曰：秦腔也。
Prominent among dozens of opera genres are Peking, Yu, Jin, Yue, Huangmei, Erhuang, and Sichuan Gaogiang, each with its own rhythm and character.
If you ask which boasts the longest history, best preserves its traditions of stage combat, singing, and storytelling, or conveys the clearest moral message, our answer is: Qingiang.
正如长处和短处一样突出便见其风格，对待秦腔，爱者便爱得要死，恶者便恶得要命。
Its perceived strengths are as striking as its perceived weaknesses.
Its admirers love it to death, while its detractors detest it to the bone.
外地人——尤其是自夸于长江流域的纤秀之士——最害怕秦腔的震撼；评论说得婉转的是：唱得有劲；说得直率的是：大喊大叫。
People outside its birthplace, especially those from the Yangtze River Basin who pride themselves on their refined taste, find Qingiang's thunderous intensity too overwhelming.
The gentlest critics blame its raucousness, while more blunt comments dismiss it as no more than "shouting and yelling".
于是，便有柔弱女子，常在戏台下以绒堵耳，又或在平日教训某人：你要不怎么怎么样，今晚让你去看秦腔！
You'll find frail-looking women who have somehow ventured into such a show have their ears stuffed with cotton wads.
You'll even hear an angry parent threaten a bratty kid by saying: "If you don't behave, I'll take you to a Qinqiang show tonight!
秦腔成了惩罚的代名词。
" For some, watching Qinqiang has indeed become synonymous with receiving a punishment.
While other dramatic traditions may spread elsewhere, Qingiang clings stubbornly to its home, just like the salt-of-the-earth folks inhabiting this northwestern swath of land.
所以，别的剧种可以各省走动，唯秦腔则如秦人一样，死不离窝；严重的乡土观念，也使其离不了窝：可能还在西北几个地方变腔走调的有些市场，却绝对冲不出往东南而去的潼关呢。
Its deep local roots defy any temptation to travel far.
Having found its way into a few neighboring communities, albeit in altered forms, it has never wandered southward or eastward beyond the Tong Pass an ancient mountain pass in eastern Shaanxi.
但是，几百年来，秦腔却没有被淘汰，被沉沦，这使多少人在大惑而不得其解。
Yet, for hundreds of years, Qinqiang has refused to be eliminated or to fade into oblivion.
This puzzles many.
其解是有的，就在陕西这块土地上。
But you can find the explanation right here in Shaanxi.
If you're a southerner and travel north by train, clattering along across the Yellow River, and entering its western bank, you'll be amazed at the vast expanse of yellow-brown earth stretching across the horizon.
This is the Guanzhong Plain.
如果是一个南方人，坐车轰轰隆隆往北走，渡过黄河，进入西岸，八百里秦川大地，原来竟是：一扶黄褐的平原；辽阔的地平线上，一处一处用木椽夹打成一尺多宽墙的土屋，粗笨而庄重；冲天而起的白杨，苦楝，紫槐，枝干粗壮如桶，叶却小似铜钱，迎风正反翻覆……你立即就会明白了：这里的地理构造竟与秦腔的旋律惟妙惟肖的一统！
There, earthen houses with foot-thick walls and wooden beams, rustic and unadorned, stand solemnly; poplars, chinaberries, and sophoras shoot into the sky, their trunks as thick as barrels but their leaves as tiny as coins flipping and rustling in the wind...
It suddenly dawns on you that the geographic features of this land sync seamlessly with the elemental cadence of Qinqiang!
再去接触一下秦人吧，活脱脱的一群秦始皇兵马俑的复出：高个，浓眉，眼和眼间隔略远，手和脚一样粗大，上身又稍稍见长于下身。
Then, go and meet the local people, and you'd wonder if they are living replicas of the terra-cotta warriors: tall, with thick eyebrows, wide-set eyes, and large hands and feet, their torsos slightly longer than their legs.
They carry heavy triangular iron ploughshares on their backs.
They drive herds of hulking oxen that resemble groups of hillocks.
当他们背着沉重的三角形状的犁铧，赶着山包一样团块组合式的秦川公牛，端着脑袋般大小的耀州瓷碗，蹲在立的卧的石磙子碌碡上吃着牛肉泡馍，你不禁又要改变起世界观了：啊，这是块多么空旷而实在的土地，在这块土地挖爬滚打的人群是多么“二愣”的民众！
They hold pottery bowls the size of their heads.
They squat on stone rollers farming tools used for threshing while biting into beef-soaked flatbread, a signature Shaanxi meal. This imagery packs a raw and visceral punch, so powerful that it challenges how you see the world.
那晚霞烧起的黄昏里，落日在地平线上欲去不去的痛苦的妊娠，五里一村，十里一镇，高音喇叭里传播的秦腔互相交织，冲撞，这秦腔原来是秦川的天籁，地籁，人籁的共鸣啊！
Ah, what a vast land this is!
It's a land empty of frippery and pretense, where rough-hewn, unpretentious, and unyielding people battle harsh, unrelenting natural forces.
At dusk, the evening glow sets the sky ablaze, and the sun lingers on the horizon as if gripped by the pain of hesitation over whether to set.
于此，你不渐渐感觉到了南方戏剧的秀而无骨吗？
Villages and towns are scattered miles apart.
Qingiang melodies from loudspeakers converge and clash in the air.
不深深地懂得秦腔为什么形成和存在而占却时间，空间的位置吗？
More than an art form, Qingiang is in truth the chorus of the heavens, the earth, and humanity reverberating across you feel that this plain.
At such a moment, don't southern dramas, for all their elegance and refinement, lack the brutal power Qin-giang possesses?
Don't you realize why Qingiang came into being, and why it has endured and claimed its rightful place in China's cultural space?