China just released a sweeping new plan that's about to shake up the world of theater, but probably not in the way that you'd expect.
Think less about preserving dusty relics and more about ancient art meeting the algorithm.
With vertical screen dramas, rising youth interest and a major push behind the scenes.
Is this enough to make traditional performance the next big cultural wave?
We're live from our studios in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Fei Fei and Yushan.
First up.
China has just released its brand new three-year action plan for the revitalization of drama.
And you can forget everything you think you know about preserving old theatrical classics.
This is a full-blown backstage upgrade that's involving everything from cultivating new generations of performing talents to shooting folk opera, micro dramas on social media.
We're seeing a surge in youth interest, which is really great to hear.
Also, the birth of a new cultural landmark and landmarks.
One example would be the newly established Shenzhen Peking Opera House.
And there's also a national push to move theatrical arts to a new peak.
We have veteran masters mentoring a new generation.
And with that, the stage is set for a digital age renaissance.
We talk a lot.
Good afternoon, Fei-Fei and Yushan.
We talk a lot.
And actually later in the show, we're going to talk about AI and industry and advancements.
And we cover a lot of those different types of stories in China because they're in the news every day, making headlines.
But it's great to see that the arts is not being left behind.
Exactly.
I was so thrilled.
I was so happy when I first heard that this is happening.
You used to work in theater.
Yeah, I used to work as an intern in this field for about two years.
And when you think about performances and a performing art type, you see it as a grandeur kind of production, but behind it is like layers and layers of hundreds of thousands of different pieces being put together by a whole team of people.
And each and every stage of that, from the cultivating of the young artists to how it should be presented, how to save the cost, how to make everything sustainable, make the production performable and have a good reputation that the theaters are willing to invite it in over and over again in the future.
These are all things that are being considered and it's continue on being elevated as we talk about a new action plan.
And this is what the industry insiders are calling it as a reassuring pill, because it provides a clear roadmap to him to move the arts from just being a okay, not bad, to really truly becoming world classics.
And the plan basically spells out 24 specific moves to enhance the industry's ecosystem.
And I roughly concluded them as the follow few aspects that I personally found very fascinating.
One of the biggest shifts has to land on the cracking down on those massive, wasteful mega productions that cost a fortune but kind of, you know, lack soul and lack of sustainability in future arrangements.
What do you mean a mega production that lacks soul?
I'm going to give you one example.
Okay.
So this is the Italian opera Aida.
If you are an opera fan, you'll know that this is yeah, it's by Verdi and it was created back in the 19th century.
It's an old time classic.
But around a decade ago one Chinese theater imported what was billed as the most magnificent version of Aida ever staged.
And they hired the set and the scenery from outside of China.
And in order to better preserve it and protect it, it came in from railway.
And that alone costed money i think two million yuan for just the freight cost just to ship the set.
Yeah, just to ship the set.
That would be like tons of train car.
It came by train.
It came by train and they even tried to recreate the whole scene because the story happens in ancient egypt.
That's the background, so the stage even featured life-sized replicas of egyptian sphinx and temples and creating just as if the audiences are traveling to Egypt on the site.
But the problem with that is the scenery and everything was borrowed.
You have to return it after you finish the season of performing it.
And you can't always spend, to expect itself to spend 2 million yuan each and every time and borrowed it in and then borrowed it back.
And those theaters, they're lending these equipments to other theaters worldwide too.
So it really ended up to be Just a facade of grandeur production for one season.
Several shows in a row and that's it.
No other productions after 2017.
So for the past decade, it only existed in memories.
Oh, I see.
So a ton of money was invested into the show to bring the actual set here.
It stayed for a few days and then it got shipped back.
And I'm assuming that the theater company lost money.
Yeah, because box office never really can't make that up.
So here is the issue.
And that's what the new regulation, the new action plan is trying to avoid in future productions.
That's very, for me, I think this is one part.
For me, I think another feature kind of stand out in this action plan is about supporting local art troops.
Because in China we have so many, so many local art troops, different art forms and folk corporates.
And they are sort of in the face in this endangered phase, simply because, First of all, for a lot of this folk opera it's only very local, cultural oriented.
For example, my husband is from the city called Xuanzhou.
Where is that in the country?
