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The Story Of The Lute
''Tale of the Pipa'' ( "Tale of the Pipa" or "The Story of the Lute") is a Chinese '' nanxi'' play written by the playwright Gao Ming during the late Yuan dynasty. There are French, German, English translations of the play, and an English novelization-translation. It was the most popular drama during the Ming dynasty,Tanaka, p153 and it became a model for Ming drama as it was the favorite opera of the first Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. Plot The play is set during the Han dynasty. Based on an older play, ''Zhao zhen nü'' (''The Chaste Maiden Zhao''), it tells the story of a loyal wife named Zhao Wuniang (T: 趙五孃, S: 赵五娘, P: Zhào Wǔniáng, W: ''Chao Wu-niang'') who, left destitute when her husband Cai Yong is forced to marry another woman, undertakes a 12-year search for him. During her journey, she plays the pipa of the play's title in order to make a living. The original story sees Zhao killed by a horse and Cai struck by lightning, however in Gao Ming's vers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pipa
The pipa, pípá, or p'i-p'a () is a traditional Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. Sometimes called the "Chinese lute", the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12 to 31. Another Chinese four-string plucked lute is the liuqin, which looks like a smaller version of the pipa. The pear-shaped instrument may have existed in China as early as the Han dynasty, and although historically the term ''pipa'' was once used to refer to a variety of plucked chordophones, its usage since the Song dynasty refers exclusively to the pear-shaped instrument. The pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China. Several related instruments are derived from the pipa, including the Japanese biwa and Korean bipa in East Asia, and the Vietnamese đàn tỳ bà in Southeast Asia. The Korean instrument is the only one of the three that is no longer wide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yul Brenner
Yuliy Borisovich Briner (russian: link=no, Юлий Борисович Бринер; July 11, 1920 – October 10, 1985), known professionally as Yul Brynner, was a Russian-born actor. He was best known for his portrayal of King Mongkut in the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical ''The King and I'', for which he won two Tony Awards, and later an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film adaptation. He played the role 4,625 times on stage and became known for his shaved head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it for ''The King and I''. Considered one of the first Russian-American film stars, he was honored with a ceremony to put his handprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in 1956, and also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. In 1956, Brynner received the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Rameses II in the Cecil B. DeMille epic ''The Ten Commandments'' and General Bounine in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Howard
Sidney Coe Howard (June 26, 1891 – August 23, 1939) was an American playwright, dramatist and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for ''Gone with the Wind''. Early life Sidney Howard was born in Oakland, California, the son of Helen Louise (née Coe) and John Lawrence Howard. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1915 and went on to Harvard University to study playwriting under George Pierce Baker in his legendary "47 workshop." (Other alumni of Baker's class included Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Wolfe, Philip Barry and S.N. Behrman. Howard became good friends with Behrman.) Along with other students of Harvard professor A. Piatt Andrew, Howard volunteered with Andrew's American Field Service, serving in France and the Balkans during World War I. After the war, Howard made use of his proficiency at foreign languages and translated a number of literary works from French, Spani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Will Irwin
William Henry Irwin (September 14, 1873 – February 24, 1948) was an American author, writer and journalist who was associated with the muckrakers. Early life Irwin was born in 1873 in Oneida, New York. In his early childhood, the Irwin family moved to Clayville, New York, a farming and mining center south of Utica. In about 1878, his father moved to Leadville, Colorado, establishing himself in the lumber business, and brought his family out. When his business failed Irwin's father moved the family to Twin Lakes, Colorado. A hotel business there failed too, and the family moved back to Leadville, in a bungalow at 125 West Twelfth Street. In 1889, the family moved to Denver, where he graduated from high school. He said he cured himself of a diagnosed bout of tuberculosis by "roughing it" for a year as a cowboy.Robert V. Hudson. ''The Writing Game. A Biography of Will Irwin.'' Ames, IA: The Iowa State University Press, 1982. University With a loan from his high school teache ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lute Song (musical)
