sw-chinese-opera-qupai

Xiqu Playwriting · the Qupai System (Chinese Opera Playwriting: the Qupai System)

Output language = language of the question; terms are always anchored back to the original word, see sw-workflow/terms.md, do not coin translated names. Xiqu terms (曲牌体, 宫调, 套数, 务头, 衬字, 前腔, 换头, 幺篇, 赠板, 帮腔, 宾白, 科介, 折, 出, 楔子) have no English counterparts; in any language keep the original word plus a one-sentence gloss.

This skill is the曲牌体cell of xiqu in the stage layer; the paired cell is sw-chinese-opera-banqiang。The division into axes is by vocal system, not by genre: in the qupai system the sung lyrics arefilledinto fixed character counts, line patterns and tonal patterns, and the unit is the 折 and the 出, one 折 to one 宫调; in the banqiang system it is seven-character or ten-characterupper and lower lines, and the aria is sustained by changes of banshi, with the unit being the scene. For the explanation of the division into axes see banqiang section 0.1.

The division of labor among the books：Li Yu's Xianqing Ouji gives the stage rules(he kept his own family troupe, and what he wrote is "what happens when the script is executed");Wu Mei's Guqu Zhutan and Quxue Tonglun give the prosodic rules(the two books are complementary in detail and also contradict each other),Zhongguo Xiqu Gailun gives the criteria of judgment；Wang Jilie's Yinlu Qutan gives the methods of stage arrangement；Kong Shangren's fanli and ganglingrank alongside Li Yu as the two primary sources;Guan Hanqing's three extant zaju give hard evidence for twelve 折(based on the Yuanqu selections in Wikisource);Tang Xianzu, Wei Minglun, Weng Ouhong, Luo Huaizhengive the exceptions of adaptation and modern practice.

Tables, act-by-act and 折-by-折 data, the full table of qupai and long quotations are in reference.md。not in this skill: everything of the banqiang system → banqiang; items 17–34 of the forty prohibitions (the whole line of the stale, the fabricated, the vulgar, the halting, the overly literary, the pedantic) are purely at the level of wording → sw-dialogue; the four questions of adaptation → sw-format-adaptation; props and entrances and exits → sw-scene-craft。

Which sections to read according to the task (do not read straight through)

Task	Read	Skip
Fill in one qupai	IV, 5.1–5.2	II, III, VI, VIII, IX, X
Set the 宫调, arrange one 套	V, VI; first run the switch of 1.4	below 4.4, VIII, IX, X
Write one 折 of Yuan zaju	II, V, IV (for 衬字 look only at the Northern qu column）	III, VIII
Write one 出 of Ming–Qing chuanqi	III, V, VI, VII	II
Revise an old script / turn an ancient script into a performable script	IX, XI, 3.1	II, VIII, X
Write a modern newly composed qupai-system work	read X first, then read 4.1, 5.2, XI	the hard rules of the 套 patterns in 5.3–5.4 (X has already loosened them)
Judge whether a famous work can be copied directly	XI, 1.3	all the rest
Diagnose an existing script	Thirteen, then check back by failed items	All the rest

reference.md is for lookup; open it only when this document points to a certain section.

I. Opening stance: two schools, two scoring lines, two prerequisite switches

Must read first: The rules of the qupai form are what two sets of people say in two positions; if you do not first distinguish the stances, the later rules will contradict one another.

1.1 Stage school vs. desk-side prosody school (parallel, no adjudication). Li Yu is of the stage school: "What Shengtan commented on isthe Romance of the Western Chamber for literati to toy with, not the Romance of the Western Chamber for actors to perform". Wu Mei and Wang Jilie are of the desk-side prosody school; they discuss musical rules first and playwriting second, exactly opposite to Li Yu's "structure first, musical rules third."Wu Mei's split evaluation of Li Yu must be read in both places together: praise—stage arrangement and stage business and dialogue "unique through the ages"; criticism—"although the layout is skillful, the wording is very clumsy... not fit to enter the judgment of the lyric world"。→ When citing Li Yu, indicate that what he gives are stage rules, not literary prosody rules. Wang Jilie is a third position: his stance is the stage, his method is entirely prosody.For the three divisions of labor (composing lyrics = filling in words, the playwright's work / setting to music / singing) and the analysis of "lyric score vs. gong score," see reference-tizhi.md §16——When asked "which Kunqu score to consult," first ask whether you want words or tunes; if you cannot distinguish, you will give the wrong book。

1.2 The Tang-Shen controversy (three parties in parallel, no adjudication). Shen Jing: "Better that the musical rules be harmonious though the words are not skillful" / Tang Xianzu: "It does not matter if it twists and breaks the throats of everyone in the world" / Wu Mei does not choose a side ("combine the two beauties"), and gives one criterion for choosing: "Ning'an's established rules can be attained by effort; Ruoshi's polishing of words cannot be reached by forced striving." The third party is Weng Ouhong's middle way, "as long as the words are clear and the meaning smooth" (cross-reference banqiang).This skill collects only "the side that can be learned."

1.3 Play and song are two independent scoring lines.The Peach Blossom Fan and The Palace of Eternal Life, measured with the textual ruler and the stage-arrangement ruler, produceopposite rankings; the periodization sentence: "From Qianlong upward there were plays and songs; at the Jiaqing-Daoguang transition there were songs but no plays; after Xianfeng-Tongzhi there were neither plays nor songs."Self-check: read the text twice—once looking only at plot structure, stage arrangement, hot-and-cold scenes, and role assignment; once looking only at song lyrics, modes and tunes, rhyme use, and the four tones; both tables must have scores.

1.4 Prerequisite switch one: clear song vs. dramatic song. The three points of repeated rhymes, padding characters, and borrowing modes will all be wrong if discussed separately;one must first ask "onstage or desk-side"。

	Dramatic song(an onstage text with stage business and dialogue)·For writing a text to be performed onstage, use me	Clear song(a san tao with stage business and dialogue removed, leaving only song lyrics)·For writing a san tao for pure singing or for a character's pure singing within a play, use me
Borrowing modes	Permitted (Nanlü borrows Shangdiao, Zhonglü borrows Banshe)	Not allowed
Repeated rhymes	Permitted, and famous masters do not avoid them	Not allowed
Padding characters	May be many (the Linchuan Four Dreams: "the more perilous, the more marvelous")	Use sparingly
Subject matter / prosody	Take the sheng and dan as the core; prosody is loose	"Need not necessarily be words of love"; the metrical rules are stricter

Invalidation condition: modern new compilations have loosened both columns; see Section 10.

