<\/p>\n
BEIJING<\/strong> \u2013 Dressed in a red-and-white warrior costume, Peking opera actress Zhang Wanting balances on one foot on the narrow handle of a rosewood chair. She bends forward, lifts her other leg high and grasps the two long pheasant plumes on her helmet to strike a pose like a flying swallow.<\/p>\n From more than 100 spectators in a modern Beijing theater, cheers and applause rise.<\/p>\n It is a Sunday afternoon in early September, and Zhang is leading \u201cThe Masked Heroine,\u201d a signature play from the Song School of Peking opera, founded in the early 20th century as part of a Chinese tradition centuries old. It is the 30-year-old actress\u2019s first time starring in the role in a full production, but also the fruit of over a decade of hard work that begins when she was a child.<\/p>\n \u201cEver since I first started learning this play,” she says, \u201cI\u2019ve always dreamed of performing it in full.\u201d<\/p>\n A dazzling chair trick that takes a decade to master<\/p>\n Growing up in China\u2019s northern Hebei province, Zhang first encountered Peking opera when she was 7 and saw children practicing at a cultural center. Fascinated, she joined them \u2014 and soon realized she had the talent and determination to pursue the art professionally. After primary school, Zhang left home for a theater school in Eastern China\u2019s Jiangsu province.<\/p>\n Most performers in Peking opera \u2014 its name comes from a now-obsolete way of saying Beijing in English \u2014 start training at a very young age to lay foundation for good physical strength and flexibility. The process, full of repetitive practice, leaves participants soaked with \u201csweat and tears.\u201d<\/p>\n The pose Zhang does on the chair requires balancing on one leg, arching backward, and stretching her arms forward with absolute stillness. It derives from a basic skill in Peking opera called tanhai \u2014 literally, \u201cgazing over the sea\u201d \u2014 that most performers learn at the beginning of their career. Originating in Chinese martial arts, the skill demands immense balance, flexibility, and control.<\/p>\n At theater school, Zhang started training at 5 a.m. daily. “After each session, I\u2019d lie on the floor and cry,\u201d she recalls. <\/p>\n Throughout the school\u2019s training, Zhang had her first exposure to Song school\u2019s plays and became fascinated. In 2015, at college, Zhang finally got the chance to study with a Peking opera artist named Song Danju, the daughter of the Song School’s founder. At a time when Peking Opera troupes traditionally favoured roles like qingyi (a role type for dignified, virtuous female characters) as headliners, the Song School brought female martial roles to the stage center with their creative stunts and a fresher performance style.<\/p>\n The chair trick is a Song family specialty. Zhang\u2019s teacher inherited it from her father and revived it by blending martial and acrobatic movements learnt from folk opera performers in northwestern China. The sequence includes moves like jumping through the chair\u2019s frame in one go, standing on its handle on one leg, spinning the chair using the palm of one\u2019s hand, hooking the chair leg with one\u2019s instep and hopping forward \u2014 and so on.<\/p>\n Though Zhang had a good foundation in skills like tanhai, incorporating them into the chair technique, she says, is \u201canother level.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing I have to overcome is my fear,” she says. <\/p>\n Zhang spends an entire semester repeatedly standing on a chair handle about 3 inches (8.5 centimeters) wide and more than 2 feet (70 centimeters) off the ground, just to conquer her fear and master balance. \u201cI carried a chair everywhere and practiced whenever I could,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Each move might take months to practice. For the jumping move, Zhang sets a goal of about 50 leaps into the narrow open space of the chair\u2019s back each day. By day’s end, her muscles tremble and her thighs are pocked with bruises.<\/p>\n But the practice continues. And there came a moment when Zhang knew she had broken through. \u201cThe moment standing on the chair no longer feels so strenuous, and this is when I know I have truly advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n Young performers continue to deliver the appeals of Peking opera<\/p>\n For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Peking opera had developed into a popular form of urban entertainment. Its roots, however, stretch back even further into the Qing Dynasty, when performances were closely associated with the imperial court in Beijing’s Forbidden City. <\/p>\n Today, the art form faces strong competition from digital entertainment and modern performing arts, and some worry it may be losing its appeal. Yet a growing number of young Peking opera artists like Zhang continue to devote years to perfecting its demanding techniques \u2014 and, they hope, to capture today\u2019s audiences.<\/p>\n Yang Hecheng, 26, a teacher at the Beijing Film Academy, came to watch Zhang\u2019s performance in September. \u201cIt\u2019s my first time seeing the full production and the chair sequence,\u201d he says, \u201cWhat attracts me most is the beauty and spirit shown in the performer\u2019s techniques on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cThe Masked Heroine,\u201d Zhang plays Wan Xiangyou, a chivalrous woman who fights injustice and protects the weak. She leaves her family and becomes a militia leader in ancient China. During a confrontation scene, Zhang performs the tanhai pose on the chair handle while interrogating a male character. Zhang thinks the coherent integration of the trick into the play\u2019s plot makes it compelling for the audience.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the classic saying: \u2018A play without skill is not amazing; a play without emotion is not moving,\u2019\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n Now a professional performer with the Jingju Theatre Company of Beijing, one of the top Peking opera troupes in China, Zhang has delivered more than 150 shows in nine years. Each production requires learning new stunts \u2014 or refining old ones to perfection.<\/p>\n Zhang says improving her technique in Peking opera remains a lifelong pursuit. \u201cI just want to make progress step by step and perform each show the best I can,\u201d she says. \u201cThe most rewarding moment is when the show ends and the audience applauds.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.click2houston.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BEIJING \u2013 Dressed in a red-and-white warrior costume, Peking opera actress Zhang Wanting balances on one foot on the narrow handle of a rosewood chair. She bends forward, lifts her other leg high and grasps the two long pheasant plumes on her helmet to strike a pose like a flying swallow. From more than 100 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2217519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741,21818,22814],"class_list":["post-2217518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-lifestyle","tag-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/In-a-breakneck-digital-era-the-ancient-art-of-Peking.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2217518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2217520,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217518\/revisions\/2217520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2217519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}