How did the tea-picking drama in eastern Jiangxi come into being?

It was the fifteenth day of the first month in the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty. In Qianshan County under Wuyishan Mountain in Jiangxi Province, every household is beaming, and everyone is wearing new clothes.

People had breakfast early, agreed to leave home and walked towards the county seat. Today is the fifteenth day of the first month, which is people's favorite day every year. You can watch opera performances during the day and enjoy dazzling lanterns at night.

Yanshan County is a tea-rich place in Jiangxi Province, second only to Fujian. Because the Wuyishan Dahongpao tea here is well-known, every spring, local tea merchants in Jiangxi and Fujian will leave here early and make an appointment with tea farmers to buy tea this year.

The prospect of a bumper tea harvest at the beginning of the new year makes tea farmers in Qianshan very happy. They had a good time.

In the busy streets of lead mountain county, the class meeting with tea-picking drama occupied a good position early. When people began to flock to the streets, these artists were already ready. In the sound of musical instruments, they unveiled the celebration of the Spring Festival and worship of God.

On the stage, beautifully dressed boys and girls dressed as tea pickers and tea boys raised their hands to pick tea with cheerful expressions, singing while picking tea, which perfectly reproduced the scene of tea farmers working in the tea garden on the stage.

With more and more people wandering in the street, master artists finally appeared on the stage and began to perform for the audience. These native artists have superb acting skills, singing gorgeous and euphemistic Huangmei vocals, and performing a plot that is no longer limited to picking tea songs, pushing the whole celebration to a climax step by step, attracting people's cheers.

Originated in Qianshan County, Shangrao District, Jiangxi Province, the tea-picking drama in East Jiangxi was developed on the basis of local folk songs, tea songs and tea-picking lanterns, and then absorbed the nutrients of Huangmei tea-picking drama in Hubei Province.

Since the Song Dynasty, the lead mountain under Wuyi Mountain has not only produced tea, but also been famous for its tea songs. These tea-picking folk songs then entered the ranks of lanterns.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to Fujian immigrants and business contacts, some plays of the early Gannan tea-picking drama spread to western Fujian were brought to Hekou Town, Qianshan County, one of the "four famous towns" in Jiangxi at that time, which greatly enriched the local lanterns and evolved into tea lantern dramas.

The Qing dynasty "lead mountain county annals" records:

After the sixth day of the seventh lunar month, there are dragon lanterns and lanterns in urban and rural areas to celebrate the Lantern Festival, and there are even tea-picking lanterns in Hekou town. Beautiful children and men dress up as actors and wear colorful clothes to entertain their ears and eyes.

During the reign of Kangxi, Jiangxi local operas were born one after another, and the Lantern Festival gradually separated from the Lantern Festival, forming a once ugly small class.

During the Qianlong period, a large number of Hubei Albanians entered eastern and northern Jiangxi, and at the same time brought the triangle class of Huangmei tea-picking opera, which had a great influence on the tea-picking opera in eastern Jiangxi, enriching and developing the repertoire and tunes of stage plays, from single play to gradual play, from singing folk songs to banqiang music.

The role of Dan and Ugly has increased the niche business, forming a class camp with three pillars of life, Dan and Ugly. This three-legged form is a seven-legged class, with two Dan, one ugly and four actors playing three times for life.

Later, due to the needs of performing big dramas, the business of old students and face painting was added, and it became a "half-class" to form a professional class club, which performed for many years. During the Daoguang period, tea-picking dramas in eastern Jiangxi flourished and spread widely in Shangrao, and some clubs performed as far away as nearby Fujian and Zhejiang.

During the Agrarian Revolution, there were many red songs in the Soviet area of Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangxi, which were written with some tunes of tea-picking drama in eastern Jiangxi, such as "Playing Shangrao" and "Playing Hengfeng", which were deeply loved by the masses.