In Fujian province, in a region called Hokkien.
And they have this Hokkien dialect.
And that folk opera is done in this Hokkien dialect.
So for me who is not in their local culture growing up, I cannot understand what the opera is singing about.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And so it's very difficult for me to understand and also getting interested in that opera in particular.
So it's mostly targeted just in that area.
And that is the problem when it comes to these kind of art forms.
If you don't have the local support, that means it's very difficult for you to sustain in the long term.
We can't use a blanket term, Chinese folk opera.
No.
Because there's just too many different types.
There's too many different regions in the country that have their own distinct style.
And they are also at the very end of extinction too.
Out of China's 348 folk opera genres, nearly 300 are considered rare and over 200 are ecologically fragile, meaning that the performers are all elders, above 60 years old, and that there's not enough young people, young blood, joining the performance to pass it on.
And among all these 121 genres are preserved by only a single state-run troupe each.
So one troupe for this one type of opera.
That said, nobody else from outside of this region ever heard of it or will ever get to know it.
And while 106 genres do not even have a single state run troupe at all.
So that's reported by Xinhua News earlier this year.
That's how pressing it has become for us to really act on the protection and if not to rescue of these local operas.
Under the new action plan, a new system is being considered to critique and hold creators accountable for poor quality, inefficient work that wastes resources.
I guess an example would be the Aida production that you talked about before.
I mean, it sounds like such a terrible thing to say.
It's a waste of resources to bring a beautiful production from somewhere else and let people experience it.
But when you're losing money like that, then yeah, it can be described such as that.
So now what they're going to do is what they're calling script first.
So the goal is to focus on genuine artistic depth.
And that will give creators the freedom to present genuinely good works for the audience.
So there's a little bit of quality control involved here.
And a huge encouragement on young script writers and performers to really get bold.
By bold I mean confident enough to showcase what you think the young audiences or the new generation audiences really want to see see presented on the stage, and how you can really vividly demonstrate it on the stage in a way that's suitable in the modern time, so that a particular type of art can keep on being passed on as an inheritance instead of being extinguished as time goes by.
That's something that we're really trying to aim at through the different regulations throughout the years and especially showcased in the new action plan too.
There's something called the One Yuan Gold Seed Plan.
This is not new in 2026.
Actually, it came out as early as, I think, early 2025.
Yes, that's a joint campaign launched to encourage those really well-known, famous enough kind of script writers to submit their famous, famous scripts with one one as a fee, as a almost like a charity kind of donation.
So what does that mean?
Local troops pay one yuan to put on the production?
Yes.
Or for the rights to the script, I guess.
Yeah for the rights of using the script and adapting from the script to put on their local kind of themes and productions so that more people, the grassroots, the people who've never seen it before, can get a peek at what this is about.
And one very interesting example is very famous playwright Chen Ming's 10th rank village official, Shi Pin Sun Guan.
It's among the first batch of the 20 play that got included in this campaign.
And this?
It was set in a small village in northern Jiangsu province in eastern China back in the late 1990s.
And the story follows a young farmer who travels to the city and come back to the village and unexpectedly brought a group of foxes with him.
And then the whole village in northern Jiangsu province started to raise fox back in the late 1990s.
Careful. from ground zero to a little ecosystem industry in there.
So that's one example of the what 20 to 30 works that can be rented out.
I suppose we can put it like that
Yeah, rented out and it covers a whole lot of different genres, like the historical subjects, folk legends or realistic themes like this one.
I especially asked Yushun if this is known to him, since he's from Jiangsu province.
And he says, it's possible, but I've never heard of it.
So you see even people from the same province.
They do not necessarily have ever seen or heard stories like this before.
Interesting.
What about when we're talking about cultivating Talent, the next generation of opera performers?
Where do they come from?
How are they finding them?
How are they collaborating together to make sure that there is talent coming through the pipeline?
Well, the plan aims first of all to expand the ranks of these theatre performers, professionals with a steady emergence of leading young talent, and they're setting up mentorships where veteran masters can pass down their classic plays and their tricks and their traditions to younger performers to make sure these skills don't just disappear because, as we've talked about a lot of these local operas, in particular smaller troops, they do have difficulties of finding young talents.
