PLT | Chapter 19

Quarrels at the Head of the Bed, Reconciliation at the Foot

For the theater’s evening performances, each show had five or six acts, mainly xiangsheng, with a few other quyi performances such as pingshu, dagu, and kuaibanshu inserted between the xiangsheng pieces.

The opening xiangsheng was performed by a pair of middle-aged male actors. Both of them had fine brows and fine eyes, and even the xiangsheng they performed had a mild, gentle air to it.

The two of them performed “Wenzhang Hui,” a traditional wenheng xiangsheng piece. It was not especially lively in the course of the performance, but probably because it was the first act, the audience below was still quite enthusiastic, and there were quite a few people supporting them.

Zhou Chenyu said, “These are performers we invited in from outside. They come to the theater on a fixed weekly basis to perform xiangsheng.”

Then Yan Chao understood. The outside-hired performers themselves did not really have much fame, and many of them had not even formally baizhi[1], they were simply earning a living by performing xiangsheng, so it was normal enough that they were still lacking a bit in polish.

The next several acts were all other kinds of quyi performances. At first the audience still applauded enthusiastically and called out their approval, but after they had gone on for over half an hour, the full house had become a little tired and looked distinctly uninterested.

Zhou Chenyu, on the other hand, was unusually quiet while watching the program. Even when the audience below had already grown impatient, he still looked very serious.

After a solo act ended, the host came out to make the announcement. Zhou Chenyu suddenly pulled over Yan Chao’s hand and placed a peeled sugar mandarin he had just finished peeling into his palm.

Yan Chao had been watching the performance, and suddenly felt something cool in his hand. Caught off guard by the sudden move, he turned to look at Zhou Chenyu in slight confusion, only to see Zhou Chenyu tip his chin toward the stage. “The jiao’er doing the zandi’er[2], is about to come on.”

The host onstage held the microphone and said, “Next, please enjoy the xiangsheng ‘Fenhe Bay,’ performed by Guan Chenfeng and Jiang Chenchi.”

The instant the words fell, the wilted audience below immediately perked up. In a flash, applause thundered through the theater, mixed with a few screams and whistles.

The two entrance doors on the stage were marked respectively with the words “Chujiang” and “Ruxiang.” To go out is like entering the jianghu, to come in is like entering the court, this is terminology inherited from the old opera stages.

At that moment, two tall, slender figures emerged from the Chujiang door, both dressed in matching ai-green changshan, handsome and fresh-looking.

Almost the instant they appeared, the audience below erupted into even fiercer applause, and at the same time, quite a few girls surged toward the stage in a swarm.

Yan Chao was instantly startled by the scene and asked, “What’s going on?”

Zhou Chenyu, on the other hand, looked totally unsurprised. “The big stars are coming out.”

Yan Chao looked toward the stage again. The two performers had each gone to one side of the stage, and both bent down gently. The fans below were holding up all kinds of things toward them, flowers, letters, plush dolls, calligraphy, paintings, basically all small items. Assistants from backstage also came out to help, arranging the things along both sides. In less than a minute, the edge of the stage was already piled full.

Only then did Yan Chao understand. So they were giving gifts.

According to Yan Chao’s prior understanding, celebrities generally did not really accept fans’ gifts. Even when they did, they accepted very little. A grand scene like this, almost like presenting tribute, was really his first time seeing it.

He was instantly shocked. “Do you people take gifts by the ton?”

Zhou Chenyu said, “We don’t accept expensive things. They’re all just little handmade things from the audience, it’s only a token of their feelings.”

Even though the nature of it was not quite the same, looking at this scene, Yan Chao still could not help being reminded of those Republican-era dramas where concubines and rich young ladies cried while throwing gold necklaces and silver bracelets onto the stage.

This kind of close-range contact, plus a hint of that old-society way of supporting a jiao’er, made the fangirl experience simply excellent. Yan Chao felt that in an instant, he could understand why xiangsheng had so many fans these days.

