The Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭), Hall Of Longevity (长生殿), Thousands Of Martyrs (千忠戮) and A Peach Flower Fan (桃花扇) are the four most celebrated classic Chinese opera dramas since Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644) until this day. Author Kong Shangren Kong Shangren (1648 – 1718), the author of A Peach Flower Fan, was a 64th-generation descendant of Confucius and an eyewitness to […]
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Watching the lanterns on the Lantern Festival — a duet from Yueju Opera “The Legend of Fish” by actress Wang Zhiping (王志萍) as the fish and actress Huang Hui (黄慧) as the scholar. The legendary inter-species romance goes like this: A talented young scholar had no money so he had no honey, and his rich and powerful fiancee’s family wanted to untie […]
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Lyrics: 悟妙道好一似春梦乍醒 Suddenly I realised my true self as if waking up from a spring dream 猛然醒又入梦长夜冥冥 Yet soon I became confused again, as though re-entering the dreamland 未修真便言悟终成梦境 Boasting enlightenment while merely knowing what will be the true reality is still an existence in a fantasy 到无梦梦无醒方见性灵 Only when I have no dream to wake up from, I will […]
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Lady Chang’e and the Moon Day As Chinese legend goes, a long long time ago right here on this planet, ten suns suddenly appeared in the sky and refused to go away. The land was burning and the people were dying. A man named Houyi heroically shot down the nine suns and left only one to light the sky. Life […]
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The Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭), Hall Of Longevity (长生殿), Thousands Of Martyrs (千忠戮) and The Fan Of Peach Flowers (桃花扇) are the four most celebrated ancient Chinese operas. Among the four, The Peony Pavilion, also named The Return of Soul at the Peony Pavilion, written in 1598 by Tang Xianzu (汤显祖), one of the two greatest Chinese dramatists, along with Guan Hanqing […]
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Long before the First Emperor Qin drove his army from the west in Xian to reach the east coast area and united China in 221BC, there were two highly developed kingdoms in the region, one in Shaoxing (near Hangzhou) and another in Suzhou (near Shanghai). It was the Spring and Autumn Era (770BC-476BC), a brilliant period in Chinese history. In […]
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The love story between stars of Altair and Vega located in the two sides of Milky Way is one of the oldest Chinese fairy tales. A Forbidden Love between Two Stars As the legend goes, in the beginning, there was no Milky Way in the sky and the stars could easily meet each other whenever they pleased. Vega is said to […]
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Dream of Nanke (南柯梦) is one of the four Kunqu Opera dramas about dreams, written by Tang Xianzu (1550-1616) of Ming Dynasty. While Peony Pavilion is the best known among the four, Dream of Nanke is the most mind-blowing, exploring time, space, multi-worlds and the meaning of life. A Chance Meeting in a Buddhist Temple One day military officer Chunyu […]
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A firewood collector watching two immortals paying chess in Mt. Lanke in Zhejiang Province – a coloured ink painting by Ming Dynasty scholar, politician and artist Zhang Yining (张以宁 1301-1370) The legend of Mt. Lanke During Jin Dynasty in the 4th century, a guy went to Mt. Lanke collecting firewoods and saw two men playing chess Weiqi (Go) on a stone. Like […]
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As folklore goes, during Ming Dynasty, there was a talented and good-looking young scholar named Zhou Wenbin living in beautiful lake city Hangzhou, and Zhou Wenbin had a friend named Zhu Zhishan who was like a celebrity watcher and feared by many elite families. During a Lantern Festival in the lunar January 15, Zhishan visited Wenbin and the two brought wine to appreciate […]
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A love story about a pair of white butterflies is one of the most enduring Chinese legends that has been told for hundreds, probably thousands, of years in China. As the legend goes, the butterflies were initially humans, one is named Zhu Yingtai and another is called Liang Shanbo. Zhu Yingtai was an academically talented teenage girl. After a decade […]
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The Battle in Red Cliffs is a textbook case demonstrating how small kingdoms could defeat a superpower. During the 3rd century, the once strong empire Han Dynasty, that dominated the land of Far East for nearly 400 years, was crumbling and torn apart. Cao Cao, the last prime minister of the dying dynasty with an ambition to replace Han monarch, ruled the […]
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