Suffer the Little Children

The Pleasure, The Pain, The Mysterious Attraction of Beijing Opera

By James Fee

Beijing opera (jingju 京剧) is the guocui (国粹) of China. Literally translated guocui means “national essence.” It is the quintessential cultural treasure, the pure distillation of thousands of years of history, mythology, literature, art and dance.

Beijing opera is also one of those things that most laowai just don’t get/can’t bear.

In fact, on our list of the most difficult Chinese tastes to acquire, it is number one--just ahead of baijiu. (The rest of the list is filled out with ceramics, the Chinese calendar, walking backward in the park, and a series of exotic animals or animal parts--all of which we’ll get to in future columns.)

So how do you acquire the ultimate acquired taste?

We weren’t sure. So a few weeks ago, we attended “Opera Welcomes the Olympic Games.” It was not an opera, in itself, but, rather, it consisted of individual and group performances of pieces from various well-known operas.

Colors flashed. Costumes dazzled. The jinghu wailed, and the ruan jangled. The pitches of the performers reached heights only dreamed of by sirens. It was all very loud.

In a CCTV interview a few years back, Ge Fa, a Beijing Opera actor, explained the loud nature of jingju.

“In the past in China, Beijing opera needed to compete with the sounds of dogs, cats and peddlers because it was in a public square, and they needed to attract people's attention…This was more or less like street theater.”

The image of street performers in elaborate makeup just trying to make some noise in a crowded square--that appeals to me. But, all the same, after thirty minutes of watching the Olympics be welcomed, I had a piercing headache and my nerves were on edge. Virginia wanted to go home.

And then the children’s performances started.

No one today was singing about the Olympic Games. The performances were part of an effort to promote Chinese culture before the games. The popularity of jingju has been on the wane in China for at least a few decades--especially among today’s youth. As jingju has some archaic language and isn’t always clearly enunciated, young people in China are much like foreigners when it comes to opera: they don’t understand the words, so they feel they just can’t get into it.

But not the young people we saw. These young actors brought such precision, dexterity and pure joy to their performances, we decided to talk to them to discover the key to appreciating Chinese Opera.

“Why do you like Chinese opera?” we asked.

“It’s our guocui,” replied ten-year old, Li Chen Yu.

“I feel honored. It makes me proud to be Chinese,” replied her twin, Li Chen Ming.

Their patriotism was inspiring, but we needed more. We asked a set of 8-year olds for some help.

Why did you want to study Chinese opera?

“We’re kids and the music sounds weird,” said Yi Chen Xing. “So of course we wanted to know what it’s about.”

“We think it sounds great now,” added Huan Yu Xing.

These children had been chosen by their teachers to take part in after school programs that would train them to perform Beijing Opera. More importantly, they had chosen to participate. There are now some programs in China that are mandatory for children. But these children had thought the decision over, and their parents did not force them into it. They felt special for being chosen and they felt their guocui was special, too. In part, because it sounded weird--there was mystery to it.

And there was the answer. Step 1 to appreciating Beijing Opera--in three parts:

A. Approach it like a child.

B. Realize that it is special.

C. Give in to the weirdness.

The strangeness had pulled me in. I am just a child when it comes to Chinese culture--a 4-year old child, to be exact, when it comes to speaking the language. And I responded like a child in some ways: Oooo, pretty colors, pounding music, weird voices… In spite of my headache, I had been transfixed.

Of course, “This is weird. I want to know more,” is not the only reaction that can pull you in.

Perhaps 1.C should simply be, “Give in to the allure.” Because another reaction is “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I want to know more.”

That was the reaction of the aforementioned Ge Fa. Ge Fa was born in Iran but raised in England. At a performance of jingju in London, he fell in love with the pageantry and spectacle of the opera. Thereafter, he quit his job as a computer programmer, moved to Beijing, studied Chinese, and enrolled in a Beijing Opera school. He has now studied for over 15 years and performs to foreigners in the capital and around the world.

Step 2: Give up all your worldly goods and devote your life to the study and performance of Beijing Opera.

Of course, you don't necessarily have to be so extreme. Just learning a little enhances the experience.

Step 2 revised: Learn more.

In performing for foreigners, Ge Fa realized that the most important thing to make the art translate was to make sure his audience had the cultural knowledge to understand it. “Even if there are subtitles,” he said, “if the audience doesn’t know the cultural meaning behind the words, the words are useless.”

We have given you a little bit of cultural background in the Culture Counter below. When the next Beijing Opera rolls into town we will provide even more information--a plot summary, a bit of translation, some pointers on what to look for in the staging.

As for the headache? Trying to apply what I knew of Chinese opera to my viewing experience, I started to pick out the color symbolism and the roles the actors were performing. That helped.

But as Ge Fa recounted his Belgian friend saying, “You have to get used to it.”

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About James Fee