Cantonese Opera

So I wasn't planning on posting at all tonight, we were exhausted when we got home...however, they have decided that 1 AM is a great time to be doing work on the street just outside the Conservatory dorms. Think drilling concrete non-stop for the last two hours. Needless to say, I'm still awake. I though I might do something productive with my time.

So we went to the opera this evening at the Peking Opera House of Shanghai on the Bund. The tickets were 20 RMB so like $ 2.50, which totally cracked me up. The funniest part is that we got there and realized that we probably wouldn't understand anything that was going on, so we bought programs. The programs were very helpful, they explained everything...in Chinese. Haha. Also, there were screens that had subtitles, also in Chinese. The opera turned out to be Cantonese, and the languages are different enough to require supertext in Mandarin. 

They told five different short stories, which took roughly three hours without an intermission. But the atmosphere was much less serious than it would have been in the States. People were getting up and down and talking (quietly...but talking nonetheless) and taking pictures, etc. so it was fun. I understood three out of the five stories and thoroughly enjoyed the first one (I think I understood it the best). It was about a prince (I think) who had been exiled and he had to save a damsel in distress who the usurper had taken captive. This of course necessitated a sweet fight scene, flips and acrobatics included. And of course all ended well. The second (that I only got a tiny bit) was about a monk who decides he's done being a monk and leaves. On his way back home, he meets a beautiful girl, falls in love and they get married. The third (which I didn't understand at all because it was just two people sitting around singing/talking) was apparently about a man who is out walking and he hears from a distance a woman singing and play a zither (sp?) and he comes to find her, etc. (I'm not sure how that one ended...it was realy long) The fourth story involved another monk who steals alcohol from a peasant, drinks it and proceeds to do fantastic acrobatic things for about ten minutes. The final story was about a bad ass warrior princess, who captures/kills a tiger or something...mostly I was fascinated by the costumes in that one, the woman had these two giant feathers (they were about a yard long each) coming out of her head piece (I promise to post pictures later!) It was definitely a taste of China that we haven't seen yet. In fact, it's the first cultural thing we've experienced besides the food. 

We are planning on going back at the beginning of October when the Peking Opera Troupe (the real one from Beijing) comes to perform. That should also be pretty amazing, and it will be interesting to compare the two styles...apparently they are totally different. Anyway, I think the drilling has actually stopped, so I am going to attempt to sleep again.