Yellow Tiger in the Relief of Cangwu Green Garden

The entry "Donghai Huanggong" in the Encyclopedia of China (the volume of traditional Chinese opera and folk art) records a popular drama of Donghai Huanggong fighting tigers in the Western Han Dynasty. This record comes from Miscellanies of Xijing, to the effect that Huang Gong, a native of the East China Sea, practiced magic when he was young and was able to resist snakes and subdue tigers. He often carries a golden knife and has thick red hair. Huang Gongyou has great ability to fan the flames in Yun Qi. In old age, physical weakness, coupled with excessive drinking, spells gradually fail. At the end of Qin dynasty, a white tiger appeared in the East China Sea. Huang Gong still tried to subdue it with the red gold knife, but the spell didn't work and was killed by the white tiger.

This play occupies an important position in the history of China opera. Because in the Western Han Dynasty, traditional Chinese opera actors didn't have a fixed script, they just improvised, told jokes to amuse themselves and mocked some current events. It was not until the appearance of Huang Gong in the East China Sea that there were specific characters and stories. In addition, there are dance movements such as raising a knife to pray for blessings and fighting between people and tigers, which began to integrate several main factors of opera performance and laid a preliminary foundation for the formation of opera.

It is no accident that such a pioneer's drama is set in the East China Sea, and people and tigers fight each other. Because there were tigers in the East China Sea at that time, and there were a lot of them. Some of them are precious white tigers.

This can be confirmed in some written records of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty. It is said that "white tigers were found in the East China Sea at the end of Qin Dynasty". A thousand years later, Song Shu. Fu Ruizhi also said that he caught a white tiger here in three years (475) and asked Liu to give it to the court. & lt/CC & gt；