“Our family have played the part of ‘wizard’ for more than 500 years, and I am the 16th generation. The original idea was to keep the art alive,” said Wang Taibao.

 

 

“My first contact with Nuo Opera was in 1978. Once I came back from school, I saw my father wearing Taoist robes and walking in front of the team. The men in the village put on masks and costumes and walked around the village, beating drums and blowing trumpets,” Wang Taibao recalled, and he was 18 years old that year.

 

“Taibao, you are a grownup, and there are things in our family that you need to know.” After the ceremony, his father Wang Benyou told him, “During the Chenghua period of Ming Dynasty (AD 1465 to 1487), our family’s ancestor Sineng went out to learn practising Nuo rituals, and created a unique style of Linwu Nuo ceremony and Nuo opera when he was back to the village. Nuo opera is commonly known as ‘God lion’ or ‘Wu Yue Nuo God’.”

 

Linwu Nuo ceremony includes three parts: making Nuo wish, fulfilling Nuo wish and closing Nuo altar. It is generally to make Nuo wish in the first lunar month, to fulfil Nuo wish and close Nuo altar in the first lunar month of next year. There are complicated ceremony procedures as installing god statues, opening god light and dividing troops and horses. “In its heyday, the villages hundreds of miles around would invite us to play Nuo opera. From the first month of the lunar calendar to March, hundreds of Nuo opera performances would be given,” said Wang Benyou with his eyes filled with pride. 

 

“Why haven’t I seen you guys perform before?” Wang Taibao asked father. Wang Benyou told him that Nuo opera was once banned as a feudal superstition, but he thought that those left by ancestors could not be lost, so he quietly hid the props.

 

 

From his father, Wang Taibao learned that the most important role in Linwu Nuo ceremony and Nuo opera is the “wizard” who communicates between man and God, and is the center of the whole Nuo ceremony and Nuo opera with all the ritual procedures dominated by him. At the same time, he is also the organizer and manager of the performance team. In the process of performing Nuo opera, all actors need to wear masks. 

 

His father solemnly told him at that time, “Our family have been playing ‘wizard’ for generations. I am the 15th generation and you will be the 16th. This is particularly taught orally and passed to males only.” 

 

From then on, Wang Taibao determined to carry on the family’s mission.

 

 

Wang Taibao learned Nuo opera from his father for a few years and achieved certain results. However, the good times did not last long. As the villagers went out to work in cities, coupled with the popularity of television, fewer people would invite them to play Nuo opera. “By the mid-1980s, nearly nobody asked us to perform Nuo opera.”

 

Thinking of these past events, Wang Taibao looked upset. He thought that the family’s 500-year heritage would be gone soon, until he met a man named Zhou Zuoming.

 

Zhou Zuoming is now an official of the Chenzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Tourism Radio Television and Sport. Since 2005, Zhou Zuoming began to investigate the status quo of the Nuo culture in Chenzhou. He found that at the turn of the Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty about 2,000 years ago, which was the peak of the development of Wu Nuo culture, Chenzhou was the place where the cultures of Chu, Yue (Guangdong) and Central Plains converged, and the folk culture of Wu Nuo praying for good fortune and exorcising evil, once flourished here. But after all his efforts, he could not find a person who really can play Nuo opera. 

 

When Zhou Zuoming was at a loss, someone told him that he had seen the scene of sacrificial dancing by those wearing masks in Youwan Village of Linwu County. Zhou Zuoming immediately drove to Youwan Village, and met with Wang Taibao for the first time. 

 

“What a surprise that Nuo opera has been here for more than 500 years and is still well preserved,” Zhou Zuoming was so excited. Subsequently, Zhou Zuoming, together with the cultural department of Linwu County and Nuo opera artists, carried out the rescue, excavation, protection, restoration and inheritance of Nuo opera. 

 

In June 2006, in order to further confirm the nature of Nuo opera in Youwan Village, Zhou Zuoming invited two experts, Zou Shiyi and Sun Wenhui, respectively director and researcher of Hunan Art Research Institute, to make a special trip to Youwan Village for inspection. After seeing the villagers’ simple performances and related props, the two experts decided on the spot, “What Youwan Village has preserved is the living fossil of Chinese opera - Nuo Opera.”

 

 

 

On October 25, 2006, Nuo Opera, which had been gone for more than 20 years, appeared again at Youwan Village.

 

“Wizard” Wang Taibao walked into the ancestral hall to open the ceremony making Nuo wish. Then, the Nuo opera troupe walked through the narrow village lanes, worshiped the gods, and then returned to the ancestral hall to kill pigs and sheep to thank the gods. At the same time, they did not forget to entertain themselves, and also interspersed the ceremony with programs such as “Beating the Lion” and “Killing the ghost”.

 

Although they performed only a simplified version that day, they still amazed the present experts and scholars. Zou Shiyi said that Linwu Nuo Opera is in the same vein as the traditional Nuo opera in the form of expression, but it has many distinctive features. For example, the preservation of the Nuo ceremony was relatively complete, and the programs were full of dramatic features such as dramatic plots, performance procedures and roles. In addition, actors wore masks on their foreheads when they performed, and the role of Nuo God was played by men, which were different from other Nuo operas in many places.

 

“The actors of Nuo opera are farmers, and most of them work outside for a living. So it’s difficult to gather them together,” said Wang Taibao. Fortunately, the city and county cultural departments have gradually paid attention to Linwu Nuo Opera since then.

 

In 2007, the government of Linwu County issued the Five-year Protection Plan for Linwu Nuo Opera. In 2012, Nuo Culture Research Base of Linwu County was established in Youwan Village, and an international academic seminar on Nuo culture in Linwu was held. In 2013, Chenzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Tourism Radio Television and Sport established Chenzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage Base in Youwan Village, and Linwu Nuo Opera has been included on the lists of municipal, provincial and national intangible cultural heritage items. 

 

In 2018, Wang Taibao was identified by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as the representative inheritor of “Linwu Nuo Opera”, and Youwan Village was shortlisted in the fifth batch of Chinese traditional villages, and Hunan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism approved the establishment of provincial opera cultural ecological protection (experimental) area in Linwu County. 

 

Today, 61-year-old Wang Taibao, in addition to teach his apprentice, is training his son Wang Yuhui as the 17th-generation inheritor of Linwu Nuo opera.