Sichuan Opera

While still in Chengdu, Emily and I were at a tea house when approached by Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee told us that he gave tours of the Sichuan opera and since he was not high pressure and spoke very good english we agreed that this would be fun. By the way, the tea houses are not as refined and manicured as Emily and I expected. Basically there is sunflower seeds, garbage, etc all over the tables and floors. However the tea is good and people play cards so we usually manage to blend in here more than anywhere else.

The Sichuan opera apparently is a dying art, as it is not supported by the government, the dialect is only understood by people of the Chengdu area, and most Chinese of a younger generation are not interested in the opera. The Sichaun opera has been around 300 years. We arrived early and were able to watch the performers apply their makeup. He explained that is was only recently, the woman were allowed to wear makeup for the performance. I was well entertained by the whole thing, as Mr. Lee shared with us while watching the the opera stars apply make up that he would be happy to have a wife wake him up singing opera. I decided he had a crush on the very beautiful 20 year old opera star. She had been performing Opera since she was 10. All of the performers had parents or grandparents that performed opera. We had front row seats and were given tea that was refilled constantly. The stage and costumes by our standards were much less than what you would see at a poor high school play. In Sichuan opera tradition dictates that they only perform part of the story so total we saw 4 short stories performed. The orchestra seemed to be comprised of lots of cymbals. After a performance from our young star as a maid (although she certainly did not look very maid like), Mr. Lee personally handed her flowers. The tradition is to buy silk flowers and they are put on stage during the performance for the performer and then after the act, the silk flowers are all collected and the ladies sell them again to people wishing to put them on stage for the next performer. Now it was intermission and I guess since his star had performed he was ready to go. He asked us twice if we wanted to stay for the entire thing but of course we did! By the end of the show though my ears were ringing and every high note the performers hit was like chalk on the chalk board to my ears. I thought it was funny how one culture could find something so beautiful to listen to and for another it was abrasive to the core. Emily also concurred that her ears hurt too. Mr. Lee gave us a very nice translation and the stories were fun to hear. Since the costumes, silk flowers and stage were minimal, we really had to use our imagination and that was fun since for the most part in the U.S. things tend lean towards being more of an assault on the senses.