One thing is that, first of all, their resources are really limited.
It's only one troop in one small city, for example, or even a small county.
They can only reach out to so many people in their range.
And so, when it comes to where to find people, young people in particular, that could be interested in this particular form of arts,
That's one of the bottlenecks.
And another thing is how to make sure that these young talents, after they're getting involved in this art form, How can they stay, you know, long term in this job in particular?
I heard a story is actually coming from the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province, also in eastern part of China.
And they have their local art form called Luantan, which is very famous.
Kind of sounds familiar, similar to Peking opera.
But the language is different.
First of all, it's in their local dialect.
And the performance can also have some differences when it comes to the movements and so on and so forth.
And at one time they have to borrow some talents from a neighboring city so that they can train to test if they can perform on stage.
And then what they find is more difficult is that after a few years of performing in Taizhou, a lot of the younger talents from that neighboring cities return to their home city, simply because, first of all, they're not from here and the pay is not really high and it's very difficult to just settle in Taizhou.
So they start to finding the problems.
For example, what if I get you a housing?
I solve the accommodation for you.
What if I can find for your children, I can find your schools, find a school for your children.
So you can find, you can feel inclusive.
You can feel that you can settle down in the city of Taizhou.
Feel secure.
Yeah, feel secure.
Yeah, and that's one of their solutions to this problem.
And I think, when it comes to the nationwide level, not as many cities in China is resourceful and as rich as the city of Taizhou, for instance.
It has a lot of private companies which they can come in and support such efforts.
But for other cities, that could be remaining a question mark.
Yeah, because it would be in that case, it would be troop by troop.
Yeah.
And what you can afford and what you can't afford.
Yeah.
The situation that you described in that particular city, Taizhou.
Taizhou, yes.
Sure.
They have.
OK, we can help you set up here.
We can help you find accommodations and make a secure life, help you find a secure life here.
But that wouldn't be every single troupe, right?
This would be a case-by-case scenario.
And that's the local situation for one particular genre.
But in terms of overall drama, education and cultivating talents, we actually have formal systems, educational systems for that.
Take the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts as an example.
Compresses departments such as speaking opera or the performance and directing, and music design and stage art for these traditional, different types of folk operas.
And that's covering the scope from youth training since age 12 all the way to master degrees and also bachelor degrees.
So that's a very general kind of coverage for since a young age.
So that's a separate type of schooling then.
Then yeah, so you don't in the, if you chose that theatrical path, you wouldn't go to a public middle school or high school.
You'd go to a theater middle school, a theater high school.
That's usually the case because... Oh, interesting.
I didn't know that.
So that means that you have to choose... From a very young age.
Right, whether you're going to be a pro or not.
Yeah, for that particular school I mentioned.
Now, the academy currently has well, this is said on their website 2895 enrolled students, including 392 master degree students, 1685 undergraduate students and 818 secondary school students, meaning that these are kids.
These over 800 kids are being trained as professional artists since middle school age.
Because a lot of these students skills required for performances in this tradition, especially for like Peking Opera or a lot of vocal training.
You need to start early at a young age, otherwise it would be almost impossible on some level to get that level of mastery and I think that's also one of the reasons in the action plan they also stressed To make sure different forms of these arts entering school in the early stage, to make sure more young kids getting familiar with them first of all.
And then you can find, you can see if you're interested in the future, if you want to develop a professional career in this particular art form.
Another change that's happening is the traditional forms of art are now going digital.
And the new plan is pushing theater straight onto our phones.
This is a unique twist.
Yeah, it is.
We're talking about AI enhanced shows and even vertical screen micro dramas on social media.
Because the micro dramas have existed.
It's everywhere.
Yeah, well, they've existed with just like the non-operatic forms.
Exactly.
But now this is kind of fun and unique.
I watched one this morning that features a very traditional type of folk opera in West northwestern China's Shanxi Province.
It's called Qinqiao.
It's known to be kind of wild and roaring and hard to understand for people outside of that region.
But apparently there is a new ultra-short drama named Flame Steed, Unquenchable Flame.
And that's coming, originating from the old time classic Chinchang opera, The Flame Steed.
And it's being adapted into a 60 excuse me, 36 episodes of ultra drama.
