Colin MACKERRAS
Classroom performance of The White-Haired Girl at Beijing’s Middle School 26. PHOTO BY JOAN LEBOLD COHEN.
A style of folk song and dance from northern China, yangge developed into theater (yangge xi) and was adapted by artists of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to create a new and revolutionary form of art.
The term yangge literally means “rice-seedlings song,” suggesting its derivation from peasants’ harvest labor. As early as the twelfth
