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Many Chinese art forms date back centuries but most struggled to survive following the Communist revolution of 1949. Artists were organised into associations, which meant that the Party controlled every aspect, both creative and administrative. Travelling theatre, music and dance groups were created to take the Party message to the masses together with teams of projectionists showing reels of ideological films. Plays written before the 1950s, films with human interest and the Beijing Opera were suppressed and their creators persecuted until the end of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. Now many pre-Cultural Revolution art forms are performed regularly as well as modern versions, which celebrate ancient and current culture as well as ethnic differences.

A crop of teahouses have recently reappeared in the capital which show a variety of Beijing Opera, martial arts and acrobatics and serve delicious selections of tea and cakes.

Acrobatics have existed in China for two thousand years and cover anything from gymnastics and animal tricks to magic and juggling. The style may be vaudeville, but performances are spectacular, with truly awe-inspiring feats.

Western influences have been embraced to transform traditional Chinese art forms into contemporary pieces and the theatrical scene is changing fast. A recent development has been a fashion for Chinese translations of Western plays, such as The Mousetrap, or homegrown dramatists experimenting with foreign forms, such as Gao Zingjian's Bus Stop - a kind of Chinese Theatre of the Absurd.

In addition, Western music and dance is now performed and the city often receives visits from international acts. The Beijing Concert Hall (tel: (10) 66 05 58 12) has a mix of Chinese and Western music, whereas the Zhongshan Concert Hall (tel: (10) 65 59 82 85) has mainly Chinese productions.

There's always a wide variety of events taking place in the city and listings can be found in China Daily or Beijing This Month.

Music:
The Beijing Concert Hall, 1 Beixinhua Jie, just off Xichang'an Jie, is dedicated to classical music, with regular concerts by Beijing's resident orchestra, and visiting orchestras from the rest of China and overseas. Beijing Opera is still very popular and the Beijing Opera Company (tel: (10) 67 24 82 22) perform nightly at the Liyuan Theatre in the Qianmen Hotel on Yonganlu.

Theatre:
Spoken drama was only introduced into Chinese theatres this century. The People's Art Theatre in Beijing became its best-known home and, before the Cultural Revolution, staged European plays that had a clear social message. The last decade has seen a total turnabout with the People's Art Theatre, reassembled in 1979, establishing its reputation with a performance of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. They and other companies perform at the Capital Theatre, 22 Wangfujing Dajie (tel: (10) 68 31 39 26) and the Experimental Theatre of the Central Academy of Dramatic Arts, 39 Dongmianhua Hutong (tel: (10) 64 01 78 94).

Teahouses:
Traditional theatre such as story-telling to musical accompaniment, comedy, magic shows and acrobatics takes place daily at the Lao She Teahouse, 3rd Floor, Dawancha Building, 3 Qianmen Xi Dajie (tel: (10) 63 03 68 30), and at the Tianqiao Happy Teahouse, 113 Tianqiao Marke.

Acrobatics:
The most popular venue is the Chaoyang Theatre, 36 Dongsanhuan Bei Lu (tel: (10) 65 07 24 21), which has a show every night.

Film:
Cinemas these days are dedicated to feeding a seemingly insatiable appetite for kung fu movies, although there is plenty of opportunity to catch the serious and fairly controversial movies emerging from a new wave of younger film-makers. European and US films are not dubbed but are shown with subtitles and Western films are carefully censored by the authorities before they are put on general release.

Cultural events:
The Chinese New Year is the most important festival of the year. The build-up to the festival is as frenzied as Christmas in the West with parties, the exchanging of gifts and streets and houses decorated with lights. Most Chinese celebrate the start of the New Year with their families and visits to the temple. Traditionally, the arrival of the New Year was marked by firecrackers, but these are banned in the big cities now, although they are still allowed in the countryside.

The Mid-Autumn Festival in September is celebrated by displaying lanterns in various shapes, such as animals, and by eating special moon cakes made of ground lotus and sesame.

Literary Notes

Lu Xun is celebrated as the father of modern Chinese literature. His first story, A Madman's Diary (1918), is considered the first story written in modern Chinese, namely in the language spoken by the masses as opposed to the classic literary language.

However, as the century moved on, and communism was firmly embraced, writers and artists who attempted to bring their ideas to the masses were soon to lose their voice. Many writers faced persecution in the Cultural Revolution (1966-70) during which art forms that failed to tow the Communist Party line were banned.

Following the relaxation of censorship in the 1970s onwards, works of literature were to become powerful testimonies to the period and provide a powerful insight into China for Western readers.

Numerous highly acclaimed contemporary works of fiction that explore China's tumultuous history and the impact of the Cultural Revolution have become international bestsellers, notably Half of Man is Woman (date), an autobiographical account of life in a labour camp by Zhang Xiangliang. Heralded as the Chinese Milan Kundera, Xianliang was born in Nanjing in 1936 and educated in Beijing.

Other celebrated novels include Wild Swans (1991) by Jung Chan and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club (1989).



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