''Lute Song'' is a 1946 American musical with a book by Sidney Howard and Will Irwin, music by Raymond Scott, and lyrics by Bernard Hanighen. It is based on the 14th-century Chinese play ''Tale of the Pipa'' (''Pi-Pa-Ji'') by Gao Ming. Though not a great success, the show is significant for Mary Martin's meeting of then-unknown cast member Yul Brynner, whom she later recommended to her friends Rodgers and Hammerstein for the role of the Siamese monarch in the classic ''The King and I'', which premiered on Broadway in 1951. It was also the only Broadway appearance of Nancy Davis, future U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan. Development Cyril Birch, collaborator in a translation of ''The Peach Blossom Fan'', wrote that presumably the basis of the American play was the 1846 Antoine (A. P. L.) Bazin French translation of the Chinese play ''Tale of the Pipa''.Birch, pxvii Plot The plot focuses on Tsai-Yong (Cai Yong), a young student who leaves his wife Tchao-Ou-Niang and parents to make a na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database.The basic Google book link is found at: https://books.google.com/ . The "advanced" interface allowing more specific searches is found at: https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives. The Publisher Program was first known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. The Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections of library partners and adds them to the digital invent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowing through it. With a population of 24.89 million as of 2021, Shanghai is the most populous urban area in China with 39,300,000 inhabitants living in the Shanghai metropolitan area, the second most populous city proper in the world (after Chongqing) and the only city in East Asia with a GDP greater than its corresponding capital. Shanghai ranks second among the administrative divisions of Mainland China in human development index (after Beijing). As of 2018, the Greater Shanghai metropolitan area was estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (nominal) of nearly 9.1 trillion RMB ($1.33 trillion), exceeding that of Mexico with GDP of $1.22 trillion, the 15th largest in the world. Shanghai is one of the world's major centers for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Language
German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italy, Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg and German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium, as well as a national language in Namibia. Outside Germany, it is also spoken by German communities in France (Bas-Rhin), Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Poland (Upper Silesia), Slovakia (Bratislava Region), and Hungary (Sopron). German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch language, Dutch, English language, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots language, Scots, and Yiddish. It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic languages, North Germanic group, such as Danish lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincenz Hundhausen
Vincenz Maria Hermann Hundhausen (15 December 1878 – 18 May 1955) was a German who was a German-language professor at Peking University and a translator of Chinese works into German.Walravens, p92 "xi 洪濤生" (footnote) He used the Chinese name Hong Taosheng (). Hundhausen owned the Poplar Island Press, based out of his Beijing house. In addition, Hundhausen saw himself as a poet and an artist.Bieg, p71 In 2001 Annette Merker, author of a book review of ''Vincenz Hundhausen (1878-1955): Leben und Werk des Dichters, Druckers, Verlegers, Professors, Regisseurs und Anwalts in Peking'', wrote that he was "little known by non- sinologists".Merker, p. 241. "This stay grew into a lifelong intimate relationship with China, where Hundhausen ..This extraordinary German expatriate, little known by non-sinologists, .. Life Hundhausen was born in Grevenbroich on 15 December 1878. His father, V. Hundhausen, was a factory owner. V. Hundhausen's grandfather, , was a friend of Ernst Moritz Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bing Xin
Xie Wanying (; October 5, 1900 – February 28, 1999), better known by her pen name Bing Xin () or Xie Bingxin, was one of the most prolific Chinese women writers of the 20th century. Many of her works were written for young readers. She was the chairperson of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. Her pen name Bing Xin (literally "Ice Heart") carries the meaning of a morally pure heart, and is taken from a line in a Tang dynasty poem by Wang Changling. Bing Xin published her first prose in the Morning Post (Chinese: 晨報) ''The Impressions of the 21st Hearing'' and her first novel ''Two Families'' in August 1919. Before and after studying abroad in 1923, she began to publish prose letters ''Jixiaoduzhe (To Young Readers; Chinese: 寄小讀者)'', which became a foundation stone of Chinese children's literature. Bing Xin was hired by the University of Tokyo as the first foreign female lecturer to teach a Chinese New Literature course. She returned to China in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
