Performance Art Enriched with Merits of Other Forms of Art
Beijing Opera Guide: Detailed guide to the history and culture of the Beijing Opera.
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Beijing Opera
Peking opera is a purely Chinese opera form which dates [...]

Peking Opera Stories: Classical Performance in Beijing Opera
Stories in Beijing Opera covers the whole history of China. Some of them are from the history book, but most were adopted from the literature and classical novels, which were best known among the public but may not be an accurate account of history.
Orphan of Zhao Family
Legend of the [...]

Beijing Opera Story: Unicorn-trapping Purse
A Peking Opera story from Chinese novel. A wealthy family in Deng-Zhou was marrying off the daughter, Xue Xiang-Lin. To ensure the daughter would never be in need, the parents prepared a lot of properties with the daughter. A local tradition was to have a large purse, called “unicorn-trapping purse”, to [...]

Peking Opera Story: Strategy of Empty City
This is a traditional play. It is a very famous story from the Chinese novel The Romance of Three Kingdoms. The whole play consists of three parts: “Lost of Jie-Ting Pass”, “Use of Empty City”, and “Execution of Ma Su”. The second part is the kernel and can also [...]

Peking Opera Story: The Drunken Concubine
The story happened in Tang Dynasty around 745-755 AD. This is one of the masterpieces by Mei Lan-Fang. It is almost a one-person show. The story is quite simple. Mei had made this play famous by his vivid performance reflecting the concubine’s disappointment, her drunken charming, and her intentional show-off [...]

Peking Opera Story: Fifteen Strings of Coppers
This is a Kunqü Opera story. A traditional play.
One night a shop-keeper, YOU Hu-Lu, went home drunk after meeting his friends in a pub. He brought with him fifteen strings of coppers which were the debt he just had collected. When asked where the money came from he made fun [...]

Peking Opera Story: The Legend of the White Snake
This is a story adopted from a classical Chinese novel. But the story in the play is totally a different account to the origin novel. This is a traditional play but may have different arias with different performing styles.
Once upon a time in the Mountain E-Mei, there [...]

Peking Opera Story: Orphan of Zhao Family
Historical story. This play was written after the founding of the people’s republic. It was based on a traditional Beijing Opera play “Hunting the orphan, saving the orphan” and a play in Shaanxi Opera (Qing3 Qiang1) “Orphan of Zhao Family”. The main characters include three of the four Beijing [...]

Peking Opera: Abstracted Arias and Dialogues
Arias are very important parts in a play. Peking Opera or Beijing Opera is nicknamed as “Pi Huang Opera” because Xi Pi and Er Huang melodies form the base of its arias. Xi Pi is believed taken from Hubei Opera which was formed under the influence of Shaanxi Opera (or [...]

Roles and Characters in Chinese Peking Opera or Beijing Opera
The ten Chinese characters shown on left is from a song sung in a Chinese New Year Eve television program. It probably says everything about the roles in Beijing Opera. The first five characters list the five role catagories. The rest tells what roles appear in [...]