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Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan

legend commonly performed in Chinese opera theatres

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ124337707
Source-derived summary

Wang Baochuan and Xue Pinggui (Chinese: 薛平貴與王寶釧), also known by many other names such as Xue Pinggui, The Red-Maned Stallion, Wujiapo, Returning to the Cave, and The Story of the Colourful Tower, is a legend commonly performed in Chinese opera theatres. The story is set in the Tang dynasty, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong in the 9th century CE.

The story is known in the West as Lady Precious Stream ("Precious Stream" being a loose translation of the female protagonist's given name, Baochuan), as it was adapted for the British stage by Hsiung Shih-I, a Chinese academic living in England. It was performed at the Little Theatre in John Street, London, by the People's National Theatre, directed by Nancy Price and Hsiung, and ran for 1,000 nights. The play was later performed on Broadway at the Booth Theatre in New York, produced by Morris Gest.

Editorial summary

“Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan” enters the record as legend commonly performed in Chinese opera theatres. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pinggui, Wang and Baochuan can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current 146-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Pinggui, Wang and Baochuan.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Pinggui, Wang and Baochuan provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q124337707. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan primary sources, Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan archive and Pinggui research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Xue Pinggui and Wang Baochuan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.