Yuan Zaju is a form of China traditional opera, which is sung with northern songs. The late Jin Dynasty and the early Yuan Dynasty originated in northern China. It was developed on the basis of Jin and Yuan Dynasties and influenced by Zhu Gong tune. As a new and complete drama form, Yuan Zaju has its own characteristics and strict system, which forms an organic combination of traditional opera art forms such as singing, vernacular Chinese and dancing, and produces a literary script with a complete structure that combines poetry with prose.

① Structure: Generally, Yuan Zaju is a complete story with 60% discount, and some are 50% discount, 60% discount or even more.

Folding is the unit of music organization and the natural paragraph of story development. Not limited by time and place, each fold mostly contains more times, similar to the "curtain" of modern drama. Some zaju also have a "wedge", which usually plays an explanatory role before the first discount. It is equivalent to the prologue of modern drama, which is used to explain the plot and introduce the characters.

A set of songs composed of songs in the same palace tune at each discount of zaju. During the performance, a book is 60% off, all of which are solo by Zheng Di or Zheng Dan. (other characters only say it), which are called "the last book" or "the last book" respectively.

(2) Role: The roles played are extreme, bold, clean and ugly. There is only one protagonist in every play of Yuan Zaju. The hero is called the ending, and the heroine is called Zheng Dan. In addition, supporting roles also include auxiliary actors (secondary protagonists), peripheral actors (elderly men) and young actors (teenagers). Supporting actresses include Vice Dan, Waidan and Xiao Dan.

Jing: Commonly known as "big painted face", most of them play characters with distinctive personality and appearance. Such as Zhang Fei and Li Kui jy.

Ugliness: commonly known as "little face", it generally plays a male secondary role.

In addition, there are Bo Lao (old man), Bo Er (old woman), Gu (official) and Lai Er (page).

Composition of the script: The script consists of three parts: singing, learning and writing.

Lyrics are rhymes written according to certain palace tunes and qupai. Gong Diao, that is, mode, is equivalent to C and D of modern music. Qupai is the name of a tune, and each Qupai belongs to a certain palace tune. In the script, the first tune of each set of songs is marked with Gongdiao. It is stipulated in the Yuan Dynasty Zaju that every time a play is broken, a set of songs with the same Gongdiao is sung, and the order of Gongdiao and each set of songs is established.

Paragraph is the general name of dramatic action. Including stage programming, martial arts and dance.

White is "guest white", which is the spoken part of the people in the play. Bai Bin can be divided into the following four categories: dialogue (dialogue between characters); Monologue (self-narration of characters); Narrator (reciting psychological words from other roles); With white (interjections in lyrics).

Bai Bin is an important organic part of Yuan Zaju. The so-called "the story is wonderful after the end of the song" just illustrates this point.