storyville

I'm making another exception to my rule about not posting photos that are directly related to my fieldwork, mostly because I like this one. The four individuals onstage here are all amateur performers of 說唱 (shuochang, literally "speaking-singing"), a kind of musical narrative performance. They are students of a very famous blind storyteller named Yang, who sat in the front row to provide encouragement for her pupils. A very nice man who noticed me and two of my friends lurking in the back area took me aside to explain that the story (performed in Taiwanese, which I don't understand) was about a man who traveled from mainland China to Taiwan before the Japanese colonial period, leaving his wife behind. He took up with a prostitute in Taiwan, which his wife eventually discovered. Upon hearing the news she was so enraged that she committed suicide to forever haunt her husband as a ghost.