Beijing Opera:a symbol of the quintessence of Chinese culture

京劇不僅是優秀的中華文化傳統、中國的國粹,同樣是世界非物質文化遺產。

B eijing Opera or Peking Opera has a long history and a complete system of stage performance in China.It'sregarded asthe national opera.It has been declared to be World Intangible（無形的） Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization.

◆Development

As the story goes,to celebrate his 80thbirthday in 1790,Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty gathered opera troupes （演出團）from different areas around China to perform for him in Beijing.Four famous troupes from Anhui Province were asked to stay.Later,some troupes from Hubei Province came to Beijing and often performed together with the Anhui troupes.The two types of singing performed on the same stage and gradually gave birth to Beijing Opera.

◆Main types of performers.

Beijing Opera includes four main types of performers named Sheng,Dan,Jing and Chou.The Sheng is the main male role in Beijing Opera.All the male roles that do not belong to the Jing,and the Chou can be called Sheng.The Dan refers to all the female roles in Peking Opera.Hualian （the painted face）,in Chinese called Jing,is a name for the male role that has some special characteristic or appearance.It's characterized by the painted face.The role must have a strong voice and the Jing's face should be made up in strong colors such as red,white and black to express their characters.The Chou is easily understood from the role's name as a clown（小丑）with an ugly appearance.The hallmark（特點）of the Chou is that there is a white paint at the top of the actor's nose.The function of Chou in a performance is to provide light relief and comedy.

◆Facial make-up and costumes

Generally speaking,red faces have the positivemeaningsymbolizingthebrave,loyal,upright and wise men.Another positive color is purple.Black faces usually have neutral（中立的）meaning,representing the just men and uprightness.Blue and green also have neutralmeaning.Meanwhile,the yellow and white represent the crafty（狡猾的） men with negative meaning such as fierce hearts.Performers who have gold or silver facial make-up stand for the monsters（怪物）or Gods and super natural power.Good-nature people are usually painted with relatively simple colors while make-up of doubtful characters bears complex marks.

◆Tunes of Beijing Opera

The tunesofBeijing Opera are mainly composed of two styles:Erhuang（二黃）and Xipi（西 皮 ）.The former originated in Hui tune in Anhui Province while the latter resulted from Han tune in Hubei Province.They are used according to the actions in different scenes.Generally speaking,Xipi tune is employed in lighter scenes while Erhuang for dramatic actions.Surely,some other tunes are also employed for different purposes.The singing in Beijing Opera is highly stylized but its variation（變化）of rhythm（節奏）and pitch（音高）enable the actors and actresses to express the thoughts and emotions of different characters in differentsituations.Acting includes a setof movements, gestures and expressions. Every movement or pose has its own pattern.The most important musical instrument used in Beijing Opera is Jinghu（京胡）.Other instruments are Yueqin（月琴）,Pipa（琵琶） and Suona（嗩吶）,etc.