1.5 Pre-switch two: first break a false premise."Ming-Qing chuanqi all observe gongdiao" iswrong— Wu Mei points out that 《琵琶记》 and 《拜月亭》 are precisely thenot seeking gong and counting diao" trend'ssource. Two accompanying points: ① **The extant electronic editions of 《牡丹亭》 and 《桃花扇》 uniformly do not mark gongdiao** (confirmed by checking scene by scene) → any entry whose gongdiao column bears 〔proposed〕 can only serve as an example, not as a basis; when discussing gongdiao and rhyme use,examples are uniformly taken from Yuan zaju, and in chuanqi only the three northern-qu suites (〈冥判〉〈硬拷〉〈圆驾〉) and those with certain annotations may be used. ② **"Previous people marked it this way" is not a basis**: first ask whether this item is a "rule" or an "example"; if it is an example, then find a second and third example (《幽闺记·请盟》 mistakenly takes the Yue mode 〔看花回〕 as the Xianlü mode 〔点绛唇〕, and 《邯郸记》 and 《长生殿》 repeat the error in a chain).

Two, the zaju branch (Yuan zaju)

The empirical evidence takes three extant zaju by Guan Hanqing (《窦娥冤》《救风尘》《金线池》,according to the Wiki文库 Yuanqu xuan edition); for the statistics of twelve zhe, see reference-tizhi.md §9.

Four zhe and one wedge, the wedge optional(《救风尘》 has no wedge; the half-year span is supplied by characters' self-narration on entrance).Invalidation condition: if the span contains events that must be performed on the spot, then a wedge must be established.The wedge can only be Xianlü 〔賞花時〕 or 〔端正好〕, at most two pieces; if it cannot fit, change it into a zhe.
One zhe one gongdiao, the four zhe do not repeat; the first zhe is always Xianlü, the fourth zhe always Shuangdiao(three plays, three hits, more operable than "four zhe four gongdiao"), and the middle two zhe choose among Nanlü/Zhenggong/Shangdiao/Zhonglü according to emotion.Self-check: are the first four pieces at the beginning of the first zhe 〔點絳唇〕〔混江龍〕〔油葫蘆〕〔天下樂〕? Is the first qu of the fourth zhe 〔新水令〕? If not, first check which form you are basing it on.
One zhe one rhyme throughout, the four zhe's four rhymes do not repeat，Gongdiao and rhyme category are bound together and changed together(self-check: copy the final characters of all qu in one zhe into a column; if another rhyme category is mixed in, it is an out-of-rhyme error).The wedge forms its own rhyme, not counted in "the four zhe do not repeat".Within a suite rhymes may repeat— this holds only for dramatic qu (1.4).
One person's lead singing is exclusive(the three plays' four zhe total 123 pieces, all belonging to the zhengdan);the wedge's singer is not fixed(《窦娥冤》 sung by chongmo, 《金线池》 sung by zhengdan). Self-check: copy the role markers into a column; if a second name appears in the four zhe, it is a breach of form.Writing scenes with many people: write the other party's words as inserted speech, and the lead singer's next linepicks up the wording of that speechand sings onward; if this is not done, the supporting role becomes mute.
Lead-singing right = protagonist right: in 《救风尘》 all 44 pieces are given to Zhao Pan'er, "the one who comes to rescue"; the suffering Song Yinzhang does not sing a single piece, and the play's title is accordingly fixed—structure, singing right, and play title are the same decision(banqiang style has no counterpart; see Section 12).
The first and last several qu of the suite pattern are fixed; the middle may be added, deleted, or reversed(All three plays and twelve zhe are in the fully merged form; the [Ge Wei] and the borrowed [Huangzhong Wei] in each mode are established conventions of zaju, but the commonly circulated Kunqu form tables do not include them, so when something does not match the tables, first check whether it is a case of "the tables simply did not include it.")One suite within twelve or thirteen pieces: if fewer, it is called "flash-and-earn"; if more, it is called "wearisome chatter."The epilogue of the final zhe may be omitted, on the condition that the closure is handed over to the official judgment and the [Ciyun]; omitting the epilogue within a zhe is a missing component.
Title and Proper Name: at the very end of the whole play, spoken, not sung, in two lines or four lines (as many lines as there are threads).The proper-name line must embed the full title of the play, and the action in it must actually be performed in the play; if you cannot write that line, it means the play's title was not well chosen.
[Huan Ke] = a dedicated marker for "switching in public"(substituting a divorce writ, swapping the person being supported): not a single word of explanation; the person being switched does not know, the audience knows; self-check: after the switch there must be a line of "mistaken questioning" to cash out the gap (mutually referring with sw-scene-craft the props section).
Scheme-setting plays(five of Guan Hanqing's eight plays are "a woman sets a scheme and brings down a powerful lord / prodigal"):The stratagem must be explained clearly in public in a whole passage of dialogue before it is carried out，The scheme must be seen through halfway and then wound back。It directly conflicts with the general-layer view of suspense—Xiqu does not keep secrets from the audience; if you hide the stratagem according to the Western method of suspense, there will be nothing to watch in the third zhe.

