Liyuan Opera, the only opera in China named after "Liyuan", is one of the oldest traditional Chinese opera genres with a history of over 800 years. It is known as the "living fossil of Song and Yuan Southern Opera". From Liyuan opera, we can see the mature form of traditional Chinese opera during the Song and Yuan dynasties - the original appearance of ancient Nanxi. It is precisely this Fujian local opera, which has a difficult to understand Minnan dialect and stage performances that do not even include "fighting" plays, that is gaining more and more attention and love. What makes pear opera survive for 800 years and still attract many young audiences in contemporary times? The inheritance of Liyuan Opera: Liyuan Opera originated in Quanzhou during the Song and Yuan dynasties. At that time, Nanxi developed in multiple centers along the southeast coast, and Quanzhou, as an important starting point and hub port of the Maritime Silk Road, became an important place for the dissemination of Nanxi. Liyuan Opera is a localized branch of Nanxi in Quanzhou. Among the ancient plays passed down from today's Liyuan opera, many Song and Yuan Nanxi plays can be found, preserving the scripts and performance forms of that time. Opening the repertoire list of Liyuan opera is like opening the "resurrection manual" of Song and Yuan Southern opera - the first works of Southern opera, "Zhao Zhennu" and "Wang Kui", as well as the four major Southern operas, "Jing Liu Bai Sha" ("Jing Chai Ji", "Bai Bai Ji", "Bai Yue Ting", "Kill Dog Ji"), are all among them. Even "Zhu Wen", which only has a table of contents left in the "Yongle Encyclopedia", can be found in the repertoire list of Liyuan opera in both Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty editions. What is even more commendable is that these plays are not specimens lying in literature, but many Southern opera plays that have been passed down from the "original Song and Yuan Dynasty" and are active on the contemporary stage - Pear Garden Opera - have been basically restored on the current stage, performed in their original form, allowing people to witness the original appearance of opera nearly a thousand years ago. As the earliest mature form of drama in the history of Chinese opera, Nanxi is the direct source of many local opera genres. Nowadays, the repertoire of various local opera genres is mostly developed from the themes of Nanxi plays, but Liyuan opera retains more of the style of Nanxi at that time in terms of plot content and character images. Taking "Wang Kui" as an example, as an ancient Southern Opera script, the themes portrayed in "Wang Kui" have been adapted and performed by many theatrical genres. The traditional drama of the Shanglu School of Liyuan Opera, "Wang Kui. The golden line spoken by Gui Ying in the play, "Ruan (I) don't like to be famous," was created by ancient people and strictly preserved through word of mouth. Similarly, although the themes of "Cai Bojie" and "Zhu Maichen" in Liyuan opera and "Pipa Ji" and "Lanke Mountain" in Kunqu opera are the same, telling the stories of Cai Bojie and Zhao Zhennu, and Zhu Maichen and Maichen's wife, the plots and character images are very different. The Li Yuan opera's "Cai Bo'er" and "Zhu Maichen" inherit more of the ancient and interesting style of the southern opera "Zhao Zhennu" and "Zhu Maichen", but have weaker educational functions - Cai Bo'er is an detestable husband, while Maichen's wife (Zhao Xiaoniang) is a lovely woman who can be forgiven. Through pear opera, people can observe the social landscape during the rise of the urban class in the Song and Yuan dynasties. Therefore, Liyuan opera has an important and special significance in the history of Chinese drama. Dramatist Guo Hancheng once believed that the cultural significance and academic research value of the preserved plays and related literature in Liyuan opera cannot be overestimated. The two playboys are suitable for their hearts, while the old playboys are suitable for their hearts. There are three schools of opera in Liyuan: Xiaoliyuan, Shangshang, and Xianan. Among them, the Xiaoliyuan school is also known as the "Seven Child Class", which used to be a class for underage children, commonly known as the "Opera Boy"; The Shangshang and Xianan schools are collectively known as Da Liyuan, and are performed by adult actors in a troupe. Different from the general styles of flat chamber singing structures (such as Peking Opera Mei School, Yue Opera Yin School, etc.), the schools of Liyuan Opera are not defined by individual style singing, but by the subject matter and performance temperament of the play: Xiaoliyuan excels in portraying talented scholars and beautiful women, such as the elegant and delicate style of "Chen San Wu Niang"; There are many loyal and treacherous ethics in road dramas, such as the ancient and humorous style of "Wang Kui"; Xia Nan Opera emphasizes folk legends, such as the rough and vivid portrayal of Zheng Yuanhe. The three schools therefore have their own plays, and except for a few, the plays are not interchangeable and cannot be mixed. According to veteran artists, each of the three genres originally had "Eighteen Shed Head" plays, or eighteen plays (Pear Garden plays are commonly measured as "eighteen"). But regardless of the genre, it is presented in its unique form of Song and Yuan Southern Opera performance. Liyuan Opera still retains the traditional form of Song and Yuan Southern Opera, with seven roles including Sheng, Dan, Jing, Chou, Wai, Mo, and Tie. The number of actors on stage usually does not exceed 8, and usually even fewer. Most of them are literary plays, and when it comes to martial arts scenes, they are replaced by recitation or infield performances. The characteristic of focusing on literature and drama has also contributed to the performance aesthetics of "science as the backbone" in pear garden opera. When Jingkun constructed a performance system based on the "Four Skills and Five Methods", Liyuan Opera stood out with its unique performance system