photography©Marc

Enguerand Popular images of the Chinese New Year often include scenes of harvest, showing a simple, optimistic peasant in fertile fields, or a fisherman with a providential catch as fish leap from the water into his net. This is a land of plenty. Then there is the reality of modern, urban, market-driven China. What was once a rice paddy is now parched land, with thousands of fish emerging from gaping cracks in the earth. In the background is a brightly colored "propaganda wall" extolling proletarian values. Nostalgic visions of abundance in the past have now faded, disappearing into crevices in the arid earth, leaving a sense of loss and a void. Ye Yan describes the decline of a country which no longer has resources to meet its own needs; it also shows how the individual has been negated. How can clichés be accepted as truth? Who can believe that such a civilization could last forever? What has become of the most glorious of all empires? In both city and country, the media constantly show scenes of joy and celebration. Such displays of happiness are compulsory, as if in an amusement park. And indeed a form of amusement fair is there, next to the aesthetic grandeur of the Forbidden City, where the visitor strolls through a perfect imitation, a mindless product of capitalist society. The grandeur and scale of an empire have been reduced to a mere child's game. In Ye Yan, such decadence is exemplified by the Emperor, who moves across the stage in a makeshift form of transport.

The Emperor is a complex character, who led a life of no merit, letting his empire run to ruin, avidly seeking personal amusement and gratification, while his country was being invaded, surrounding himself at Court with flunkies flattering his ego and joining in his pursuit of worldly indulgences. Whenever war was waged against him, he would concede land to the enemy and by the end of his reign held nothing more than a tiny patch of territory, until eventually this last domain was taken from him. It is no doubt poetic justice that a life led in an ever decreasing empire and ever straitened circumstances should end confined in custody. Yet it was when the Emperor was under house arrest that his artistic talent emerged. His first works were decorative, with no real substance or feeling, but his personal decline inspired heartfelt poetry of great beauty, exalting the universal feeling of nostalgia, longing for the glorious land of yesteryear, now lost forever. Such poetry strikes a strong chord in China today.

When the Emperor summonsed the artist, Gu Hongzhong, and ordered him to spy in the house of the upright, law-abiding Han Xizai, art was made to serve corruption. Gu Hongzhong spent between five and ten years working on his masterpiece, now acclaimed as the first Chinese painting to show indoor scenes, relating events with great detail and subtlety, and providing the first painted study depicting the attitudes of the different characters. The scroll marks a turning point in the history of art in China. The artist achieved almost immediate fame and his technique and style are studied to this day. A thousand years later, the artist and his master, the degenerate emperor and poet, are both revered, while Han Xizai, who chose to withdraw from society rather than serve a corrupt emperor, is known solely as the subject of the painted scroll.

Scenes in the Night Revels of Han Xizai form the story of the new opera composed by Guo Wenjing Ye Yan. The scroll also provided text, as verbal commentary was included. Traditional Chinese painting features an introduction, providing a form of calligraphic summary painted by the artist and written in poetic style; this is followed by comments and opinions by various scholars, commentaries on commentaries, theories and counter-theories, continuing until the date marked at the end of the scroll and which authenticates the painting. The latest commentary to be made on Ye Yan is this current production of an opera.