Reforming the State and Constructing Commercial Opera in Sichuan, 1902–1920s: An Entangled History of Performing Arts and Administrative Reforms

This article analyzes the thorough reformulation of opera in Sichuan in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It argues that theater developed in Sichuan during the eighteenth century as a part of the social and religious life of market towns and cities and that it was indivisibly connected with the political and administrative structure of the country. As such, it was fragmented along musical, dialectic, and geographic lines. The introduction of the New Policies in 1905, which most affected the largest urban centers such as Chengdu and Chongqing, was the main cause of organizational reconstruction of theatrical performances. They changed both opera’s place in social life and the way it was produced and staged. Within the new legal framework, opera was placed under the Company Law and therefore moved from the sphere of festivity to that of business, while playhouses’ prosperity was bound with the police departments that taxed and protected them. The mutual dependence of law enforcement and entertainment persisted during the early Republic and was revived in the 1930s, making theaters among the most stable and important institutions of early twentieth-century Sichuan cities. The Sichuan opera we know now is a product of this historical process. The study of the institutional development of opera shows the aims, scope, and limitations of the political reforms that reshaped China in the late Qing and Republican periods.