III. The Chuanqi Branch (Ming-Qing Chuanqi and Kunqu)

Length：Ming chuanqi generally takes forty chu as the measure—Wu Mei held that this length itself is a disease,sixty chu certainly "makes the main theme reverse into brevity and lets the guest usurp the host"；side branches can only be mentioned in dialogue(self-check: besides the main text of each chu, how many matters does it touch on? if more than one, merge them into the dialogue). The Qing remedy was short-play collections of "one zhe completes one matter".
Division into books: The Peach Blossom Fan has an upper and lower book, each performed for one night, joined by adding twenty-one fu-mo return scenes (self-check: if the upper book is self-sufficient, the lower book becomes a sequel).The sequence of each chu "cannot be shifted, cannot be reduced"(General Rules 4);long zhe have eight qu, short zhe six or four(General Rules 5, to prevent actors from cutting at random)—costs set side by side: Wu Mei criticized this quota for making "the writing unable to flow freely," and also "the sheng and dan cannot be handled carelessly"。
Fu-mo opening: in the first chu the fu-mo explains the intention and the outline, without performing events; Li Yu split it into two layers—first an entrance short song that "darkly states" the intention, then a jiamen passage that "openly states" the outline, and the jiamen is the hardest to write,so one may "temporarily omit the opening piece and wait to add it in at the final scene"。The Peach Blossom Fan expanded it into a through-line: four unnumbered chu all feature the fu-mo Old Libationer,and the Old Libationer is at the same time a character in the play。Self-check: if the narrator speaks only within the frame, he has no weight; at least let him undertake one actual action in the main line.
Separate singing by sheng and dan and the he-tou：One sheng and one dan are the main brain of the whole play, and must appear in the second and third zhe；Exceptions coexist: Handan Dream and Juntian Yue take the laosheng as the lead.The wording of the choral passage (he-tou) must be such that all characters on stage can claim it——A scene of "each telling their own worries" must be explicitly markeddivided singing, otherwise it will inevitably be merged away during rehearsal.
North-South combined suite (南北合套): created by the Yuan man Shen He; its positioning is "a song suite with somewhat more scene-heads" (suite-form reference-taoshu.md §4).The Peony Pavilion · Yuan Jia is a top-tier sample：All ten northern songs belong to Du Liniang alone; the southern songs are distributed to everyone else, and each has a he-tou——A combined suite is not a display of technique; it writes "one person against the crowd" into the rules of song。Conditions for failure: if at the final scene several people equally share right and wrong, the combined suite will leave the protagonist架空; switch to alternating singing of the same tune.
Northern and southern songs have a division of uses; the two stand side by side, and one cannot take only one：Northern songs are given to the outsider(The Peach Blossom Fan, scene 11, Liu Jingting forces the camp gate; The Peony Pavilion: the foreign prince, bandits, ghost judges, court, and imperial court use northern suites, and one person sings the lead throughout)· Use me when an outsider bursts into a scene where the situation is already set；Northern songs are given to the master commander of the主场(The Peach Blossom Fan, scene 18, the direction is opposite; Wang Jilie's general rule: "For sheng, jing, and laosheng meeting tragic drama, it is fitting to use northern songs")· Use me when the home-ground character must press down the whole scene with majestic grief and indignation。Shared criterion: whether what is wanted is sinewy density or long lyrical expression, and whether the crowd is to take up the singing.Proportion: chuanqi must be eight or nine tenths southern songs;Conditions for failure: zaju is the opposite and may use northern lyrics purely.
Gongdiao echoes across scenes (unique to the qupai form; the banqiang form cannot do it): Liniang dies in the southern shangdiao "ying"-word suite; Liu Sheng in 〈Wan Zhen〉 facing the painting still uses the same gongdiao and same tune group. Self-check: before writing a new suite, first check whether this gongdiao has been used in this play and on whom. ⚠️ Only the three northern suites and examples with certain annotation may be used as support—the gongdiao of the single example of the "ying"-word suite is [proposed] (1.5).
Tang-collected exit poems: in The Peony Pavilion, all 55 scenes end with four lines collected from the Tang, with the Tang person's name noted below each line,may be recited by one person, divided among roles, or carry a "he"，It both closes the present scene and hints at the next(Self-check: draw out the four lines and read them alone; can you see what is going to happen in the next scene?), and the final scene may exceptionally use eight lines.Kong Shangren objects: "Collecting Tang lines is also a stale convention.Now all are newly created poems, with beginnings that have a starting point and endings that have a thread" (Fanli 15)——The two views stand side by side; take according to the play's own conventions.
Four colors and four qi: in The Peach Blossom Fan · Gangling, theaxis of classification is not good and evil but function—the four colors (zheng/jian/he/run) govern the separation-and-union line, and the four qi (zhong/li/yu/sha) govern the rise-and-fall line; the two figures in the Jing section are framework characters and are listed in a separate section (full table reference-tizhi.md §11),and sw-character-conflict 's three-dimensional characters stand side by side rather than replacing them。Role assignment is evaluation but is not equal to a moral label: "When the zheng color is insufficient, borrow chou and jing" (Fanli 14); self-check: list a "hangdang—character—good and evil" table; if the three columns align completely, it shows the assignment is lazy.

IV. Methods of lyric writing

4.1 What "filling in" is. The musical score is a tracing copy，"The clumsy cannot subtract even slightly, and the skillful cannot add even slightly""The older it is, the better; if one leans slightly toward the new, then a difference of a hair's breadth becomes an error of a thousand li"（李渔）。The tension in Li Yu himself must be written out for him: this entry says the older the score the better, while the two entries on breaking conventions say "change makes it new, no change makes it stale"; the boundary isprosody (score, rhyme, character patterns) cannot change; plot, comic business, and detailed dialogue must change（This entry is a summary from notes, not Li Yu's original text）。Choosing a tune title = simultaneously choosing rhythm, length, and performance form(Luo Huaizhen) → order of putting pen to paper:first set the structure, then establish the main idea, then arrange the tunes, and only last choose lines to form the piece(Wu Mei, "absolutely avoid piecing in, absolutely avoid making do").Self-check: before writing the first sung line, can you list the order of tune titles for this act along with what each tune carries? If you cannot list them, it is not yet time to start writing.

4.2 Three levels: qianqiang / huanto / yaopian. qianqiang= using several pieces in succession,with not a single word of syntax changed；huanto= changing the head of the preceding tune, adding or reducing one or two words or lines; in Northern drama it is calledyao。failing to distinguish them will make "huanto" be read as "repeat once"(modern new compositions often write "continue singing" without marking qianqiang, judging by rhyme and number of lines). For the three levels of scope and the must-check list for same-name different-tune titles and same-tune different-modes, see reference.md §3.

4.3 Chenzi (padding words). Three hard rules for Southern qu：①add only where the beat pattern is dense, and only at the beginning of a line or in the middle of a line; within the last three characters of a line and where the beat pattern is sparse, they must never be added；②at most three characters per place；③empty words are suitable, solid words are not。Northern qu has no restrictions at all on chenzi(beats are not fixed, and beats may be added on chenzi) —when writing a Northern suite, all three of these rules are lifted。in chouban tunes and the first line of the coda, not one character may be added；for lines of eight, ten, or more characters, the excess is by default chenzi, and no solid beat may be assigned(Tang Xianzu excessively added chenzi, "making it so singers had no way to parse the lines," and after being altered, "the text then fell ten times short of the original"）。before writing Southern qu, first identify the beat pattern: if the final beat of the preceding line and the first beat of the following line are far apart, then not even the first character of the following line may be added.

