When Pop Music Meets Peking Opera

Peking opera--Peking opera(simplified Chinese: 京剧; traditional Chinese: 京劇),a synthesis of music, dance, art and acrobatics, is known as China's national opera and widely regarded as the highest expression of the Chinese culture. It is the most refined form of opera and one of the three main theatrical systems in the world. Although it is called Peking Opera, its origins are not in Beijing but in the Chinese provinces of Anhui and Hubei. It then absorbed repertoire, music, arias and performing techniques from other operas and musical arts in China and became the most influential and representative of all operas in China. Almost every province of China has more than one Peking Opera troupe. Beijing and Tianjin are respected as the key base cities in the north while Shanghai is the base in the south.

The singer used a piece of famous Peking opera play , which I am very familiar with. My grandmother taught me how to sing this piece when I was a little kid. The music simply reminds me of happy days back to 1990's when I was living with my grandma.


Personally I like this song. I made it as my polyphonic ring tone for my mobile phone last time when I was in China. Everyone who calls me will hear the verse of the song and won't get bored when wait for me to pick up the phone. You can trace more elements of Peking opera in this song, the lyric is very impressive as well.


The costumes in Peking opera are graceful, magnificent, elegant and brilliant, most of which are made in handicraft embroidery. As the traditional Chinese pattern are adopted, the costumes are of a high aesthetic value. The types of facial make-ups in Peking opera are rich and various, depicting different characters and remarkable images, therefore they are highly appreciated. Moreover there are numerous fixed editions of facial make-up.


This is the latest trend in Chinese pop music composition and lyrics writing. People insert elements of Chinese traditional music to make the pop songs sound delicate and tasteful. More and more audience realize the beauty of Chinese traditional music nowadays and begin to accept the Chinese style pop songs.The pure Chinese traditional music might be too serious and profound but it becomes approachable when it appears in the pop music. People at my age or younger are no longer only interested to western rock&roll, rap or popular music,we feel quite proud of our own traditional music as well. Though there are some criticisms from formal music conservatories or music reviewers,who think some Chinese style pop music is quite nondescript(which I agree to some extent), the positive sides are pretty clear as well. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really category each music genre clearly. I love different kind of music style and new musical concept as long as it's beautiful and impressive. That's the beauty of melody, isn't it?