What's Next?: Peking Opera Workshop

hey guys, Remember the 4 field trips we will have for the culture class? well this is the 2nd, this time we had our own little experience of Peking Opera, one of the most ancient forms of drama that share equal fame with Greek Tragedies and Indian Sanskrits (call me bluffing, but our textbook tells us this).

This experience was brought to us by liú lì zhēng, from the Shanghai Kunju Opera Troupe. He was sent to the School of Arts in Shanghai at a young age specifically to take on roles in the practice of traditional opera. Although it seemed like a limited career, one reason he had chosen this path was because not only will he take part in preserving the culture, the entire duration of his training was paid for by the government.

respect foe this hipster for not wearing glasses

The shocking part was that he was probably less than 5 years older than us yet he has already polished and mastered the techniques of Peking Opera.

(why did I use "mastered"? well, he actually brought one of his student with us, and if he's already got students, I would say hes probably pretty bad ass at what ever he is doing)

He demonstrated the fine arts involved in the Opera incdluing:

-face painting: in addition to costumes, facial make-ups will help the audience immediately recognizes characters and will learn about their roles.

-acrobatics: there are very little stage props involved so the actors are very skilled in using body language to describe the scenes and deliver messages.

-stage talking: Peking Opera has different emphasis on talking & singing on stage which resembles different part of the drama and is what brings the distinctive "shouting" into the show.

To start off the show, he asked a couple of us to volunteer to play out the singing part. Carmen did a nice little demonstration along with English translation for us:

rest of the group, waiting to get on the guillotine

Carlin doing the shout, or ready to be hit by a bus

taking pictures with white people will always remain a novelty

After the first demonstration, we were all like "ok, glad that's over, let's see what's next?"

Before we can react, this guy dresses up as a monkey jumps in with some banging music, and starts doing acrobatic in this tiny little space in front us us, and no, that's not it, he then starts to swing around a stick, pulls out a sword and then waves it all at about 15cm to the closet student, without a single sweat! (im sweating just typing this long asss sentence, forgive my grammar)

balance a sword in motion? no big deal

i mean, look at Weiqi's face!

After the demo, our grand master comes up, asks for volunteer, and of course, nobody is crazy enough to say yes.

But No, where were we from again? that's right, home of the brave, in the second round of performance, we actually have more people happily performing and they even had to battle out for the first place for rewards! (what fine capitalism at work)

after hitting a three way tie, our gentlemen have to "go through loops" to win the final prize

acting out is not enough? let the trick training begin!

After some good laughs, the master change up the mood a little and led us to the next part of the workshop...

Face painting. since we are engineers not _______, we ___________ (oh gawd, what jokes can i pull here). Anyways, turns out there won't be enough faces to be drawn on with the given time (or not enough faces to lose) we drew on paper.

What did we draw?
- ~~a very general variation of chimpanzee/gorilla/monkey~~
okay, but really though, we drew the monkey king, which is the character we just saw.
We kept calling him the monkey king, but I do feel like he should deserve more credit, Sun Wukong (which also happen to be where dragon ball got the inspiration for Goku). He's very famous for people who grew up with the Chinese culture, but I doubt it is the same case for the readers.

And here's the part you've been waiting for:

i was doomed from the start

the resemblance is uncanny

Our neighbors' version of monkeys

Wait, did I mention the prize the winning performers got? Or did you already guessed?
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(I hope you didn't scroll down too far and already ruined the surprise for yourself)
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(a few more for insurance)
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Did you even try guessing? but yeah, the winners will get painted on by the performer himself! winner of the 2 rounds who acted out parts of 包公(or justice man as well called him) and The Monkey King will be transformed into their corresponding character