Many Chinese art forms date back centuries but most struggled to survive following the Communist Revolution of 1949. Artists were organized into associations, which meant that the Party controlled every aspect, both creative and administrative. Traveling theater, 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.
As to be expected from a capital city, Beijing is leading the country’s cultural revival, and a crop of teahouses have recently reappeared in the capital that show a variety of Beijing Opera, martial arts and acrobatics and serve delicious selections of tea and cakes. New cafes doubling as art galleries and also bookstores, the best being The Bookworm Café, Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Jie, Chaoyang District (tel: (10) 6586 9507; website: www.chinabookworm.com), which also host regular talks by writers and artists.
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 and home-grown dramatists are experimenting with foreign styles, such as Absurdist theater, or emulating influential playwrights, such as Samuel Beckett. In addition, Western music and dance is now performed, and the city often receives visits from international acts. The Beijing Concert Hall has a mix of Chinese and Western music, whereas the Zhengyici Theater has mainly Chinese productions.
Also worth seeing is traditional Chinese acrobatics, which have existed in China for 2,000 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.
Music: The Beijing Concert Hall, 1 Bei Xinhua Jie, Xicheng District (tel: (10) 6605 5812), just off Xi Chang’an Jie, is dedicated to classical music, with regular concerts by Beijing’s resident orchestra, as well as visiting orchestras from the rest of China and overseas. Beijing Opera is still very popular and the best place to see it is Zhengyici Theater, 220 Xiheyan Dajie, Xuanwu district (tel: (10) 8315 1649), a short walk from Heping Men subway station. Built in the 17th century, the theater was originally a Ming Dynasty temple before being converted by some of the founding artists of the Beijing Opera company.
Theater: Spoken drama was only introduced into Chinese theaters this century. The People’s Art Theater 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 Theater, reassembled in 1979, establishing its reputation with a performance of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. They and other companies perform at the Beijing People’s Art Theater (in the Capital Theater), 22 Wangfujing Dajie, Dongcheng District (tel: (10) 6525 0123).
Teahouses: Traditional theater, such as story-telling to musical accompaniment, magic shows and acrobatics, takes place daily at the Lao She Chaguan, 2nd Floor, Da Wancha Building, 3 Qianmen Xi Jie, Xuanwu District (tel: (10) 6303 6830), while Wen Ru Teahouse, 10 Jianguo Lu, Chaoyang District (tel: (10) 8580 4341) is an authentic Beijing teahouse with a large range of specialty infusions.
Acrobatics: The most popular venue is the Tianqiao Acrobats Theater, 95 Tianqiao Jie, Beiwei Dong Lu, Xuanwu District (tel: (10) 6303 7449). There are also nightly shows at the Chaoyang Theater (also known as the Heaven & Earth Theater), 36 Dongsanhuan Bei Lu, Chaoyang District (tel: (10) 6507 2421/1818). Performances at all venues start at 1915.
Film: Beijing cinemagoers are beginning to move on from a seemingly insatiable appetite for kung fu movies, and taking seriously the often controversial movies emerging from a new wave of younger film-makers. Foreign films are mainly dubbed and carefully censored by the authorities before they are put on general release and a constant supply of Hong Kong hit movies and Korean rom-coms is readily available. For blockbuster movies, head to UME International Cineplex, 44 Kexueyuan Nan Lu, Haidian District (tel: (10) 8211 5566). East Gate Cinema B1/F, Building 8, East Gate Plaza, Dongzhongjie, Donzheng District (tel: 6418 5931; website: www.dhyc.cn) has a good variety of local releases.
Beijing is the center for China’s film industry and its appeal for film directors as a sweeping, cinematic panorama was most brilliantly demonstrated by Bernardo Bertolucci in his famous 1987 epic The Last Emperor. Zhang Yang’s 1999 film, Shower is set in an old Beijing bathhouse threatened by developers who want to turn it into a shopping complex. The film epitomizes the tension between tradition and the dictates of commerce in contemporary Beijing. Farewell My Concubine (1993) is a stunning epic spanning half a century of modern Chinese history including the Cultural Revolution and is about the relationship between two friends growing up in the world of Beijing Opera. It was a triumph internationally for the director Chen Kaige. An extremely funny film set in modern-day Beijing is Sorry Baby (1999) directed by Feng Xiao Gang, about a feud between a wealthy businessman and his driver. Wang Xiaoshuai’s 2001 hit, Beijing Bicycle (Shiqisui de Zixingche) is unerringly simple and uncomplicated, yet its masterful cinematography earned it the Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. More recently, Chinese movies have made a bid for swashbuckling, international blockbuster status and, although the budgets are large, action unyielding and the glamour quotient high, productions such as The Banquet (2006), The Promise (2005) and Battle of Wits (2006) have proven to be artistically uninspiring.
Literary Notes: There is a good joke in the novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001) by the Chinese-American writer, Amy Tan. A Chinese character in the book gives the following dismissive appraisal to a Westerner who is enthralled by Beijing’s Forbidden City: ‘In those day, so many thing forbidden, can’t see. Now everyone pay money see forbidden thing. You say this forbidden that forbidden, charge extra.’ This epitomizes much of the current Chinese attitude towards Beijing, where reverence towards the city because of its history and tradition is put very much to the effort of making money.
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(1985), an autobiographical account of life in a labor camp by Zhang Xianliang. 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, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) and Li Cunxin’s Mao’s Last Dancer (2003). Lu Xun (1881-1936) is celebrated as the father of modern Chinese literature, and A Madman’s Diary (1918) is considered the first story written in modern, colloquial Chinese - namely in the language spoken by the masses as opposed to the classic literary language. Lu Xun embraced the early communist movement and is still regarded as a hero by the authorities. The small house he inhabited in Beijing from 1912 to 1926 can be seen next to a museum dedicated to his life and work at a hutong just off Fucheng Men Dajie, near Fucheng Men subway station.
However, for a contemporary Beijing-based writer who marks a break from the serious tradition of political and social responsibility favored by the Communist Party, there is Wang Shuo. Dubbed the ‘Chinese Jack Kerouac’ for his sharp mockery of almost every aspect of Chinese life, delivered in a savvy Beijing slang, his novel Please Don’t Call Me Human (1989) is perhaps the best introduction to his work for foreign readers. Written in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre, the book wickedly lampoons the state security apparatus and its need to bend the individual into serving the interests of the nation. Recommended lighter reading includes Rachel De Woskin’s Foreign Babes in Beijing (2005), which blends a humorous account of the writer’s accidental foray into working as an actress on a Chinese-made soap drama with some astute analysis of Beijing’s physical and psychological metamorphosis in the late 1990s. Simon Napier-Bell’s I’m Coming to Take You to Lunch (2005) is an insightful book chronicling the Wham! manager’s trials and tribulations in setting up and staging the first foreign pop concert by a Western group in Beijing in 1985.
