I hadn't been to a chinese opera but had seen them on tv, not really singing, random noises and odd bells seems to characterize the typical beijing opera performance. I was hesitant but agreed with the two guarantees A it was free and B I could leave a find a bar if it was THAT bad, or at worst a taxi home!
We got the bus down with several of the other teachers in lauding several students to make up the numbers and went to the huge beautiful opera house in ningbo, a massive building sitting on the river, very beautiful. The tickets face value was over 60gbp, but they were of course sent to the university for free as a sign of respect, of course nobody in the uni wants to go but that looks bad so they sent the foreign teachers who will go to anything if its free, everybody wins!
We got in and sat down in row 5, very near the front, although a little to one side! Then it started, and it wasn't a beijing opera at all, it was a chinese story in modern operatic style but in chinese language, very cool! Of course as even chinese people don't understand chinese music without the lyrics there were giant LED boards at each side with the lyrics displaying, almost a giant KTV!
The story was of the origin of one of ningbo's tailor societies, with a central love story thrown in, but quite watchable and good practice for my chinese, I had a dictionary on my ipad constantly translating the odd character and trying to keep up with what was going on! Emem, an American teacher without any chinese and me struggled along and did ok, the Japanese teachers could read the lyrics with ease so they understood and the rest of the group were chinese, but good fun! The costumes and the singing were good enough to make up for missing a few plot twists here and there!
It was also thankfully only two and a half hours, not the many hour epic of some beijing operas, all in all a good night! And very cheap! A shame chris was teaching and couldn't go...
