BEIJING (AP) — Dressed in a red and white warrior costume, Peking Opera actress Zhang Huoting balances on one leg on the narrow arm of a rosewood chair. She leans forward, lifts her other leg high and grabs the two long pheasant feathers on her helmet, striking the pose of a flying swallow.
Applause and cheers erupt from more than 100 spectators at a modern Beijing theater.
It's a Sunday afternoon in early September and Zhang is leading “The Masked Heroine,” the signature piece of the Peking Opera Song School, founded in the early 20th century as part of a centuries-old Chinese tradition. This is the first time the 30-year-old actress has starred in the role in a feature-length film, but it is also the fruit of more than a decade of hard work that began as a child.
“Ever since I first started learning this piece,” she says, “I’ve always dreamed of playing it in its entirety.”
An Amazing Chair Trick That Takes a Decade to Master
Growing up in northern China's Hebei province, Zhang was first introduced to Peking opera when she was 7 years old and saw children rehearsing at a cultural center. Fascinated, she joined them and soon realized that she had the talent and determination to pursue the art professionally. After elementary school, Zhang left home and attended a drama school in Jiangsu province in eastern China.
Most performers of Peking Opera (its name comes from the now obsolete name “Beijing” in English) begin training at a very young age to lay the foundation for good physical strength and flexibility. This process, full of repetitive training, leaves participants drenched in “sweat and tears.”
The pose, which Zhang performs on a chair, requires balancing on one leg, arching back and reaching forward with absolute stillness. It comes from a basic Peking Opera skill called tanhai—literally “looking at the sea”—that most performers learn early in their careers. This skill, which originated in Chinese martial arts, requires tremendous balance, flexibility and control.
At the drama school, Zhang began training daily at 5 am. “After each session, I lay on the floor and cried,” she recalls.
While attending school, Zhang was first introduced to the plays of the Song school and was fascinated. In 2015, in college, Zhang finally had the opportunity to study with a Beijing opera artist named Song Danju, the daughter of the Song School's founder. While Peking Opera troupes traditionally favored roles such as qingyi (the role of dignified, virtuous female characters) as headliners, the Song School brought female action roles to center stage with their creative stunts and fresher performance style.
The chair trick is a Song family specialty. Teacher Zhang inherited it from her father and revived it by mixing martial and acrobatic movements borrowed from folk opera performers in northwest China. The movement includes movements such as jumping over the frame of a chair in one go, standing on the chair's handle on one leg, spinning the chair with the palm of your hand, hooking the leg of the chair with your lift and jumping forward – and so on.
Although Zhang had a good foundation in skills such as tanhai, incorporating them into chair exercise techniques is, she says, “another level.”
“The first thing I need to overcome is my fear,” she says.
Zhang spends an entire semester constantly standing on the arm of a chair that is about 3 inches (8.5 cm) wide and more than 2 feet (70 cm) off the ground, just to conquer her fear and learn to maintain her balance. “I carried a chair everywhere and practiced whenever I could,” she says.
Each movement can take months to master. When it comes to jumping, Zhang aims to do about 50 jumps into the narrow open space of the back of a chair every day. By the end of the day, her muscles are shaking and her thighs are covered in bruises.
But the practice continues. And the moment came when Zhang realized that she had broken through. “The moment when I'm standing on the chair doesn't seem so tiring anymore, and that's when I know I've really made progress.”
Young artists continue to carry the message of Peking Opera
Throughout much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Peking opera emerged as a popular form of urban entertainment. However, its roots go back even further to the Qing Dynasty, when performances were closely associated with the imperial court in the Forbidden City of Beijing.
Today, the art form faces stiff competition from digital entertainment and contemporary performing arts, and some fear it may lose its appeal. However, a growing number of young Peking Opera artists like Zhang continue to dedicate years to perfecting their demanding techniques and, they hope, attracting today's audiences.
Yang Hecheng, 26, a teacher at the Beijing Film Academy, came to watch Zhang perform in September. “This is the first time I’ve seen the whole production and the stage with the chairs,” he says. “What attracts me most is the beauty and spirit displayed in a performer’s technique on stage.”
In “The Masked Heroine,” Zhang plays Wang Xiangyu, a chivalrous woman who fights injustice and protects the weak. She leaves her family and becomes a militia leader in ancient China. During the confrontation scene, Zhang assumes a Tanhai pose on the arm of a chair while interrogating a male character. Zhang believes that the consistent integration of the gimmick into the play's plot makes it appealing to audiences.
“We have a classic saying: ‘A play without skill is not impressive, a play without emotion is not moving,’” she explains.
Now a professional artist with the Beijing Jingju Theater Company, one of the top Beijing opera companies in China, Zhang has staged more than 150 performances in nine years. Each production requires learning new tricks or perfecting old ones.
Zhang says perfecting her Peking Opera technique remains her life's work. “I just want to progress step by step and perform every show the best I can,” she says. “The most satisfying moment is when the show ends and the audience applauds.”
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Researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.