4.4 Wutou (the "key line" in the tune-title style version, four sides in parallel, four realizations of the same functional position: "first find that line").

Who	What wutou is	How to find it
Li Yu(alternative interpretation, stage school)	"like the eye in chess: with it, alive; without it, dead"	point out which line, which one or two characters, the wutou is;if you cannot point it out, it is a dead tune
Wu Mei(definition by sound rules)	"places in the tune where the three tones level, rising, and departing are linked in a string"; in a seven-character line, the third, fourth, and fifth characters must not have the same sound	mark the last line character by character with the four tones and yin-yang, and find where three sounds or two sounds are connected
Wang Jilie(adopts Wu Mei's theory, gives a method of checking)	same as Wu Mei, adding "mostly at the last line of the mode or at a critical point in the middle"	check places annotated in the Beici Guangzheng Pu as "rising and departing cannot be moved" and places annotated in Southern qu scores as "departing-rising is marvelous"
Lu Jun(banqiang style, mutual reference)	key line — the line that embodies the theme, mood, or change in relationship	first write the key sung line, then let it determine the rhyme

Mutually refers to section 2 of banqiang. Two additional points:At the wutou, rather let the four tones and yin-yang be compromised than let the text and reasoning be incoherent(the only place where sacrificing prosody for textual meaning is permitted,not to be generalized）；The position of the wutou is designated in advance by the author。⚠️ Wang Jilie's correction must be quoted together with: Kong Shangren's "'the character 'si' is the wutou" isa mistaken conflation of two matters—"si" belongs to the zhi-shi rhyme, and when sung the sound comes out from between the teeth; it has nothing to do with the wutou.

4.5 The Forty Prohibitions and the four tones. The Forty Prohibitions come from Wang Jide's Qulü, with Wu Mei's annotations (full table in reference-jinji.md §12); take only the prosodic-level 1–16、35–40，items 17–34 → sw-dialogue。Wu Mei's general concluding remarks must be quoted together："if one cannot observe them all, one must examine and remove the worst""the method is extremely harsh"→ The Forty Prohibitions are a checklist, not an admission threshold; if you cannot run through them all, at least run through six: repeated rhymes, offending rhymes, jarring the throat, excessive padding characters, piling up erudition, and chaotic use of gongdiao.Four items on the four tones(detailed rules and the six categories of sound-ending method in reference-taoshu.md §6): ①never use four level tones, four rising tones, four departing tones, or four entering tones in succession；②a departing-rising combination is better than a rising-departing one→ for lines with a low tune use the rising tone, for high ones use the departing tone; ③the entering tone is the "licorice among medicines"—in Southern qu the entering tone has its own proper sound and can serve as level, rising, or departing,in Northern qu the entering tone has no proper sound and has already been assigned to the three tones, and may not be borrowed, andwhen using entering-tone rhymes in Southern qu, the whole piece must use entering-tone rhymes(the only exceptions being jiama and cheshe); ④ self-check: sing it out and listen whether it has turned into another character ("guang" heard as "kuang"); if it has changed, change the character, not the tune.Within the six categories of sound-ending, interchange is often permissible; across categories, borrowing is never allowed—mixing zhenwen, gengqing, and qinxun rhymes is necessarily wrong (counterexample: The Jade Hairpin, "Qin Tiao", [Chaoyuan Ge], "no one can sing it to perfection"）。

4.6 Syntax, ban patterns, and the coda. Syntax determines the ban pattern, not textual meaning: for a seven-character line, first determine whether it isfour-threeorthree-four; self-check: break it according to the ban pattern and read it through,the latter half after the break must itself be able to form a phrase(in The Peach Blossom Fan, "Chuan Ge", "配他公子千金体" broken into "子千金体" is a counterexample, and Wu Mei therefore judged it to have "fine words but no fine tune"）。The proper and padding characters and the punctuation are the responsibility of the lyric writer, not the composer。Codaalways usestwelve bans，the eleven named patterns are used according to the current gongdiao; do not disorder the sequence（reference-taoshu.md §7）；the three situations in which the coda may be omittedand "suisha" see reference-taoshu.md §7.The last line should set the finest line of the whole piece。Observing the rules is dead; writing lyrics is alive: it is permissible for the qianqiang/yaopian to differ from the preceding qu in the four tones,but the places shifted must be able to cite an ancient work as evidence. ⚠️ That "Table of level-and-oblique patterns for Southern qu codas"cannot serve as a basis—the two OCR versions differ greatly in the level-and-oblique character strings,marked "to be checked against the paper copy"; the table of eleven named patterns (obtained from reading the image) may be used.

4.7 Verification loop: sing according to the sections. Each time one was written, it was sung once according to the score; "if there is the slightest awkward character, it is immediately revised."(Kong Shangren, "The Peach Blossom Fan: Postscript"; what he sought were seasoned performers who thoroughly understood the suites). Li Yu gives the same point from the opposite side: rising-tone charactersare lowest when set to song, but in recitation are instead high; when the author writes, he recites rather than sings, and "what is high in recitation comes out low in singing"—this is the common failing of "suited to the desk but not to the stage". → After writing, someone must sing it through; one must not merely recite it. This is the same functional position as the "examining the tune" step in qupai-form and banqiang-form.

V. Modes and Suites

5.1 How far the playwright needs to understand this. Wu Mei locks it down in one sentence: "Modes are what limit the pitch level of the instrument's pipe color." And he defines the depth: "Qu and lü are two different matters"; he himself sets temperament aside, and says that the correspondence between mode names and pitch levels "no one knows its basis"。→ Boundary rule: the playwright's knowledge of modes stops at "pipe color + suite linking." If asked about the generation of pitches by octaves, the twelve pitches, or "why is Zhenggong not Huangzhonggong," answer, "This is temperament theory, not what is needed for writing lyrics; Wu Mei also said it is inexplicable," and pull the question back to flute color and suite linking.