If two young little jiao’ers were already this popular, then wouldn’t He Chenfeng and Zhou Chenyu be even more exaggerated than this?

Yan Chao asked, “When you two perform, is the display even bigger than this?”

Zhou Chenyu smiled with no trace of modesty at all. “Next time I’ll let you see it, and then you’ll know.”

Only after the surge of gift-givers receded a little did Yan Chao finally get the chance to look carefully at the two young men onstage.

The penggen looked to be around twenty, while the dougen looked even younger than him. There was still a trace of youthful greenness in the handsome brows and eyes of both of them.

Every one of them was good-looking and well-proportioned, with the not-yet-fully-solid build of adolescent boys. Put into a changshan, their figures looked especially long and attractive.

Zhou Chenyu pointed at the spirited, lively young boy on the left and said, “That clever little imp doing dougen is called Guan Chenfeng. In jianghu circles he’s known as…”

Yan Chao picked it up, “Xiao Zhou Chenyu.”

Zhou Chenyu looked at him with some surprise, a trace of laughter flowing into his eyes. “So you really did your homework in advance?”

Yan Chao had not actually gone out of his way to look them up. He had just been hanging around the forums eating melon lately, and over time he had come to know these two newly popular traffic names from Xiaqing Yuan.

Guan Chenfeng had also formally taken a master very young. He was seven or eight years younger than Zhou Chenyu, and had grown up trailing after Zhou Chenyu since childhood, a complete little tagalong.

On top of that, the two of them were both cheerful and lively in personality, and both had faces especially capable of wreaking havoc on young girls. Gradually, people began saying he had some of Zhou Chenyu’s shadow from back when Zhou Chenyu used to do dougen, and as it went on, he ended up with the nickname “Xiao Zhou Chenyu.”

Zhou Chenyu grinned smugly. “He does have a bit of this young master’s bearing from when I was younger, but he’s still far from it.”

The penggen actor on the right had handsome, cool features. Just standing there gave people the impression of someone with poetry and books in his belly, the very image of a scholarly young man from the Republican era.

Zhou Chenyu said, “Jiang Chenchi, also a Peking University top student, your xuedi.”

Yan Chao teased him, “Wasn’t it enough for xiangsheng performers to have finished middle school? Since when are your shidi expected to have high degrees too?”

Zhou Chenyu glanced at him and said, “Shidi doesn’t need high degrees. Shisao does.”

Yan Chao: “……”

Feeling thoroughly deflated, he changed the topic. “These days you people don’t judge apprentices by education, you judge by looks.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “What can you do? There are just too many young people these days who are good-looking and well-proportioned. Aren’t you one of them?”

Yan Chao joked, “If I wanted to come to your theater and learn xiangsheng, would your shifu be willing to take me?”

Zhou Chenyu looked him up and down with great disdain. “With the way you are, you think you’d catch his eye?”

Yan Chao had interacted with Zhou Maoqin on the program, and in his impression, the man had always been kindly and approachable. Hearing Zhou Chenyu say that, he naturally felt unconvinced. “What’s wrong with me?”

Zhou Chenyu said, “Your kouhuo’er isn’t good.”

Yan Chao: “……”

“But if you really want to come that badly, I can reluctantly take you as a disciple.” Zhou Chenyu went on with a roguish smile, “As the saying goes, if you want to learn it well, first sleep with the shifu.”

Yan Chao wore a flat fake-smile. “Haven’t the two of us slept together enough already?”

Zhou Chenyu said, “But you haven’t practiced kouhuo’er with me.”

Yan Chao: “……Go to hell.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “I don’t have a daye.”

Yan Chao: “……Then get lost.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “Ai, Xiao Yan-gege, I remember you used to be very gentle. You never swore.”

Yan Chao smiled. “Yeah. That was before I knew you, wasn’t it.”

The two of them were still bickering when a sudden commotion rose below the stage. Yan Chao looked over, and it turned out that a fan had stuffed two folding fans into Guan Chenfeng’s hands.

