Day 1 Peking Opera

About 2 hours before the show, you will either take a taxi or use our private transfer service to get to the theater where our guide will be waiting for you. After receiving your tickets, you will be left to enjoy the show on your own. After the show, you will either go back yourselves or our driver will transfer you. The Peking Opera was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty court where it came to be regarded as one of the cultural treasures of China. With its unique combination of music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics, the Peking Opera is an ideal medium for interpretation and performance of traditional and historic legends. It is a scenic art integrating music, performance, literature, aria, and face-painting. There are distinctive roles and strict rules that have been standardized over many years of artistic  practice.




Main Roles



Sheng: Refers to male characters. Lao Sheng refers to the middle-aged man with a beard who acts as the decency figure. Xiao Sheng means young man without a beard.

Dan: Refers to female characters. Zhengdan mainly plays the role of the strong-minded middle-aged woman who behaves elegantly. Huadan refers to little girls. Laodan refers to the senior woman and Wudan indicates a fighting female.

Jing: Refers to male characters with a unique appearance or personality who have painted faces.

Chou: Refers to a comic role or villainous character or righteous person whose nose is painted with white powder.




Four Means of Artistic Presentation



It includes singing, dialogue, dancing and martial art. Singing is utilized to intensify the appeal of the art by using all kinds of tones. Dialogue is the complement to the singing which is full of musical and rhythmic sensation. Dancing refers to the body movements requiring high performing skills. Martial art is the combination and transformation of traditional Chinese combat exercises with dances.




Six Main Types of Song Lyrics



It includes emotive, condemnatory, narrative, descriptive, disputative, and "shared space -separate sensations" lyrics. Each type uses the same basic lyrical structure, differing only in the kind and the degree of emotions portrayed. Costumes function to distinguish the rank of the character being played and generally feature brilliant colors and rich embroidery.




Stage Props (Qimo)



Qimo or stage props are used to recreate real life experiences. For example, an actor can pretend to be galloping on a horse simply by using a horsewhip rather than riding a real horse on stage. Two chairs standing on each side of a table will make up a bridge. Storms are implied by performers dancing with umbrellas. Imaginary performance skills complemented with well chosen props  allow performers to convey more life scenes  convincingly.




Facial Painting (Lianpu)



Through long-term practice and experience, the dramatic artists create Lianpu based on their understanding and judgment of the roles in the plays. Different facial parts are painted in different ways. For example, eyes, foreheads and cheeks are painted like wings of butterflies, swallows and bats. Lianpu is the colorful dressing up on actors' faces and different colors represent different personal characteristics. Red symbolizes loyalty, black signifies honesty and frankness or abruptness and impertinence, and white stands for cattiness and cunning. By using exaggerated figures and colors, professional audiences can easily tell the characteristic of a role.