The clip contains a few lyrics from the play The Strategy of an Empty Town, which is a popular play staged by different genres (also see Jingju kongchengji). It is taken from an audio-visual record of “Sound Matching Image”, which uses the previous gramophone record of Ding Guoxian, a Master performer of jinju, with a young actor’s performance.
Ding Guoxian (1909-1972), originally named Ding Buyun and her stage name Guozihong (lit. Red Berry), was born in a very poor peasant family. She was sold to The Ding family at 4 years old and began to study acting of the local theatre when she was 7. She started singing in front of a public when she was 9 and a few years later, she started performing on the stage. Ding learned the female role-type first and then moved to the male role. She established her own Ding School in the jinju performance art. In order to perform male characters on the stage, she often disguised herself in man’s attire riding a horse in daily life.