Chinese Opera

Saturday night, after clearing our pores of Peking Duck oil, Natalie and I ventured out to see some Chinese opera. Natalie was a music major at University and was especially interested. I was along for the ride, though interested as well, and ended up enjoying the experience quite a lot.

The venue we chose ended up being a tea house theatre. We were served tea and snacks during the performance and because a lot of tourists attend this particular theater, the performance was only about 45 minutes. This was alright with us because the music is rather screech like. We enjoyed it for the duration of the performance, but it would have been difficult to take for a full 3 hours (the usual performance time).

Most of the show was focused on Chinese operatic style singing, but near the end there was a tremendous fight scene complete with magnificently choreographed sword fighting, back flips and spear "juggling". It was easy to see how films like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (incidentally - the names of two of the mountains that the Great Wall passes over) were based on Chinese cultural art form and not merely Hollywood. Really neat.

The face paint and costumes were magnificent. I don't know how to post video, so for now, pictures will have to do.