5.2 Table of the vocal moods of the seventeen modes. The order is fixed:first determine the separations, reunions, sorrows, and joys in the play → determine the mode → within that mode choose qupai and link suites, not first pick pleasant-sounding tunes and then patch them together.

Mode / Diao	Vocal Mood	Mode / Diao	Vocal Mood
Xianlügong	Fresh and distant	Banshediao	Picking up pits and trenches
Nanlügong	Sighing and sorrowful	Xiezhidiao	Urgent and hollowly resting (lost in the north)
Zhonglügong	High and low flashing and dazzling	Shangjiaodiao	Sad and melodious (lost in the south)
Huangzhonggong	Wealthy and lingering	Shuangdiao	Vigorous, swift, and soaring
Zhenggong	Melancholy and majestic	Shangdiao	Desolate and resentful
Daogong	Ethereal and clear and quiet	Jiaodiao	Choking and resonant and sustained (lost in the north)
Dashidiao	Elegant and refined	Yuediao	Expressing cold laughter
Xiaoshidiao	Charming and lovely	Gongdiao	Elegant and heavy (lost in the north)
Gaopingdiao	Twisted and swirling (in southern lyrics it becomes Yudiao)

(Wu Mei, "General Discussion of Qu Studies," chapter 2, p0027.Use these seventeen lines as they are; do not rewrite them into modern emotion words—"picking up pits and trenches" and "high and low flashing and dazzling" are themselves terms. Examples of the Yuan people adhering to this rule:tragedy uses Nanlü and Shangdiao; comedy uses Huangzhong and Xianlü; heroes and outstanding figures sing Zhenggong; comic mockery sings Yuediao。）

A name ≠ having usable qupai: three diao are lost in the north, and Shangjiao is further lost in the south; Wang Jilie further reduced it tothe nine commonly used gongdiao: Xianlü, Nanlü, Huangzhong, Zhonglü, Zhenggong, Dashi, Shangdiao, Yuediao, Shuangdiao. Self-check: if a mode outside the nine modes is used, first confirm that there really are enough tune titles under that mode to form a complete suite.Invalidation condition: short acts, transitional scenes, and composite tunes may borrow modes with few tune titles. The complete table of tune titles for the six modes and eleven modes and the twenty-one rhyme categories are in reference.md §1.

5.3 One suite, one mode, and three transgressive established practices. Within one suite, if the preceding and following tunes are in different modes, that isleaving the mode / modulating, which the rules of tune writing do not permit ("though the lyrics be fine, they cannot be set to pipes and strings").Borrowing modes (Northern drama) may only follow Yuan-era established practices, and one must not splice them together on one's own(self-check: can you point out which Yuan-era work this borrowed-mode suite pattern comes from? If you cannot, it is "drawing a tiger").Five rules for composite tunes (Southern drama): ① modulate within the same mode or modulate intoanother mode with the same flute pitch; ②those whose flute pitches are vastly different in height must never be joined; ③ the first several lines must use the first several lines of the proper tune; ④ the last several lines must use the last several lines of the proper tune, and the middle lines must use the middle lines; ⑤reversing the order front to back is absolutely not permitted；The mode to which a composite tune belongs = the mode of the tune title used in the first several lines(self-check: can you state which several tunes are modulated into and which flute pitch they share? If not, do not use it).General rule for modulation: only those with the same pipe color may modulate(flute pitch—mode correspondence table reference.md §2);juxtaposed reservations: Wu Mei is reserved about composite tunes and does not encourage them; Wang Jide's statement that "Xianlü may interchange with Shuangdiao" was explicitly judged by Wu Mei as "not quite correct,"do not copy Wang's statement。Within one act one may change modes and change rhymes, but it must be because of a change in stage arrangement or a shift in the plot(positive example: The Palace of Eternal Life, "Engaging the Affections," Dashi = feasting on the consort's investiture, Yuediao = secret words in the deep palace; negative example: The Story of the Pipa, "Eating Bran," "changing modes without cause");self-check: what happened on stage at the moment of the mode change? If you cannot answer, do not change.

5.4 Arranging suites. The only hard standard for Southern drama: those with added beats (slow tunes) come first, those without added beats (fast tunes) come later, and those for which added beats are optional may come either before or after(the three divisions of added beats and the table of the three categories of tune titles are in reference-taoshu.md §5).The prelude is at the entrance and the coda is at the conclusion; one act has at most three,when jing and chou enter they do not use a prelude(details in reference-taoshu.md §5).Selecting suites by the six categories of tune sentiment：joy / sightseeing / sorrow / hidden resentment / action / expressing emotion, with four additional categories: ordinary, martial play, transitional scene, and quiet and refined (itemized suite lists in reference-taoshu.md §4);the long grand suites for expressing emotion are reserved only for the main acts of the whole play, and should be sung by the sheng and dan—self-check:does the longest suite for expressing emotion fall in the act with the greatest value turn(isomorphic with sw-scene-craft value turns).Invalidation condition: the six categories are an entrance, not a cage."Zhuan" (not the path) is used at the moment of a change in stage arrangement as a joint,one act per whole play is appropriate, and no more than two in one act。cold tune titles = no one has fixed their beats = unperformable; self-check: before choosing a tune title, first check whether Nanci Lüding and Jiugong Dacheng have its beat patterns (Invalidation condition: veterans who compose new tunes themselves are not restricted).

