamed loudly, the dust fell on the tiles." Liu Yiqing of the Southern Song Dynasty "Shishuoxinyu · Grief for the Death" It is recorded in "Jian'an Seven Sons" that Wang Can, one of the "Seven Sons of Jian'an", liked to learn "donkey braying" during his lifetime.After Wang Can's death, Cao Pi, Emperor Wen of Wei Dynasty, was very sad. In order to mourn his close friend of poetry and prose, he even led all his officials to make a "donkey bray" to "send him off".Both Chen Deng in the Three Kingdoms period and Ruan Ji in the early Jin Dynasty were good at Xiao. According to the "Wei Shi Chunqiu" records, Ruan Ji went to visit Mr. Sumen:
In Wang Yin's "Book of Jin", it is said that "Sun Deng is what Ruan Ji saw", and Sun Deng was known as Mr. Sumen.According to Yuquanzi's "Real Records of Yuquanzi's Experience" in the Tang Dynasty, at the end of Tianbao reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, a Taoist priest surnamed Chen from Mount Emei came to visit the capital. He:
This book also records that during the reign of Zong Yongtai in the Tang Dynasty (765-766 A.D.), Sun Guang (one of the works "Sun Kang") wrote "Xiao Zhi", a Dali commentator, who believed that "the air is excited in the throat and becomes turbid, which is called words; it is excited at the end of the tongue. And Qing is called Xiao. The turbidity of speech can understand people and things and express emotion; the clearness of Xiao can sense ghosts and gods and cause immortality." Gao Sisun wrote "Gao Shi Wei Lue" in the Song Dynasty. There are 15 chapters of Xiao, of which 11 Chapter 13 is called "Sumen", written by Sun Dengyin at Sumen Mountain; Chapter 13 is called "Ruan's Yiyun", written by Ruan Ji.According to the records of "Tang Qu Wei Shan Cry" in the volume of "Tang Guo Shi Bu" by Li Zhao of the Tang Dynasty, there was a scholar Tang Qu in the Tang Dynasty who had been unsuccessful for a long time, "good at crying, with a sad tone, and those who heard it wept."The great poet Bai Juyi wrote a poem "Send to Tang Sheng":
He also listed the things that loyal and righteous people were harmed by evil forces, and Tang Sheng "every time he saw such a thing, he burst into tears and followed suit", which shows that he is an upright person who is sentimental about current politics and cynical.It was not until the Song Dynasty that oral skills were performed as acrobatics. According to the records of "Old Stories of Wulin", it was originally named "Yinming".At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, there was an "Old Man of Changxiao" Wang Jing, who was a famous master of howling skills after Sun Deng, Ruan Ji and Taoist Chen of Emei.
Oral skills developed to its peak during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and two schools emerged: one is whistle skills based on strength, and the other is oral games that emphasize lifelike images and sounds.However, among the two schools, the development of Xiaoji is relatively slow, while the skill of oral opera has reached an astonishing height.Xu Ke summarized and explained ventriloquism in "Qing Barnyard Banknotes·Drama Class·Ventuli":
Famous ventriloquist artists compiled by Xu Ke in the book include Guo Maoer, Zhou Dexin, Lu Ruibai, Chen Jinfang, Huamei Yang, Bainiao Zhang, etc.Among them, Zhou Dexin is the teacher of the author Chu Renhuo.Liu Jingting, a famous talker in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, was a master of ventriloquist.The contemporary Zhang Dai recorded Liu Jingting's story of "Wu Song fights the tiger in Jingyanggang" in the book, which is realistically simulated.In Wang Yun's "Roaming Jilue·Yanyou", he described Liu Jingting's scene in the boat "sitting dangerously and lifting his beard, syllables frustrating, or making battle sounds, or cooing like sons and daughters singing and weeping".The great thinker and scholar Huang Zongxi not only praised his character, but also praised his ventriloquism in "The Biography of Liu Jingting", saying that "every time he makes a sound, people can hear it, or he floats in the air like a sword and iron horse; Cry, birds sing and beasts startle."In the Qing Dynasty, Lin Sihuan recorded a "good verbalist" in Beijing in "The Preface to Autumn Sound Poems".Sitting in an eight-foot-wide "enclosure", he performed ventriloquist performances using only "one table, one chair, one leaf, and one foot" as props, which was called "next door play" by the people of the Ming Dynasty.He first imitated the sound of a dog barking in the distance, and then imitated the sounds of a woman talking to her husband after being awakened, breastfeeding a child, and urinating.The most wonderful thing is the scene of "fire". He first imitates the sound of a person yelling for fire, a husband and a woman, and two children crying. There are also the sound of "stripping" fire, "whirling" wind, snatching, splashing water, houses collapsing and tens of thousands of people calling for help.Due to the artist's wonderful mouth scenes, it created a realistic tense atmosphere, so that some audience members naturally entered the role, and even "changed their colors and left the table, raised their sleeves, and fought with each other". Some wanted to escape from the dangerous place, and some Impatient to fight the fire.Suddenly, he sounded the ruler, everything was quiet, and the screen was removed again.Only then did people realize that they were appreciating the art of oral play.Pu Songling, a great novelist in the early Qing Dynasty, described a young woman in Juan 1 and 3, who earned a living by selling medicine by making "the crowd astonished as a real god" by her wonderful oral tricks.
