Peking Opera, Beijing

Again, I'm not much of the historian or "cultured" by any means, but this performance was pretty cool.

While in Beijing for two weeks, most of my days were spent going on the various tours, but the tours can be so tiring that saving a day to lounge around during the daytime in some of the various parks around the city, have lunch at one of the billions of restaurants in the city, or just take a stroll is really worth it, saving the evening for something like the Beijing or Peking Opera.

My pal at the tour desk in the Xindadu Hotel, arranged everything for me and even argued with me when I refused to take a taxi to the Liyuan Theatre and settled instead on setting out early and taking the subway to the Hepingmen stop and walking the rest of the way to the Jianguo Hotel, which houses the theatre.

My tour lady called ahead to the theatre and spoke in rapid Mandarin to someone she knew at the theatre, scratching something down on a business card. She then told me to present this card at the theatre window for some "special" treatment.

I arrived plenty early and presented the card and sure enough, a man appeared and escorted me into a long enclosed hall, which took me a minute to figure out. Suddenly, the actors began arriving and attendants began the long process of applying their makeup. Finally it dawned on me that I had an excellent photo opportunity, which I quickly began to take advantage of, clicking away tons of photos and feeling funny because I was the only one there.

Eventually others began arriving and again my "man" appeared and escorted me to a table within spitting distance of the main stage. Excellent treatment!

I'd highly recommend this show, although it's in Mandarin with screens above the stage that digitalize broken English about what's going on, it is still awesome! You even get a photo op after the show, with some of the actors!

We visited the Opera in a small theater. The play was subtitled above the stage, but as we were sitting font row not easy to read without pain in the neck.
For us it was a strange experience, sometimes even funny when the sounds coming from stage sounded like screaming cats. The make-up of the artists was another story, it looked great. But it was absolutely not a show we would like to see often. The one hour show was just enough.

To get an impression of the sound see a short movie we put on this website: http://www.freewebs.com/tompt/

For drama, acrobatics and wild and wonderful costumes, Peking Opera cannot be beaten! We paid for the expensive seats, and were treated to a table at the front, at which we were served all manner of lovely little cakes and an endless stream of tea!

To the uninitiated it is not always very clear what is going on on stage, but like most high art and traditional opera, it was full of larger than life characters, unblelivably loud stage whispers and dramatic gestures. See website for background information.

The tickets were not cheap I remember, but as I was saving on hotel bills I treated myself: it was worth every Yuan spent!

For western ears, the Peking Opera might need getting used to. The story is sometimes difficult to follow.
My opinion: a must see - but choose a short performance (one/two hour/s will do)! Some Hotels offer aggregated performances - enough to get an ideo of Peking Opera.

Peking opera of China is a national treasure with a history of 200 years. It's a synthesis of stylized action, singing, dialogue and mime, acrobatic fighting and dancing to represent a story or depict different characters and their feelings. In Peking opera there are four main types of roles: sheng (male) dan (young female), jing( painted face,male), and chou (clown, male or female). The repertoire of Peking opera is mainly engaged in fairy tales of preceding dynasties, important historical events, emperors, ministers and generals, geniuses, and great beauties from the ancient times.
The music is of the "plate and cavity style".Its melody with harmonious rhythms is graceful and pleasing to the ears (say the Chinese). The performance is accompanied by a tune played on wind instruments, percussion instruments and stringed instruments.

As the traditional Chinese pattern are adopted, the costumes are of a high aesthetic value. The facial make-ups are rich and various, depicting different characters and remarkable images. Moreover there are numerous fixed editions of facial make-up.

Even if you don't understand a word of Chinese I highly recommend a night at the Opera! Wonderful costumes, Great Music, and superb acting make for a Great evening! All for the US$.26 cent admission price. (Circa 1987) I'm sure the price has increased since I was there!

I am not sure if this place is interesting for you and maybe not a "must see activity" if you are just few days in Beijing. Even I didn't visited this place when I was the first two times in Beijing.

But who is Mei Lanfang? Well, he is the most popular Beijing Opera singer and he even had some performances in Europe, USA and Japan. With his voice, movements, style,.. he played female roles perfectly.
I don't understand Beijing Opera but when I visited such a performance I was very impressed. So, at least for me, it was a 'must see activity' to visit the Residence of Mr. Mei Lanfang. ( 1894 - 1961)

Open: daily 9:00 -12: 00 a.m. and 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. (except Monday)

The Peking opera is a real must see, but dont expect to understand it if you are not Chinese its very colourful bright and extremely noisy and bears absolutely no resemblance to western opera.After about ten minutes your eyes may start to glaze over and you will develop a strange ringing in the ears depending on how close to a speaker you are sitting but you have got to try it, there will be someone there who will explain the plot to you and its ok to leave before it finishes but the memory of the lights,colours,cymbols clashing and singing very closely related to Mr Punch will stay with you a long time

No visit to Beijing would be complete without a visit to the Peking Opera. The mixture of bright costumes, vivid makeup, singing(???) and gymnastics is extremely entertaining. Keep an eye on the english translation shown on a display to the side. Sometimes the translation is very amusing.