Six, Stage arrangement and plot

First separate the two terms：「Joys and sorrows, partings and reunions are what is called plot; the comings and goings of the performers are what is called stage arrangement.」——Stage arrangement is an account that must be reckoned at the moment of writing the lyrics, not the director's business(At the same level as Fan Junhong's "technical structure", mutually referring to banqiang).
The law of alternating stage arrangements (common to both systems): "If the first act is sung by the sheng and the second act by the dan, then the third act must usekuokou or a lively ensemble scene; after two or three acts of slow tunes and long suites, there must be intersperseda short transitional scene or a comic scene of the chou and jing." Self-check: arrange the act titles in a column by "lead singing role / nature of the tune", and see whether there are three consecutive acts with the same role and same nature.Conditions of failure: for short plays of within ten acts, only ensure "no two consecutive acts with the same lead singer". The sample is the full stage-arrangement table of the fifty acts of Changsheng Dian (reference-tizhi.md §8).
Transitional short scenes must not be omitted："Otherwise the plot will not cohere and the threads will not connect", andshort tunes and fast tunes must be used. Self-check: is there a transitional scene between the two major scenes? Has a slow tune with added zengban been mistakenly used in the transitional scene?
Alternating cold and hot: Li Yu's judgment is the reverse — "In chuanqi there is no cold or hot; one only fears it does not accord with human feeling」；Cold scenes are not impossible to perform; they simply have not been polished。
The jing and chou are structural components (two positions stated side by side, not merged)：Wu Mei——"The more perilous the jing and chou's foil, the more extraordinary the lyric realm", and even the small tunes at the transitions must be "fitted thread by thread" (in Dinu Hua the jing and chou have only one act, which "seems rather cold").Li Yu——"Comic banter is the ginseng broth of the theatergoer", its positioning is rhythm management; the other two items:Comic banter is not the exclusive patent of the clown、Every instance of comic banter must have a trigger in the scene(Self-check: delete those for which no trigger can be pointed out).

VII. The interface from spoken dialogue to song

The first line of a song must have support in the preceding line of spoken dialogue(the most practicable item in the entire batch of materials). Two examples from Mudan Ting · Jingmeng: first the spoken line "what fine weather" before proceeding to [Bubujiao]; first the spoken line "If one does not enter the garden, how can one know that spring colors are like this" before proceeding to [Zaoluopao] "So it turns out that purple and red bloom everywhere".Self-check: circle the connective words in the first line of the sung passage ("so it turns out", "how", "yet"), and go back to the preceding spoken line to find support; if none can be found, then the singing begins out of thin air.Mark as common to both systems: the same item appears independently three times in Chaoyang Gou and the seven Yue opera works; in banqiang terms, it is "is the line before each sung passage a term of address", see banqiang.
The three things about spoken dialogue that "must not be left unrefined": ① When many people sing in one act,even the supporting parts must be vivid② Since Kun tunes have few words and long melodies,spoken dialogue must relieve the singers' labor③ Southern lyrics "are called one suite, but in reality areone tune, one meaning", and the places of transitionall lie in the spoken dialogue. Auditory difference: when singing, the strings and bamboo clamor so that "what is ten parts excellent shows only seven parts;but with spoken dialogue, every single word is known to everyone". The self-editing method Li Yu gives is "with the hand holding the brush, yet the mouth taking the stage"; self-check: being transparent on the printed page yet muddled on stage is precisely lacking "using the mouth in place of the actor and the ear in place of the listener."

Eight, Bangqiang (the textual device of Gaoqiang)

Bangqiang: in Gaoqiang (the Sichuan opera Gaoqiang and Yiyang qiang lineage), a short passage sung in response by the musicians or the offstage crowd.Banqiang style has no such device, so it forms a section within the main text of Qupai style. The evidence is taken from the nine bangqiang passages in the full play Ba Shan Xiu Cai (1983, ninth draft, Sichuan opera Gaoqiang) by Wei Minglun and Nanguo.

In the script it is treated as a character: the word "Bangqiang" is written at the head of the line, occupying the same position as a character name.
Four functions, only one chosen per instance：Narration(stating facts the character finds inconvenient or impossible to say—the xiucai suspects he is dead, and the bangqiang announces on his behalf "survivor of a great calamity who did not die") /Commentary(exposing, settling accounts—Nichang sings "softly singing low—", and the bangqiang cuts in to add "putting on a smiling face!") /Speaking on behalf of and participating(speaking for the character and even deciding for him) /Amplifying emotion("On the road to the Yellow Springs there is no inn" followed by "where to lodge, three thousand wronged souls of Ba Shan?", the parallelism complete while the subject shifts from "I" to "three thousand souls"). There are alsostarting the songandtaking up the next line, two purely structural uses. Self-check: attach one functional label to each instance, and delete any that cannot be labeled; if two functions are switched within the same passage, the audience will not know whose voice this sound is.
Three formal rules：Extremely short(six of the nine instances are only 3–7 characters)—bangqiang never carries a full passage of lyric expression；Its position is always where "the character cannot keep singing"；It can be used by the bangqiang to complete a tune change(starting another [Gua Gu Ling], "switching to [Xiao Shun Ge] he ge", with the character following along). Self-check: if the bangqiang exceeds one line of seven characters, one must ask "why is this line not given to a character to sing?"
Solitary example: a character in the play hears the bangqiang and adopts it. The bangqiang sings "take your wife to Chengdu!", and Meng Dengke follows with the spoken line "Hey, this bangqiang helps well!" and immediately complies → the bangqiang changes from "the voice of the crowd" into "the voice of fate".At most once in the whole play, and it must be placed at the point where the character has nowhere left to turn; use it a second time and it degrades into an ordinary supporting role.

