Pages

0

Media Type

Audio

Credit

Zhongguo Changpian Chang [China Phonograph Records Studio/Factory]

Physical Location

Stacks D040.0E

Number of Media

6

Language(s)

Chinese

Format

Record/LP

Digitized in HD?

No

General Note

Xianglin Sao [Xianglin's Wife] Chinese opera in the Yue Ju [Shaoxing Opera] form, adapted by Yuan Xuefen, et al., sung by Yuan Xuefen, accompanied by Band of Shanghai Yue Ju Academy. Adapted from the novel Zhu Fu [Benediction]; music collated by Xiao Zhou and Xiang Guansen. Chorus: Shanghai Yue Ju Academy Chorus. Xianglin Sao was the wife of Xianglin. No one knew her maiden name. Xianglin was ten years older than Xianglin Sao and made his living as a hired hand and by collecting firewood. He died six months after marrying Xianglin Sao and his mother, in order to pay her debts, secretly sold Xianglin Sao to He Laoliu, a hunter. Upon hearing of the deal, Xianglin Sao flees to a small town, where she finds employment as a housemaid to a wealthy family. She is eventually discovered by her deceased husband's clan and forcibly returned to be married to the hunter. In the beginning, Xianglin Sao tries to commit suicide but eventually yields to her fate and weds He Laoliu. A year later, she gives birth to a son, A Mao. Four years after her second marriage, Xianglin Sao is widowed again, and her son is stolen away by a wolf. Then, her brother-in-law confiscates her house. Homeless, she returns to work again as a housemaid to the same wealthy family as before. However, she is careworn from her troubles, and becomes boring to the neighbors. She is persuaded by a sympathetic Buddhist woman to donate a threshold which, by allowing numerous people to step over it, would relinquish her past sins, so that she would not continue to suffer after her death. Xianglin Sao worked silently and saved her money. After a year, she used all her savings to donate a threshold, thinking she had redeemed herself from her sins. However, when she tries to participate in the New Year's sacrifice in front of the shrine in her employer's house, she is insulted and called names by her master and his wife, then driven out of the house. She becomes a beggar for five years, by which time, her hair has turned gray. The next New Year, she dies a lonely death.