Fifty-five-year-old Chiang Ch'ing-liu seems to have been fated for a career in opera.

Like many other opera players, Chiang was born to a theatrical family. Most people are aware that his father, Chiang Chieh-chih, was a popular performer of Nankuan opera during the Japanese Occupation, but if you go back far enough you'll find that his grandfather was a performer too, in ch'i-chiao opera, the predecessor of Taiwan opera.

Having begun learning opera at the age of seven and having debuted at age 14, he was just 21 when he founded his own troupe, the Hsin Ho Hsing Opera Company of Yuanlin, in 1956.

There were just 15 members in the troupe at the time, including his wife, Lo Ch'iu-ch'a, who comes from a family of Peikuan opera players. The two of them teamed up so well they were known in the south of the island as "a golden boy and a girl of jade."

Thanks to his father and his wife, Chiang is thoroughly versed in both Peikuan and Nankuan opera, the twin fountainheads of Taiwan opera. In addition, during his time in the military he enriched his performing repertoire by learning the singing styles and stage movements of Peking opera from his fellow servicemen from the mainland. Even today, he can still come out with a perfect Nankuan or Peikuan melody on the spot, and those special skills have won him frequent accolades and prizes in the past.

A look at the development of the Hsin Ho Hsing Opera Company over the past 34 years presents a clear picture of the rise and fall of local Taiwan opera.

When he founded the company in the 1950s, Taiwan opera was in a period of boom development just after Retrocession and was flourishing both on outdoor stages and on indoor stages, in commercial theaters. There were more than 300 opera companies on the island at the time, with shows every day, and top singers could rake in gold bracelets, necklaces and tips for a good performance. Poor families apprenticed their children to acting companies in the hope that they would become famous some day and make a fortune for the whole family.

But around the same time, Taiwanese-language movies were on the rise and stole away part of the audience. And after Taiwan opera started being televised in 1964, opera at the local level deteriorated year by year.

"Taiwan opera lost commercial value and was demoted from the indoor to the outdoor stage, where it had to fight it out with traditional puppet plays and newly rising song and dance acts," points out Lin Feng-hsiung, an associate professor of drama at Chinese Culture University. "And under the policy of the time to cut back expenditures for temple festivities, even though there were so many temples on Taiwan, very few companies were invited to perform. Even famous temples like Lung Shan Temple rarely had them, and the niche for Taiwan opera narrowed even further."

Through all this time Chiang Ch'ing-liu never considered changing occupations, if only because opera is an inseparable part of his life, having been taught to him personally by his father and having been partly responsible for his tying the marriage knot. Instead, he redoubled his efforts: besides acting in wu-sheng, hsiao-tan, and ch'ou roles, he wrote scripts and directed. In addition, he is outgoing and easygoing about pay and demands on his time, so he continued to remain popular with local audiences. And as his children became old enough to go on stage, he made an even more astonishing move, expanding the Hsin Ho Hsing Opera Company into two troupes in 1962 and into three in 1967, establishing the basis for the company's present financial strength and scope of artistic achievement.

That his children have carried on the family tradition is highly gratifying to him. Except for his younger son, who is fond of studying, his other children--five daughters and a son--are all talented members of the company. Su-yun, his eldest daughter, specializes in hsiao-sheng roles; Yu-mei, the third daughter, is adept at k'u-tan and wu-tan roles; and Chiang-chin, the older son, plays a good Chinese zither and handles staging and lighting. They have won many prizes and are a big help to their father.

The Chiang family's ties to opera indeed seem more than fortuitous. The eldest sons in three generations of the family have all married at the age of 18, and Chiang's father, like Chiang himself, also married a popular ming-tan actress, Wang Meng-ch'iu. Even more interestingly, Wang Meng-ch'iu was born to a Taiwan opera family herself, and after she married, her parents, who were performers themselves, came with her and worked for the Chiang family, too. In time, their grandchildren were in their teens, and a fourth generation was on its way.

Most noted local opera companies are family operations, passed on from generation to generation, and the reason isn't hard to understand. As Chiang Ch'ing-liu well knows, "Outside actors are hard to find! You find one and pretty soon they're gone: the attrition rate is frightening!" Not only that, but name performers are apt to try to "borrow" NT$40,000 or NT$50,000 the first thing you know, which you might as well write off as a "no-term, interest-free loan."

"It's all because there aren't enough performers," Chiang laments. There are more than 160 opera troupes on Taiwan at present, and although fewer than 40 really keep up regular performances, "it's not that no one's willing to pay for a performance. It's just that no one can act!"

