Peking Opera - an aquired taste

One of the benefits of being a part of the Xia Da community is the availability of tickets to shows. Brett recently arranged to have two tickets to see the Peking (or Beijing) Opera that was performing at the university. We changed our date night to accommodate the show and went, not really knowing what to expect.

Well the stage was sparse - and so we concentrated on trying to see how much we could understand. The words were projected (in hanzi) on a screen to the side of the stage. The costumes were interesting to see and the musicians sat to the side on the stage. But this was not enough to hold our attention for the entire time. After a little over an hour, we both decided that we weren't appreciating the singing - it was sounding more like fighting cats to us by this stage - and so we discretely made our exit (well, as discretely as two waiguoren 外国人 could). We still aren't sure how much longer there was to go in the performance.

Nice to know that this is not for us - and also nice that we didn't have to spend mega-bucks finding that out. Interesting it was - just not interesting enough to keep these two waiguoren in the auditorium for more than an hour.