Lesson 12: Urbanism and Culture in the Song and Yuan Dynasties（941words）

The prosperous city life

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, there were many large cities that were not only very developed in commerce, trade, culture and education, but also presented a colorful scene in social life. Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty, Lin'an in the Southern Song Dynasty, and Dadu in the Yuan Dynasty were all famous metropolises in the world at that time.

In Kaifeng of the Northern Song Dynasty, the most prosperous temple was the Daxiangguo Temple, which had a wide venue for 10,000 people and held temple fairs several times a month. The temple was crowded with people inside and outside the temple, trading all kinds of goods, as well as puppet shows, sword dances, acrobatics and various other performances. During the Lantern Festival, a music hall was set up in front of the main hall of Xiangguo Temple for the royal orchestra to play, attracting crowds of people to come and watch the event, which was very lively.

With the prosperity of the city, the civic class in Song Dynasty grew and the cultural life of citizens was enriched. There were many entertainment and commercial places in Kaifeng, called "wazi". Large tiles could accommodate several thousand people. In the tiles, many circles were circled for performances, called "Gouban". There is a wide range of commercial advertisements in the tiles, where various artists make a living, such as storytellers, singers, acrobats, acrobats, and cuju performers, making people dazzled. There were also many stalls in the tile, selling food, herbs, antiques, calligraphy and paintings, as well as shaving heads, face reading and fortune telling, which was very lively. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the cultural and entertainment industry in Lin'an was even more developed, with a number of tiles in the city, such as the Great Tile, the Middle Tile, the Lower Tile and the South Tile, and more than ten other tiles outside the city.

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, the main form of theatrical performance was miscellaneous drama, which included rap, acrobatics, songs and dances, puppets and other skills, and was performed in the bazaars, busy downtowns and tile houses of large cities and local counties. Miscellaneous dramas were formed in the Song Dynasty. After the establishment of the Shang dynasty, Yuan opera was performed in the northern region centering on the metropolis, and after the reunification of the north and the south, Yuan opera was introduced to the south, and performances were held all over the city and the countryside, which were loved by the general public.

Today's traditional festivals such as the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc., in the Song Dynasty. Some festival customs, such as the Spring Festival firecrackers, mutual New Year's worship, the Lantern Festival hanging lanterns, rowing dry boat, the Dragon Boat Festival, such as eating zongzi, dragon boat racing, has been passed down to this day.

Song Lyrics

Song is a new style of poetry, with long and short sentences, also known as long and short sentences, which are easy to sing. Lyrics already appeared in the Tang Dynasty, and developed greatly through the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, becoming one of the main literary forms in the Song Dynasty. Each lyric has a certain format based on the requirements of the music score, which is called a lyric plate, such as "Nian Nu Jiao", "Man Jiang Hong", "Butterfly Lovers", etc.. The content of the lyrics was mostly about women's sadness and grievances or the scenery under the moon in front of the flowers, but it was only in the Song Dynasty that there was a big change and a variety of styles, including Su Shi, Li Qingzhao and Xin Qiji.

Su Shi, a literary scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty, made outstanding contributions to the development of lyrics. He improved the composition of words, expanded the realm of words, and improved the style of words. His words are bold and elegant, combining scenery writing, lyricism and arguments, which have a fascinating and emotionally stimulating artistic effect.

The female lyricist Li Qingzhao's lyrics are euphemistic, delicate, and clear. Her works were mainly about the sincere feelings of couples before the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, but her subsequent works were full of blood and tears, reflecting the disasters brought by the war and expressing her deep sorrowful feelings through the description of her personal displacement and uncertain life, which had a great influence at that time.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, Xin Qiji inherited the bold style of lyrics and the sentiment of serving the country since Su Shi, making the lyrics more majestic and broad, lyrical, scenic, narrative and argumentative, majestic and shocking, further enhancing the social function of the lyrics and their status in the history of literature.

Yuan Opera

Yuan dynasty drama was developed to an unprecedented extent and Yuanqu appeared. Yuanqu includes loose songs, miscellaneous plays and southern operas. Yuanqu blends music, song and dance, movement and recitation into a comprehensive art. There were about 200 writers of miscellaneous dramas in the Yuan Dynasty, with about 600 kinds of plays, of which more than 150 exist. The most outstanding dramatist of the Yuan Dynasty was Guan Hanqing, who wrote many plays during his lifetime, and more than 10 of them have been handed down to this day, the masterpiece of which is the tragedy "Dou E Gong". Other famous miscellaneous dramatists include Ma Zhiyuan, Zheng Guangzu, Bai Park, Wang Shifu and others. Guan, Ma, Zheng and Bai were known as the "Four Great Masters of Yuan Opera" after the Ming Dynasty.（941words）