The numbers game has been popular on Taiwan in recent years, and people who hit the jackpot always want to put on a show "in gratitude to the gods," Professor Lin points out, so there are indeed chances to perform. It's just that Taiwan opera has been languishing for so many years it lacks new blood. Most of the performers from its heyday are in their forties or fifties and ready to retire, so it's no wonder the actor shortage gives troupe directors fits.

Not only are performers scarce, but audiences are shrinking too. An outdoor performance these days may attract only four or five old fans. "Actually, quite a few younger people are interested," Chiang thinks, "but they don't have any way to get started. All they can do is sit at home and imitate the moves they see on TV."

With the dual goal of "cultivating an audience and training new actors," Chiang invested a hefty sum of money and manpower three years ago in founding the first supplemental school for Taiwan opera officially registered with the Ministry of Education.

During its first term, the school drew more than 30 students from all over central Taiwan, ranging in age from an old man in his eighties to a six-year-old in the first grade. Chiang is willing to teach all and sundry. Each term runs six months, with three hours of class every Saturday and Sunday evening, often completely free.

Mo Kuang-hua, who works for the Provincial Historical Research Commission and has studied Taiwan opera on his own, was a student in the school's first term and fondly recalls his time there. "They offer a tight, well-run curriculum," he says, "and they really want to do a good job teaching people about Taiwan opera."

Because he studied Taiwan opera himself for many years, Mo is well aware of one of the school's special strengths: "They teach a lot of tunes you don't hear anywhere else anymore." That is surely a result of Chiang's mastery of both Peikuan and Taiwan opera, of so many ancient scores being passed down in his family and of his loyalty to his career.

Ch'en Shu-teh, a graduate in foreign languages from Soochow University who now works at a travel agency, commutes two hours from Taichung to Yuanlin for classes every Saturday and Sunday and two hours back. Asked if he finds it tiring, he replies, "It's not tiring if it's for something you're interested in." What's more, "Mr. Chiang, the owner" is very good to his students, and even hails a taxi for them after class to take them to the bus station.

Well aware of his students' hopes and expectations, Chiang makes sure to arrange a final performance before the end of each term to give them a chance to really strut their stuff. "That was a really thrilling moment, like a dream come true," Ch'en says, recalling his feelings just before going on stage.

Chiang is naturally pleased with his students' favorable responses, and he has also revised some of his teaching methods in line with their opinions to make Taiwan opera easier and more fun to learn.

Singing used to be taught by rote repetition, by "learning a melody line by line just the way it was sung," but Chiang has switched to musical notation, which students find easier to follow. He has even prepared a "Taiwan Opera Handbook" that anyone who went to music class in elementary school can use without a teacher!

In addition, Chiang has found that "singing should be taught before movements." Practicing movements is rather taxing, and the students, most of them sedentary office workers, are often embarrassed at watching their clumsy efforts in the mirror and feel stiff and sore afterwards. As a result, Chiang usually teaches five weeks of singing first. After the students have gained a sense of accomplishment by learning a few songs, they're more amenable to practicing movements.

Be that as it may, general classes twice a week can only satisfy the curiosity of the average person, but they're no help in cultivating professional performers. If there are any students in the general classes who really want to join the professional ranks, Chiang enrolls them in a special class, where they eat and live with the troupe seven days a week for six months. The cost is free, but they have to work for the troupe for two and a half years afterwards. During that time, the students are considered entry-level performers. They travel with the company, act in performances, earn a minimum wage of about NT$10,000 a month and are covered by medical insurance.

There are eight students in the special class now, all of them young women. Although the school's general classes have an excellent reputation, the special class, designed to train professionals, is not as strong. When students who have studied for only one or two years go onto the stage, they inevitably move out of synch, drop lines, lose the rhythm, or smile at each other when they're not supposed to. When students are on stage with regular professionals, audiences can tell the difference at a glance, and Chiang himself can only sigh and fret behind the scene.

"A privately run cram school can't compare with a real drama school, after all," says Li Tien-k'ui, one of the judges for the Chinese Folk Arts Award and a professor at Hualien Normal College.

If you ask why the students aren't well taught, there's probably just one explanation: the training's not strict enough.

Chiang recalls that when he studied opera, if he turned a somersault a little too slowly, out came the master's cane. "Repeat!" The cane corrected everything. But nowadays? The students are there out of personal interest, not for the money, so a teacher has to scold them and coax them along at the same time.

