7 - The Ping opera and fi lm: nationalizing the new marriage practice and politicizing the state-family, 1949–1960

Summary

From 1949 to 1956, the story of Liu Qiao'er departed from its spatial and social roots in the SGNBR and was brought to the national stage. The route of the story from Yan'an to the nation between the late 1940s and early 1950s was closely associated with the CCP's rapid political and military victories in China. After the People's Liberation Army (PLA) gained control of Manchuria, the CCP made that region the most important revolutionary base for marching toward inner China. Yuan Jing's libretto of Liu Qiao'er Goes to the Law was republished in 1947 by Dongbei Bookstore, a revolutionary publisher in Manchuria. In the same year, Han Qixiang's ballad script, Liu Qiao's Reunion, was also published by Haiyang Bookstore, a leftwing press in Hong Kong, as an example of the national form of artistic works. In 1949, Han's ballad script was again republished by Xinhua Bookstore, the official publishing agency of communist-led China, indicating that this ballad was to be sold through the bookstore's newly established national network.

In 1948, when the CCP could foresee its upcoming national victory, the top leaders began their construction of a new state that included extending the party's reform of marriage and the family throughout the country. By the time the CCP entered Beijing in early 1949, the drafted Marriage Law was already awaiting approval by the newly established legislature; in the meantime, the CCP's female leaders turned to preparing a campaign for its promulgation. Elizabeth Perry suggests that during the early communist movement, the CCP adopted a “cultural positioning” policy toward mass mobilization, while after 1949, the party-state applied a “cultural patronage” strategy. In fact, in the 1950s, the CCP used both cultural positioning and cultural patronage in promoting the Marriage Law. On the one hand, the state adopted and adapted various forms of popular culture in supporting the marriage reform campaign; on the other hand, the state also constantly revised and recast the cultural symbols from Yan'an for reconstructing its historical narrative. The image of Liu Qiao'er, which originated from the legal case Feng v. Zhang, also became a part of this cultural positioning and patronage project.