Well a couple of hours really. Our tickets are delivered to our hotel by David in good time, and we change and set out for the evening. We travel by taxi, around a twenty five minute journey for under £4. One thing that is cheap for us in China is travel, subway and taxis. We enter the theatre and sit at a communal table, with seven seats. There is Chinese tea and snacks on the table. We are joined by a New Zealand couple, their son who lives in Shanghai, his Chinese wife and an American lady who is teaching English to Chinese students. We note she speaks no Chinese. About thirty minutes before the performance is due to start a gentleman walks onto the stage, with a chair and a box which contains his make up. He then begins the complicated procedure of making up and dressing, aided by men who come to the stage with his garments. Once dressed he is an imposing figure, who begins to assume a number of poses at which point the assembled audience applaud. He then leaves the stage never to be seen again.
We are advised by the younger Kiwi, who has been to the show before, that this theatre is showing some selected highlights of traditional Chinese plays. There is an English translation on a matrix screen to the left and right of the stage. The first play involves a love match between a young girl, left to look after her mothers “cocks” when she goes to town. There is a lot of gesturing which suggests that she may have killed one of the chickens, and she attempts to push it away with her feet. A young man arrives and attempts to woo her by dropping a jade bracelet on the ground. She cannot take this offering for fear of accepting his advances, but she is tempted to recover the jewel unknown to anyone else. There is a series of slapstick pantomime encounters between the girl, the man and a pantomime dame character who we think is either her mother or a matchmaker, we are quite sure.
The scene then ended, to be continued on another night we believe. Oh, I forgot to mention, the whole performance is accompanied by the sounds of Chinese instruments and singing, or wailing which to our western ears is rather like a collection of wailing banshees.
The second excerpt recounts the tale of a heroine from times past, a fearsome warrior who layed siege to an army attacking her town. She was a master of martial arts, and the actor performed feats of acrobatics interspersed with dance and singing. At the end of the scene she and her warriors killed the attacking general by running him through with her halberd (no, we had never heard of it either, but it was on the translation screen).
In short an entertaining, amusing and colourful spectacle if a little hard on the ears but would recommend a visit as it is only a short performance.