Considered one of the Four Great Yuan Playwrights, Guan Hanqing (關漢卿) (circa 1241-1320), sobriquet "the Oldman of the Studio" (齋叟 Zhāisǒu), was born in the capital city of the Yuan Empire, Dadu (the part that is Anguo, Hebei, China now) and produced about 65 plays, mostly in Vernacular Chinese of the time. Fourteen survived, including: Events April 5 - Mongols of Golden Horde under the command of Subotai defeat feudal Polish nobility, including Knights Templar, in the battle of Liegnitz April 27 - Mongols defeat Bela IV of Hungary in the battle of Sajo. ... Events January 20 - Dante - Quaestio de Aqua et Terra January 20 - Duke Wladyslaw Lokietek becomes king of Poland April 6 - The Scots reaffirm their independence by signing the Declaration of Arbroath. ... The Yuan Dynasty (Mongolian: Dai Ön Yeke Mongghul Ulus; Chinese: 元朝) (1271-1368), also called the Mongol Dynasty, was a significant ruling family in Asia. ... Khanbaliq or Cambuluc (great residence of the khan) is the ancient Mongol name for Beijing, the current capital of China. ... Anguo (Chinese: 安国; pinyin: ), nicknamed Medicine Capital (藥都), is a county-level city in the regional city of Baoding, central Hebei Province, China, south of Beijing. ... Hebei (Chinese: 河北; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ho-pei; Postal System Pinyin: Hopeh) is a northern province of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Vernacular Chinese (pinyin: báihuà ; Wade-Giles: paihua) is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. ...
GuanHanqing, whose birth and death dates remain unknown, was a native of Dadu (Beijing), and once worked at the Imperial Academy of Medicine.
GuanHanqing's Zaju gave voice to repressed and indignant feelings -- a natural outcome of the fact that the playwrights were fully aware of the dark side of the society they lived in.
GuanHanqing used the story as a framework for criticism of the evils of contemporary society.
But these works have no critical coloring, apart from In Search of Ghosts, which uses street anecdotes to make the point that "the gods are not deceived, " and underlines the girl' s filial constancy by stressing her spirit of resistance.
Guan Hanging's accomplishment was to fuse the accounts in the records, folk tradition and the creations of the other zaju playwrights of his own times, and embellish this basis with real-life cameos of Yuan Dynasty society to produce a classic of dramatic tragedy which continues to impress audiences deeply.
It was GuanHanqing's misfortune to be born in the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, when intellectuals were oppressed and despised, and their status was on a par with the very dregs of society.
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