In a breakneck digital era, the ancient art of Peking opera works hard to keep flourishing. Dressed in a red-and-white warrior costume, Peking opera actress Zhang Wanting balances on one foot on the narrow handle of a rosewood chair. She bends forward, lifts her other leg high and grasps the two long pheasant plumes on her helmet to strike a pose like a flying swallow. From more than 100 spectators in a modern Beijing theater, cheers and applause rise.
It is a Sunday afternoon in early September, and Zhang is leading “The Masked Heroine,” a signature play from the Song School of Peking opera, founded in the early 20th century as part of a Chinese tradition centuries old. It is the 30-year-old actress’s first time starring in the role in a full production, but also the fruit of over a decade of hard work that begins when she was a child. “Ever since I first started learning this play,” she says, “I’ve always dreamed of performing it in full.”
Growing up in China’s northern Hebei province, Zhang first encountered Peking opera when she was 7 and saw children practicing at a cultural center. Fascinated, she joined them — and soon realized she had the talent and determination to pursue the art professionally. After primary school, Zhang left home for a theater school in Eastern China’s Jiangsu province. Most performers in Peking opera start training at a very young age to lay foundation for good physical strength and flexibility. The process, full of repetitive practice, leaves participants soaked with “sweat and tears.”
The pose Zhang does on the chair requires balancing on one leg, arching backward, and stretching her arms forward with absolute stillness. It derives from a basic skill in Peking opera called tanhai — literally, “gazing over the sea” — that most performers learn at the beginning of their career. Originating in Chinese martial arts, the skill demands immense balance, flexibility, and control. At theater school, Zhang started training at 5 a.m. daily. “After each session, I’d lie on the floor and cry,” she recalls.
Throughout the school’s training, Zhang had her first exposure to Song school’s plays and became fascinated. In 2015, at college, Zhang finally got the chance to study with a Peking opera artist named Song Danju, the daughter of the Song School's founder. At a time when Peking Opera troupes traditionally favoured roles like qingyi as headliners, the Song School brought female martial roles to the stage center with their creative stunts and a fresher performance style. The chair trick is a Song family specialty. Zhang’s teacher inherited it from her father and revived it by blending martial and acrobatic movements learnt from folk opera performers in northwestern China.
Though Zhang had a good foundation in skills like tanhai, incorporating them into the chair technique, she says, is “another level.” Zhang spends an entire semester repeatedly standing on a chair handle about 3 inches wide and more than 2 feet off the ground, just to conquer her fear and master balance. “I carried a chair everywhere and practiced whenever I could,” she says. Each move might take months to practice. For the jumping move, Zhang sets a goal of about 50 leaps into the narrow open space of the chair’s back each day. By day's end, her muscles tremble and her thighs are pocked with bruises. But the practice continues. And there came a moment when Zhang knew she had broken through. “The moment standing on the chair no longer feels so strenuous, and this is when I know I have truly advanced.”
