Zhenjiang, China, December 1985

I was told that this was "THE Beijing Peking Opera Troupe" on tour. Imagine the Metropolitan Opera performing in a small, backwater city in middle America. That's kind of what was happening. The performance was of The Legend of the White Snake, which is a folk tale that take place in this Chinese backwater, Zhenjiang. The Foreign Affairs Dept. of the university scored a block of tickets in order to treat we four Foreign Expert teachers (four of the total of six foreigners in the city at the time). The rest of the audience was mostly Party officials and other city big shots.

A lot of Chinese people, especially young people, thought of Peking Opera as old fashioned, boring and hard to listen to, though one of my students , a quiet, studious fellow, had a great appreciation for traditional opera, and was thrilled to be asked to attend with us to translate.

I was certainly excited about the cultural experience of going to a concert in China, but this turned out to be one of the premier music experiences of my life. I actually liked the music.

I had recently graduated university with a degree in music and was very much into avant garde jazz, so I was amenable. It took a couple of minutes to tune my ears to the new sounds... but, not to sound condescending, it was just as expressive and complex as a western opera.

The singers would have room to improvise a bit at high points in the music--much like a cadenza in western classical music, gospel or jazz-- and it was thrilling. And just as you at a jazz concert, the crowd would cheer and stomp their feet as the "soprano" set off her vocal fireworks. The singers would absolutely wail.