Chaining the Five Dragons (Suo Wu Long)
Overview. Chaining the Five Dragons (also called Beheading Xiong Xin) is a jing (painted-face) singing play drawn from the tales of the Sui-Tang romance, centered on Shan Xiongxin's defiant last stand.
Synopsis. In the early Tang, Li Shimin (the future Emperor Taizong) campaigns against Luoyang and captures Shan Xiongxin, who refuses to submit. His sworn brothers from the old Wagangzhai band, Xu Maogong (Xu Shiji), Cheng Yaojin, Luo Cheng, Yuchi Gong, come one by one to visit him in prison. Shan, seeing that all have gone over to the Tang, rails at them for breaking their oath, each serving his own lord, while he himself would rather die than surrender. In the end Shan is executed, his righteousness fulfilled in death. The play turns on the three beats of prison visit, rebuking friends, and execution.
Artistic Features. This is a vocal showpiece for the hualian (painted face), requiring the actor to shape Shan's unyielding, loyal, and unbowed character through impassioned, desolate erhuang melody. The celebrated aria "Seeing this, I cannot hold back my rolling tears" (a sequence of erhuang daoban, huilong, and yuanban) is majestic and solemn, a touchstone for both tongchui and jiazi hualian.
Why Watch. Chaining the Five Dragons distills the moral choices of turbulent times through one man's death, with stirring singing and a noble figure, among the most representative traditional plays of the jing (painted-face) role.
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