ABSTRACT
The street just outside the theater was crammed with anxious fans arriving to get a seat for the performance of the famed Mă clan of performers. Scalpers were willing to pay up to ten times the amount of a ticket, and I was asked by several people to surrender mine for considerable sums of money. After making my way into the theater and watching the streams of young people scramble to find seats, I could see that the hall would be packed that evening. These were hard-core fans of the genre known as Xiàngsheng, translated as “face and voice routines.”1
