Drama

Drama is a Chinese vocabulary term, pronounced xì jù, with the foreign name "drama." The term first appeared in Du Mu's Remembering the Past at Xijiang in the Tang Dynasty, where it originally meant game and child's play. In the Song Dynasty, it expanded to become a designation for Xiqu art and once referred to toys. In the Yuan Dynasty, Tao Zongyi's Records of Ceasing Plowing distinguished Yuefu from . In the Ming Dynasty, Hu Yinglin emphasized that drama must possess three elements: songs, stories, and staging.