Thought for the week

"There is no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end."

It's opera, Jim, but not as we know it

The school took a trip out to Yellow Dragon Park on Sunday afternoon to see a couple of short performances of excerpts from Chinese opera. I think this is the Kunqu school of Chinese opera, but I couldn't absolutely swear to it.

The popularity of the form does seem to be waning amongst the younger generations of Chinese. There was a large and enthusiastic crowd turned out for these open-air matinee performances, but they were almost all well over 70 years old.

Here are a couple of short clips I filmed from an extract the troupe performed from the convoluted local Hangzhou story, Legend of the White Snake.

Though the screeching quality of the vocals can become a little wearing (and the lyrics, it would appear, are largely incomprehensible even to native Chinese speakers), the performance is still a pleasing diversion. This piece involves a lot of broad comedy, which is quite engaging - even though the characters' motivations remain completely impenetrable to me.

Thought for the week

"Education is what's left when you've forgotten everything you were taught in school."