Guan Chenfeng took a look, then smilingly opened one in each hand toward the audience. On them were written two lines of poetry: “Moonset, crows cry, frost fills the sky. River maples, fishing lights, accompany sorrowful sleep.”

The audience below instantly erupted into a chorus of shrill screams.

This time, Yan Chao understood very quickly why they were screaming, because from eating melon he already knew that “JiangfengYuhuo” was exactly the CP name of this peng-dou partner pair.

This little brat named Guan Chenfeng really had learned his shige’s flirtatious, slutty energy ten out of ten.

Yan Chao seemed to think of something. “Guan Chenfeng, Jiang Chenchi, the names in your generation all sound pretty nice.”

Zhou Chenyu said, “That’s because we got lucky. ‘Zi chou yin mao, chen si wu wei[6],’ it just happened to fall on this point. Take my taishiye’s generation, for example, the Chou generation, who were they supposed to complain to?”

Yan Chao could not help laughing. “Zhou Chouyu?”

Zhou Chenyu gave a huff. “You’re messing up the generations. When we get back, I’ll have my shiye smack you.”

Yan Chao could not help reflecting inwardly that Liao Feng Pavilion’s tradition of taking stage names by generation according to the twelve earthly branches was, in a way, also proof of how this century-old quyi family had carried on its flame from generation to generation.

He looked at the two fans in Guan Chenfeng’s hands, then mused, “Fengyu Tongzhou, JiangfengYuhuo[3], your CP names are all pretty poetic too.”

Zhou Chenyu rarely blanked out like this. “Fengyu Tongzhou[4]? What kind of thing is that?”

Yan Chao said, “You don’t even know that? Yours and your partner’s CP.”

At that, Zhou Chenyu let out a mocking laugh. “A married middle-aged man with children, and a young, beautiful boy in the flower of youth like me, what future could there be in that CP? At most people can just ship some partner feelings. If you ask me, ChenyuLuoyan is…”

“Fake.” Yan Chao once again solemnly declared it.

Zhou Chenyu sighed. “Look at you. With an attitude toward promoting the pairing as crooked as yours, how can you blame people for saying the two of us don’t get along?”

Yan Chao smiled. “The two of us never got along in the first place.”

Zhou Chenyu spread his hands. “Fine then. It’s not a big deal anyway. Quarrels at the head of the bed, reconciliation at the foot.”

Yan Chao: “……Watch the show!”

Footnotes:

[1] 摆枝 here refers to formally entering the lineage through a master-disciple relationship, that is, officially taking a master. The note in the source glosses it as 拜师.

[2] 攒底儿 means the final act to appear, usually the featured act or strongest closer in a lineup.

[3] “Moonset, crows cry, frost fills the sky. River maples, fishing lights, accompany sorrowful sleep” comes from Zhang Ji’s “Night Mooring at Maple Bridge” and here works as a CP pun: 江枫 and 渔火 are used to form the ship name JiangfengYuhuo from Jiang Chenchi and Guan Chenfeng.

[4] 风雨同舟 literally means “crossing wind and rain in the same boat.” Here it is used as a CP name for Zhou Chenyu and He Chenfeng because 舟 sounds like Zhou and 风 comes from Feng.

[5] “床头吵架床尾和” is a common saying meaning a couple may quarrel fiercely, but they make up quickly. Zhou Chenyu uses it flirtatiously to frame himself and Yan Chao like a bickering couple.

[6] “Zi chou yin mao, chen si wu wei” lists the Twelve Earthly Branches (十二地支), the traditional cyclical sequence used in Chinese chronology: zi, chou, yin, mao, chen, si, wu, wei, shen, you, xu, hai. In Liao Feng Pavilion, these branch names are used to assign generation markers in stage names, so people of the same generation share the same branch character. The joke here is that Zhou Chenyu’s generation happened to fall on chen, which sounds elegant in names, while an earlier generation fell on chou, which would sound much less flattering in a stage name.