The Butterfly Lovers, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai

Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (梁山伯与祝英台), often shortened to Liang Zhu (梁祝), is one of China's "Four Great Folk Legends". It is often called the "Chinese Romeo and Juliet". This is the outline most often told today, set under the Eastern Jin (东晋):

• Zhu Yingtai (祝英台), daughter of a rich family of Shangyu (上虞) in Zhejiang, persuades her father to let her go away to study, disguised as a boy;

• on the way to Hangzhou she meets Liang Shanbo (梁山伯), a student from Kuaiji (会稽, today's Shaoxing), and they swear brotherhood;

• for three years they study together, and Liang never notices that his classmate is a girl;

• called home by her father, Zhu has to leave. Liang walks her eighteen li; she drops hint after hint, compares them to a pair of mandarin ducks, then promises him the hand of her "sister";

• when Liang comes to ask for this sister's hand, he discovers the truth, but Zhu's parents have already promised her to Ma Wencai (马文才);

• Liang, now a magistrate, wastes away and dies;

• on the wedding day a fierce wind stops the procession at Liang's tomb. Zhu steps down to weep, the tomb opens with a clap of thunder and she throws herself in. Two butterflies come out and fly away together.

In the beginning there is a tomb. The oldest known text is a single sentence in the Shidao sifan zhi (十道四蕃志) of the scholar Liang Zaiyan (梁载言): "the virtuous woman Zhu Yingtai lies in the same tomb as Liang Shanbo". Chinese Wikipedia dates it to the early Tang, English Wikipedia to the late Tang.

A longer passage, attributed to Zhang Du's (张读) Xuanshi zhi (宣室志) and quoted by later writers, already holds the core of the story. Yingtai, a daughter of the Zhu family of Shangyu, disguises herself as a man to study and shares her studies with Liang Shanbo of Kuaiji. She goes home first; two years later Liang visits her and finds out she is a woman. He asks for her hand, but she is already promised to a son of the Ma family. Appointed magistrate of Yin (鄞, in today's Ningbo), Liang dies of illness. When Zhu, on her way to her husband's family, passes his tomb by boat, wind and waves stop the boat; she steps ashore to mourn, the ground splits open and swallows her. The chancellor Xie An (谢安) has the grave named "Tomb of the Virtuous Woman" (义妇冢).

So there are no butterflies yet, and the fiancé has no name: he is only "the son of the Ma family".

Under the Yuan, the playwright Bai Pu (白朴) made the story into a play, Zhu Yingtai Marries Liang Shanbo in Death (祝英台死嫁梁山伯), which is now lost.

Under the Ming, two writers mention the butterflies. In his notes (识小录), Xu Shupi (徐树丕) places the two young people under the Eastern Jin, has them study together in Hangzhou for three years, and adds that the tomb closed again over Zhu. He also mentions brightly coloured butterflies, born from grubs on orange trees, which women and children call "Liang".

Feng Menglong (冯梦龙) says more in his anthology of love stories, the Qingshi (情史). In the Wu region, he writes, women and children call the yellow butterfly "Liang Shanbo" and the black one "Zhu Yingtai". A popular tradition says that after Zhu's death her family burned her clothes at Liang's tomb, and that in the fire the clothes turned into two butterflies. Feng Menglong adds that this was probably made up by someone fond of stories: in his book, the transformation that now ends the legend is still only a popular belief.

In the 20th century Yue opera (越剧) made it a classic. Born in 1906 in Sheng County (嵊县), in the Shaoxing area of Zhejiang, this theatre was first performed by men, then in the 1930s became an all-female art, with actresses in the male roles. Zhu Yingtai's story, long told in eastern Zhejiang around Shangyu, became one of the plays that every early troupe performed. According to Chinese Wikipedia, in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai even people who do not sing Yue opera know its tune.

The Yue opera version was filmed in colour in 1953 or 1954, depending on the source, with Yuan Xuefen (袁雪芬) as Zhu and another actress, Fan Ruijuan (范瑞娟), as Liang. Other regional theatres have their own versions, such as Sichuan opera, which calls it "In the Shade of the Willow" (柳荫记).

On stage, two scenes are especially famous, to the point of being performed on their own as excerpts: the eighteen-li farewell (十八相送) and the meeting in the pavilion (楼台会).

In 1958, ahead of the tenth anniversary of the People's Republic, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music set up a group of students to combine Western instruments with Chinese regional opera. Two of them, He Zhanhao (何占豪) and Chen Gang (陈钢), wrote a violin concerto, Liang Zhu (梁祝), on the melodies of the Yue opera: He Zhanhao supplied the main theme, Chen Gang the development and orchestration. The work was finished in early May 1959 and premiered in Shanghai on 27 May 1959 by Yu Lina (俞丽拿), a young violinist studying at the conservatory.

The concerto, in a single movement divided into seven parts, tells the legend step by step. English Wikipedia counts it among the most famous Chinese orchestral works; according to Chinese Wikipedia, its melody is now everywhere, from grand official concerts to primary-school music lessons.

The legend is tied to several regions. When the "Legend of Liang and Zhu" (梁祝传说) was put on the first national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2006, it was listed under six places: Ningbo, Hangzhou and Shangyu in Zhejiang, Yixing in Jiangsu, Jining in Shandong and Runan County in Henan.

Near Ningbo, at Gaoqiao, visitors can see a Liang Shanbo temple with the couple's tomb behind it. In Hangzhou, where they study, tradition puts their school by West Lake. And each region has its own variants. Chinese Wikipedia sums up the Runan one, for example: it is set under the Western Jin, the two young people meet on a bridge on their way to the academy on Mount Hongluo, Liang walks Zhu eighteen li to her home, coughs blood when he learns she is engaged to Ma Wencai, and dies; a golden butterfly and a white one fly out of the tomb.