Talk:Eight model plays

Not sure why they are called "eight model plays" when there's at least 10 of them. I think the Chinese for "Model play" is 样板戏, and there's 641 hits for 十大样板戏 which means "10 big model plays". Kappa 15:53, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The reason that it is called Eight model plays is that eight such plays were created in the early part of the Cultural Revolution. The epithet remained unchanged even though later more such plays were created. At that time, the population in China was about 8 yi (yi is a unit used in China and, 1 yi is equal to 100 million), and henceforth the proverbial saying "Eight yi people watch just eight plays" to satire the poverty of cultural life of the period. --User:Roland 21:05, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I propose changing the title of the article to "Eight Model Operas," which is the term more familiar to English readers and no plays are mentioned in the article. ch (talk) 03:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Merging with 'Revolutionary opera'

I would like to merge this with the article I just created called Revolutionary opera; whether that one goes into this, or that goes into here is a matter of debate, I think. I would suppose that it is best to put this into that one, because the revolutionary opera is the overall topic, whereas these are about specifically the eight model plays.

Granted, there was no revolutionary opera apart from these eight plays, but the other title seems to offer the possibility to provide a more thematic and context grounded exploration. I could be quite wrong. I would suggest that 'Eight model plays' be one of the body sections of the 'Revolutionary opera' article, with other sections elaborating on other important aspects. Homunculus (duihua) 15:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Then if nobody objects, I'm going to redirect the page and copy the information across. Homunculus (duihua) 23:54, 13 April 2010 (UTC)