of "Science, Bai, and Qu". This type of stage performance often leaves audiences who are accustomed to other regional genres both unfamiliar and amazed. Pear Garden Opera refers to the performing movements as "Ke" and "Ke Bu", with the most basic Ke Bu being called "Ke Mu". In the 1950s, veteran artists used incomplete mnemonics such as "bowing to the chin, breaking up to the belly button, raising the hand to the eyebrows, and poisoning to the belly and navel" left by the past, combined with fixed performances of specific plays such as "one line, one step, one subject", to summarize and organize the "eighteen subject mothers" that appeared today. The hands need to be bent into "three sections of hands", once standing in a soft and sticky "cake body", and the eyes need to look at each other in a "four eyed" posture... These are the specific requirements for performance in the "Eighteen Masters". Liyuan opera places the movements of Ke Jie at the forefront of performance, which is consistent with the traditional emphasis on Ke Jie's teasing and joking in Southern opera during the Song and Yuan dynasties, and also in line with the local audience's need to pay attention to "watching plays" and enjoy performances. As the saying goes, "opera performers find it pleasing to their hearts, while old opera performers find it enjoyable to watch Ke Qu". The "Bai" in Pear Garden Opera is generally referred to as "Zuibai", and plays with more "Zuibai" are called "Zuibai Opera". They are often important scenes throughout the play, aimed at entertaining and entertaining, with no restrictions on details, such as "Selling Pancakes" in "Zhu Shouchang", "Forcing Writing" in "Zhu Maichen", "Tuogong" in "Wang Kui", and "Duili" in "Dui Li". These plays are deeply loved by local audiences, so there are plays and proverbs such as "Zhang Gong buys wine and invites Zhang Gong" (mocking people or things who want to take advantage of others for nothing) derived from "Zhu Maichen" that are spread in dialects. From the perspective of the history of traditional Chinese opera, the "white" aspect of Liyuan opera is closely related to the Southern opera of the Song and Yuan dynasties, and can even be traced back to the "teasing" of the Tang dynasty. There is only one opera troupe in China, the Fujian Provincial Pear Garden Opera Experimental Troupe (Fujian Provincial Pear Garden Opera Inheritance Center), located in the ancient city of Quanzhou. As the only remaining theater troupe in Liyuan Opera, the troupe bears the responsibility of preserving the genre. For decades, the theater troupe has mobilized its entire strength, not only tightly guarding its solid "family background", but also injecting new vitality and connotation into the traditional theatrical genre, becoming a model of "upholding integrity" in traditional Chinese opera. On the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China, due to frequent wars and the market impact of emerging genres such as Gaojia Opera and Gezi Opera, the ancient pear garden opera was on the brink of extinction. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, old artists scattered in the countryside were summoned. By 1952, the Jinjiang County Daliyuan Opera Troupe (the predecessor of the Fujian Provincial Liyuan Opera Experimental Troupe) was established, marking a turning point in the fate of Liyuan Opera. From then on, the three schools of Liyuan opera merged and became a single troupe. Since the first day of its establishment, Liyuan Opera has embarked on a new path of integrating tradition and modernity. Under the leadership of the new literary and artistic workers at that time, the theater troupe relied on old artists to rescue and record dozens of traditional plays, and used drawing and notation to record performances such as "Eighteen Masters" and music scores; On the other hand, the beginning of "innovation" gave birth to the "Chen San Wu Niang" that rewrote the history of pear opera. The play won seven major awards at the 1954 East China Opera Festival, making the theater troupe and pear opera stand out together. This play, which was inherited in an orderly manner in the Ming and Qing dynasties, follows the principle of "tailoring to suit" adaptation. It not only retains the traditional texture of the "eighteen mothers", but also gives aesthetic expression to the times. It has become a classic that has been performed frequently for more than 60 years and nourished several generations. Its significance is comparable to that of Kunqu opera "The Peony Pavilion" to Kunqu opera. For decades, the theater troupe has consciously protected tradition and worked tirelessly to organize, adapt, and perform dozens of traditional plays recorded by veteran artists. In addition to the uninterrupted traditional opera performances, there are also constantly new forces joining the ancient pear garden opera. Not to mention classical opera masters such as Wang Renjie's "Jie Fu Yin" and "Dong Sheng and Li Shi", young screenwriter Zhang Jingjing's "Yu Bei Ting", Xie Zichou's "Ni Shi Jiao Zi", "Ti Ying" and other newly composed plays, the traditional play "Chen San Wu Niang" alone has inheritance versions (East China performance version), small theater versions, immersive performance versions, and now even AI combined "Chen San Wu Niang", as well as "sit down" reading versions. The newly composed ancient costume drama 'Dong Sheng and Li Shi' is full of classical beauty and exquisite comedy, and is one of the best pear garden drama genres at present. The portrayal of the Li family by Zeng Jingping, the winner of the "Second Plum Blossom", is full of charm on the stage, like a Song and Yuan dynasty girl who has traveled back to the present day. With the flow of sunshine and the transmission of emotions through simple hands, it tells the story of the inheritance of thousand year old opera on the contemporary stage through new pear garden opera - not a museum style preservation, but a flowing cultural landscape through innovation and adherence to tradition. (New Society)