Nine, Adaptation and Revised Scripts

Li Yu's "changing the tune" distinction between constitution and bearing：「keep its constitution, change its bearing。」Constitution = the qu lyrics and the major plot sections, unchanged；Bearing = the comic byplay and minute spoken dialogue, must be changed。When filling gaps, first look among the play's existing characters; only add people if none can be found(the xiao er in The Story of the Pipa, Cai Ping in The Story of the Bright Pearl).Conditions of invalidity: Li Yu's motive for supplementing The Pipa was the Ming-Qing view of chastity,the method is usable, the motive cannot be copied。
Shortening the long into the short (the expandable-and-contractible script method)："Better short with an ending than long without one"：Mark the several acts whose plot may be omitted with a separate cue; the key lies inthe method of adding within deletion—in the following act after the deletion, add a few more words to point out that plot, or in the preceding act prepare to draw it in.
Turning an old text into a performable text: Wang Jilie's abridged revision of The Story of the Purple Hairpin. Diagnosis first—"all four of Yu Ming's Four Dreams lack careful arrangement…The Purple Hairpin has the least proper arrangement,it truly cannot be performed"; thenselect fourteen scenes and adapt them into a shortened version, recording item by item which arias were deleted and why (too many slow tunes, one person cannot sing it all, plot can be omitted).This is the only first-hand working record of "adapting an ancient edition into a performable version", to be compared with sw-format-adaptation the four questions on adaptation.
The same action, three outcomes(Wu Mei's four adapted editions): Feng Menglong's Mohanzhai Definitive Edition "each tune further carefully revised in ban-style" → success; Saoyinsheng's adaptation of Bu Fu Lao from northern to southern → success; Nan Xixiang from northern to southern → failure (when the modal suite cannot be linked, oneborrows tunes from other modes with similar syntactic patterns, filling them in at will); Zang Jinshu's revision of the Four Dreams to fit tonal rules → another kind of failure ("only attends to tune rules, paying no attention to the text at all……turning gold into iron"）。three conclusions：①when converting a northern play into a southern version, one cannot seek line by line for tunes with similar syntactic patterns and force them in, if adapting, one must rearrange the modes, suite patterns, and ban styles according to the target system; ②adapted editions must have the ban styles revised together with them; ③ **"tonal conformity" and "vividness" are two independent validation items; neither is allowed to swallow the other**.when words and rules conflict, change the tune title, not the words(Niu Shaoya's Gecheng Huanhun Ji Cidiao: "rewritten as a collected tune…the original text still unchanged by a single character"); self-check:if more characters are changed than tune titles, the direction is wrong；conditions under which it fails: when the punctuation and phrasing themselves are wrong, one must go back and change the words' punctuation and phrasing.
Tang Xianzu's four actions in adapting the storybook(compared with the source storybook Du Liniang Mose Huanhun): ①delete relativesto isolate the protagonists; ②change the legal into the illegal(the opening of the grave, originally presided over by Magistrate Liu, is changed to Liu Sheng secretly digging it up, violating the Great Ming Code: "opening a coffin and exposing a corpse, whether principal or accessory, all shall be beheaded")—the conflict of the latter half of the play arises from this; ③change "love at first sight" into "secret meeting in a dream + seeking the dream again"；④the good lines of the original work are kept unchanged in the spoken parts, and only the arias are changed(in the inscribed painting poem only one character is changed: "not by the plum side, by the willow side" → "not by the plum side, by the willow side"). Self-check: ask item by item "did this change create a new opponent or a new risk of illegality"; if only verbal polishing is done and the structure is untouched, it does not count as adaptation.

Connect to banqiang section twelve (arranging traditional themes) and sw-format-adaptation。

ten, modern newly composed qupai-style

This section stands alongside "lyric-writing methods / modes and suites," not as an appendage. The practices of the three schools and Wu Mei and Wang Jilie's "lyric-writing must follow the notation"directly conflict; the ancient and modern two lines are preserved side by side, not merged, not choosing one over the other。

Weng Ouhong (newly composed Kunqu for a Peking opera troupe): Uproar in Heaven and Gao Liang Chasing Water are in the style of full-length Kunqu yetdo not use suites, instead switching to "scattered gold and broken jade" interwoven selected tunes, relying on modal shifts and modulations to connect; the reason is "suites are too restrictive"。
Wei Minglun and Nanguo's Ba Shan Xiucai (1983, ninth draft, Sichuan opera high-pitched) four answers：①not forming suites—the whole play in eight scenesThere is not a single gongdiao annotation., and the same tune is reused across scenes and characters (〔Red Lined Jacket〕 is assigned to a blacksmith, a corrupt official, and a favored concubine); the only remnant of suite structure is "continuous singing." ②Selecting tunes as scattered fragments, based on emotion and the scale of the passage(tune-emotion correspondence table reference-jinji.md §13)——Criterion: what can be explained is "how long this emotion lasts and in what mode," while what cannot be explained is "what gong the previous piece was in." ③Half adherence to prosody：Within a passage, one rhyme runs strictly throughout(the 24 lines of 〔Fragrant Silk Sash〕 use the you rhyme),while character count and tonal patterns are completely free。④Do not invent tune names, but expand the tune-name column into a "singing-method instruction column"—which may be filled with vocal genre ("Kunqu"), metrical patterns from other opera genres (Peking opera "Xipi Erliu"), or delivery method ("rhymed recitation").
Luo Huaizhen's Ban Zhao takes the opposite path：written in modern vernacular, "but not one character of mine violates the rules", with the tonal patterns of characters in odd positions, end-of-line rhyming, and the assignment of entering-tone characters into the three tones all followed one by one; the cost is that "sometimes it takes two days to fill in a single qupai"。
Commonalities and divergences: none of the three treats gongdiao as a tonal system, but rather as an index of emotion and scale;Divergences are not adjudicated—what Weng and Wei loosened were the suite and the wording, while Luo kept the wording and loosened the linguistic register.Two opera genres, two authors, and two eras (Weng and Wei) independently reached the same conclusion: modern newly written plays do not use suites; but Ban Zhao likewise holds.How to choose: should the script enter Kunqu's existing singing-mode system? If yes—take Luo's path (write according to the notation, and budget working time); if no and the opera genre has a living qupai vocal library (Sichuan opera high-pitched style)—take Weng and Wei's path (scattered fragments, strict rhyme and loose wording).
Negative criterion: "pseudo-youth Kunqu"—"its essence isteenage young lives conveying the aged breath of late-Ming literati and old loyalists" (luo-v6 p0109). Self-check: in newly written scripts, are the words spoken by young characters their words or the words of literati from three hundred years ago?

Eleven, Famous works also violate the rules

The handling is only one sentence: "But one should study its writing, and must not imitate its method."(Wu Mei on the Four Dreams of Yuming Tang) Those named and the faults indicated:The Peony Pavilion / Four Dreams(too many padding characters, to the point of being unpunctuable; in 〈The Vow in the Underworld〉 the gong is left and the mode is changed; all four dreams are insufficiently considered in stage arrangement; level, rising, and departing rhymes are mixed with entering tone);The Peach Blossom Fan(tonal patterns are often off, padding characters are not apt; the syntax of 〈Transmitting the Song〉 is mistaken; 〈Crying at the Altar〉 uses the southern 〔Chaotianzi〕 in place of the northern "greatly losing the meaning of alternating southern and northern suites"; "there are fine words but no fine tune");Southern Western Chamber(its suite patterns are the least to be followed, see section nine; Li Yu judged it "first in merit and chief in guilt");The Story of the Lute(zhi and shi are not distinguished from yu and mo; ge and luo are used together with jia and ma; reversed characters are patched in for rhyme;the last eight scenes are not Gao Ming's original work）；The Story of Moon Worship Pavilion(many rare modes with no fixed beats; together with The Lute it is a source of southern qu "not seeking gong and not counting modes");The Jade Hairpin · Qin Tiao(mixes rhymes from the three rhyme groups geng-ting / zhen-wen / qin-xun);Jin Xian Chi (The Golden Thread Pool)(The fourth fold has no coda — the third kind of exit, omitting the coda.) For the exact wording and page numbers item by item, see reference-jinji.md §14.

