As spring comes, you will often find in the parks people playing the jinghu (Peking Opera fiddle). Wait and see, and before long you will find someone walk over to the fiddler and say "let's start."
Within moments he or she will launch into a recital of Peking Opera to the accompaniment of the jinghu. And even if you cannot understand the lyrics, so absorbed are the performers it is possible to get an insight into the opera's meaning from their facial expressions.
These performers may not know each other, but in piaoyou they have a shared identity. This Chinese word means amateur performers, especially those of Peking Opera.
Piaoyou appeared in China with the popularization of the art form at the end of the 18th century. To be a piaoyou was a very expensive hobby before 1949, said Shen Lilai, a famous piaoyou. Piaoyou then had to be rich enough to afford the costumes and to make friends with professional performers.
The numbers of piaoyou peaked in the 1950s and early 1960s when the labor unions organized part-time Peking Opera troupes at the grass-roots level.
But the onset of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) sounded the death knell of these part-time troupes and as older Peking Opera performers died off the number of piaoyou sharply decreased, said Shen.
But the piaoyou have made a come back. And today among the thousands of piaoyou in Beijing, about 1,000 can perform Peking Opera very well, said Zhao Shuangwu, organizer of Peking Opera Fans' Home in Beijing.
Piaoyou can be found enjoying themselves and entertaining passersby in most of the capital's large parks, including Taoranting Park and Tiantan (Temple of Heaven) Park. The best of the piaoyou are usually to be found in theatres though, according to Zhao.
The major theatres in Beijing where piaoyou can be found performing are the Zhengyici Theatre, the Hunan-Guangdong Provincial Guild, the cultural centers of Xicheng and Dongcheng districts, and the Dawancha Theatre to the south of Tian'anmen Square.
Among the theatres, Zhengyici, where piaoyou meet every Saturday afternoon, is the oldest and one of the best. It lies at No 220 Xiheyan Street, at the northern end of the Liulichang Antique Street and behind the well-known Quanjude Peking Duck Restaurant.
A temple in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Zhengyici was turned into a theatre in 1667 during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
With a grand two-story stage and a capacity to hold an audience of more than 100, it was recorded in the Encyclopedia of China as a "perfect theatre." It is the only well-preserved wooden theatre in Beijing today.
(China Daily April 14, 2003)
