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Arts festival sets eyes on common people
Updated: 2004-09-23
Miss Li, a young migrant worker in Hangzhou,
walked into a theater in Hangzhou city for the first time in her life this week
to watch a play called "Migrant Workers' Shanty" at the on-going China Arts
Festival. She left with tears swelling in her eyes.
The play, staged by an art troupe in Li's hometown in southwest China's Yunnan
Province, tells the story of how a Party secretary in a rural village leads
his village folks to work in a big city to get riches and happiness.
In the course of China's economic reforms, rural people in their hundreds of
millions left their native land to look for vacancies in large cities.
"It seems to me that we are at the bottom of the social ladder. Nobody
understands and cares about us, let alone really knowing what we need," Li
complained.
But Li changed her mind when the troupe visited her home and invited workers
living in the construction site sheds to watch their play for free of. The
playwright, Li Shiqin, lived together with workers, listened to their personal
bitter stories and witnessed the disputes between workers and their employer and
an accident at the building site.
"I liked the play very much as it was based on our everyday life. Moreover,
it told us that we can become accustomed to urban life just like the people in
the play," said a farmer-turned construction worker from east China's Zhejiang
Province.
Many plays and performances staged during the current China Arts Festival
portray the true life of ordinary people in China. For instance, one modern
drama depicts the life of laid-off workers. A song-and-dance duet popular in
northeast China tells a love story between a garbage collector and his fiancee.
The "Xiaobaihua" Shaoxing
Opera Troupe has created a fascinating play about finding love through the
Internet.
For years, audiences for Chinese theater were usually government officials,
intellectuals and art workers. Common urbanites and farmers, however, who number
about 800 million in China, have had few opportunities to appreciate modern
dramas.
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