Two ways to use it: ① Before citing a famous work's aria as an example, first check whether it is on this list; if it is, avoid the place pointed out. ② **"Previous people marked it this way" is not a basis** (1.5).

Two disagreements that must be preserved side by side: Wang Jilie refuted Jin Shengtan's revision of Xixiang — "Jin's specialty in plain description is precisely where the Yuan people's true colors lie……is truly a great calamity for Xixiang"; Wu Mei and Wang Jilie both criticized Taohua Shan, yet Kong Shangren's own general rules have their own system (long folds of eight arias, reverse jiti Tang, detailed spoken parts) —the author's self-established rules and the verdicts of the prosody critics are two sets of coordinates; write both.

Twelve, Medium boundaries: the few lines exclusive to the qupai style

Item	Qupai style	Banqiang style
Lead-singing right	In zaju, one fold has one person leading the singing and it is exclusive,lead-singing right = protagonist right	Role types sing in turn; anyone can sing
Gongdiao correspondence	Can use the same gongdiao and same tune group for cross-chu correspondence	Cannot do it — ban patterns are not classified into gong by emotion
Qupai names	Generally do not hint at the content, and there are even unintelligible dialect names	Ban pattern names directly hint at tempo and emotion
One section, one rhyme	One fold/one chu uses one rhyme throughout, and the four folds do not repeat; within a suite rhymes may repeat (dramatic song)	One section uses one rhyme throughout; the whole play may change rhyme category scene by scene
Helping chorus	A presence unique to gaoqiang; can comment, can speak for a character, can change tune	None; the equivalent functional position is hetou/offstage singing

The choices at the general level (qi-cheng-zhuan-he can be used, BS2 page numbers cannot be used, formulaic patterns are not setup, late entry and early exit do not apply) are consistent with banqiang style; see banqiang section 0-2. Add one more line:"One person, one matter" belongs to the Li Yu—qupai style tradition, while banqiang style speaks of the same matter using "vertical concentration"; each side uses its own terminology.

Thirteen, Diagnostic checklist, workflow, training

13.1 Diagnostic checklist

For the stage or for the desk? If you cannot answer, the table in 1.4 cannot be used.
Have you read it twice — once looking only at staging and plot structure, once looking only at aria lyrics and gongdiao (→ 一)?
Zaju: are the gongdiao of the four folds four different ones? Is the first fold Xianlü and the fourth fold Shuangdiao (→ 二)?
Zaju: copy the role markers into one column; does a second name appear in the four folds? Is the subject of the zhengming line the lead singer (→ 二)?
Chuanqi: in which chu does the protagonist appear? If the previous fold has sheng as protagonist, is the next fold again sheng (→ 三)?
Copy the rhyme-foot characters of each fold into one column; have any from another rhyme category mixed in (→ 二、四)?
Can you point out, for each aria, which line and which one or two characters are the wutou? If you cannot point it out, it is a dead aria (→ 四). In southern qu, are all the chenzi placed where the ban is dense, at the beginning or middle of a line, and does each place not exceed three characters (→ 四)?
Do the qupai of one suite all fall under the same gongdiao? If it crosses gong, can you say which flute color they share? What happened on stage at the moment of changing gong (→ 五)?
Arrange the scene list in a column by "lead-singing role / nature of the song's emotional content." Are there three consecutive scenes with the same role and same nature? Is there an interlude between the two major scene blocks (→ 6)?
Does the longest extended lyrical suite fall on the scene with the greatest value reversal (→ 5, 6)?
Can the linking word in the first line of each song find support in the preceding spoken line (→ 7)?
Can each instance of supporting vocals be tagged with a functional label? Does the word count exceed one seven-character line (→ 8)?
Revised version: does the number of characters changed exceed the number of tune titles changed? If more, the direction is wrong (→ 9).
Modern new composition: does it follow "fill according to the score" or "zero gold broken jade"? Have the costs of the two paths been reserved separately (→ 10)?
Are the famous arias cited as examples on the list in section 11? Is the last line of the coda the most defensible line in the entire suite? After finishing each song, has someone sung it through according to the beat?

13.2 Workflow

First ask two switches: stage or desk (1.4); zaju or chuanqi (2 vs 3). Modern new compositions follow section 10 separately.
Define the main idea: compress it into "one person + one matter in four characters," then verify the subplots one by one (6).
Lay out the act/chapter sequence: set the length (chuanqi no more than forty scenes; zaju four acts and one楔zi), list the scene table marking song-emotion categories, lead-singing roles, and hot/cold; run the alternation rule and evenly distribute labor (3, 6).
Determine the emotion act by act → determine the mode → select the tune-title suite of the same mode(5.2, 5.3); for southern qu arrange by slow/medium/fast (5.4), for northern qu follow the beginning and end of the suite-pattern table (2).
Write the spoken dialogue and stage business, first write out the interface of each song (the last line of the spoken part) (7); thenfill in the lyrics—consult the tune score to fix word count, line pattern, and the four tones; consult the rhyme book to fix the rhyme category; first designate the pivotal point before setting the brilliant phrase (4.4); handle padding characters separately for northern and southern (4.3).
Sing according to the beat（4.7）→ Run the forty prohibitions and remove the six most serious ones(4.5) → run 13.1. Before delivery, if both long and short versions are to be prepared, mark the hidden signals according to the "method of adding within deletion" in section 9.

13.3 Training

Fill in one song against the original pattern: mark the four tones character by character for [Xia Shan Hu] (The Story of the Secluded Chamber), then fill in new content slot by slot; place old and new side by side, and if there is one difference in the four tones, refill. "The harder it is, the easier it is to do well."
Write each of the two paths once: for the same scene, once fill according to the score (Luo Huaizhen style), once zero gold broken jade (Wei Minglun style), and compare work time and performability (10).