Chinese Opera Mask, Tu Xingsun

Tu Xingsun

Names of characters in Yuan Zaju often reveal personality traits. Functioning not unlike painted faces in more modern Chinese opera, names in Yuan drama alert the audience to a character's moral fiber or class status background. The Yuan drama Hanshan Ji offers a case in point. In this melodrama about the dissolution and reunion of a family, the good-hearted but wayward son is named Zhang "Filial to friends" (Xiaoyou); the Zhang family savior is Zhao "Resurrector of the Grandson" (Xingsun). The villain is denied any traces of humanity by his name, Chen "the Tiger" (Hu).