"They're pretty well educated these days, and they're quick on the uptake. Whatever you teach them, they say, 'Hey! I can do that!' And they can. But when they go on stage, they can't; it doesn't look right. It's really annoying!"

The use of student performers has brought along a side effect. Because of Chiang's concern to nurture them, they've been given the most important roles, which has led the senior performers to quit. So now, except for his own family, there are only seven regular professionals in the company's three troupes, a far cry from 20 or more there used to be before.

With raw newcomers taking the place of seasoned professionals, won't audiences complain about the effect?

"They do, of course," Chiang says with a note of resignation. "But audiences like to see young performers themselves, so they aren't too demanding!"

Frankly speaking, the artistic level of most outdoor performances isn't all that high. There are too many distractions, and the shows are often put on "for the gods" rather than for the audience.

As Lin Feng-hsiung says, "Taiwan opera has to return indoors, to commercial theaters, in order to have a chance to survive and progress."

The government has begun to pay increased attention to traditional folk arts in recent years, and Taiwan opera performances have been staged at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, the National Theater and many city and county cultural centers around the island. The Hsin Ho Hsing Opera Company put on two performances at the National Theater this June.

Chiang proudly states that "I can put on the same opera now using different scenery, costumes and scripts for an out-door stage, a cultural center or the National Theater. All you have to do is tell me who your audience is, and I'll give you whatever you want!"

That the sixth Chinese Folk Arts Award for Taiwan opera was given to Chiang Ch'ing-liu this year is "a fitting honor," believes Tzeng Yung-i, a professor at National Taiwan University, who advises Hsin Ho Hsing. The thrust of the award, Li Tien-k'ui thinks, is not so much aimed at the artistic level as made in recognition of Chiang's devotion to folk opera and his persistence and tenacity. Hsin Ho Hsing may still look rough and unpolished, but its efforts to improve itself represent the hope of Taiwan opera in the future.

[Picture Caption]

Childhood in the countryside seems to have always been bound up with noisy opera shows and crowded temple fairs. Hsin Ho Hsing Opera Company has been performing in rural towns and villages for more than 30 years.

Performing outdoors without a stage was popular in the countryside 20 or 30 years ago. The picture shows Chiang Ch'ing-liu (playing the Monkey King, on the right) and his eldest daughter, Su-yun, acting in The Story of Judge Chi. (photo courtesy of Chiang Ch'i ng-liu)

(Left) When he came across this old photograph of himself playing a comic role at age 12, Chiang Ch'ing-liu couldn't help chuckling. (photo courtesy of Chiang Ch' ing-liu)

Chiang Yu-mei (standing at center), who has won several awards for best female lead in the Taiwan local opera competition, is responsible for leading the special class through their daily exercises.

Even though he no longer goes on stage, Chiang Ch'ing-liu still maintains an impressive manner when he talks about the theater.

Chiang Ching-liu, who has served several terms as chairman of the Taiwan Commission for the Promotion of Local Opera, has won high marks for his public spiritedness.

Even though they may wear a watch and hold a microphone, the students still win applause for trying hard.

Included in this group picture are Chiang Ch'ing-liu, his eldest daughter, third daughter, son, daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law's mother along with the students in the special class. It wasn't easy getting them all together at one time.

（Left） When he came across this old photograph of himself playing a comic role at age 12, Chiang Ch'ing-liu couldn't help chuckling. （photo courtesy of Chiang Ch' ing-liu）

Performing outdoors without a stage was popular in the countryside 20 or 30 years ago. The picture shows Chiang Ch'ing-liu （playing the Monkey King, on the right） and his eldest daughter, Su-yun, acting in The Story of Judge Chi. （photo courtesy of Chiang Ch'i ng-liu）

Chiang Yu-mei （standing at center）, who has won several awards for best female lead in the Taiwan local opera competition, is responsible for leading the special class through their daily exercises.

Even though he no longer goes on stage, Chiang Ch'ing-liu still maintains an impressive manner when he talks about the theater.

Chiang Ching-liu, who has served several terms as chairman of the Taiwan Commission for the Promotion of Local Opera, has won high marks for his public spiritedness.

Even though they may wear a watch and hold a microphone, the students still win applause for trying hard.

Included in this group picture are Chiang Ch'ing-liu, his eldest daughter, third daughter, son, daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law's mother along with the students in the special class. It wasn't easy getting them all together at one time.