Ultra short drama featuring both the normal traditional ultra short drama style and singing.
So how they do it is that they have these performers sing out those very iconic pieces from this old time classic Chinchon opera.
And, amid that, just weaving the story of the traditional opera in the form of just normal TV drama style or the ultra short drama style.
So they've kept it as you would see it on stage.
They just chopped it into mini pieces.
Or did they kind of modernize it for Gen Z?
Modernize how?
Like... Well...
The reason I ask is because I remember I think it was the 1990s when the director, I think it was Baz Luhrmann who remade a Shakespearean play, Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Yeah, I saw that movie.
Right?
Now, I was in university at that time, and I was studying poetry and literature.
And I remember we had a very spirited discussion in the class about whether...
That had a place in modern society because that film adaptation had like gold guns.
They have this modern twist.
It was very, very, very modern, right?
And so the argument for was we're taking a lost...
Almost Shakespeare, who doesn't really exist in modern society anymore, and making him accessible for people who probably would never read Shakespeare in their life.
The argument against was and the purists.
Right.
They argue against this saying you can't touch that.
It's like you can't go on stage and sing a Michael Jackson.
You can't impersonate Michael Jackson.
You just don't go there.
Right?
He's a legend.
You just leave it.
It's a classic.
Just keep it original.
Just keep it the way it is and don't touch it.
So the reason I asked you what they're doing with these ultra short, vertical micro dramas of classic operas.
This is an adaptation.
For sure, by the look of it, you wouldn't recognize immediately that this is intangible cultural heritage of china, right?
So the purist must be hating this so much.
Then, as the show goes on, you start to hear these actors singing.
Actually, they're not the actors.
Singing is dubbed by the professional artist and if you look at the professional artist, it's like the.
It has all the props and set that looked completely different from how they staged on the ultra short drama, but still people watch it over 800 uh, excuse me amasses, the 844 million on platform interactions and young people are commenting that.
I arrive at the final episode all the way from the first one, and the emperor's voice here truly shocked me.
I wasn't expecting him to sing and then, below that comment, somebody commented his were her comments saying that oh, actually it's dubbed.
And everyone can sing, apparently.
The emperor's voice is astonishing.
It's just that I can't understand it.
You see, that's how they kind of put on subtitles and everything and push a traditional art form forward noticeable to younger generation through ultra short drama.
So the numbers i mean the purists can say what they want right, but if the numbers are there 844 million views and the po and the comments are positive, then obviously there's a place for this form of artistry too, getting it out there to an audience that may not otherwise have the opportunity to see it.
Now, speaking of that, giving it to an audience who might not get the opportunity to see it.
One of the initiatives is about taking the show on the road, so to speak, and going global.
Yeah, that's so cool as well.
I mean, one recent example would be the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
That's in Scotland, right?
Yeah, it's been around for a long time.
1947 that was founded.
Yeah, exactly.
And last year, over 10 Chinese productions were invited to perform there.
For the global audiences, and among them, wide categories were covered, such as Echoes.
Guangling Juesiang it's a stage drama and Zhuangzi's Dream Zhuangzhou Mengdie also a stage drama.
You can see these are all originating from Chinese literary classics.
Well, there are also modern ones, such as The Life of Mine, which is a Beijing opera production featuring dialogues and singing in Beijing dialects and local tunes.
You see, I'm a Bejinger and I've never heard of 曲子.
I've never seen one single performance of that too.
And audiences in Edinburgh apparently watched it before I do.
Well, but that also makes sense.
Like in Beijing, there are also a lot of like French Italian opera singers performing on the stage in French and Italian.
You just put on subtitles in Chinese.
What do you think about that, Fei-Fei?
I mean lot of the people at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is huge, by the way.
It's really popular and well-known.
A lot of people who would watch that show or the Beijing show wouldn't know who Zhuangzi is.
They would have no idea.
So do you think that taking these Chinese pieces of gold, so to speak, and and showing them to an audience that doesn't necessarily know anything about it, do you think that that's worthwhile?
Or do you think well, if they don't even know who that is and they don't know anything about the history of it, is there a point to this?
Well, I definitely think it's worthwhile.
First of all, even though, for example, a person from Scotland has never heard of Zhuangzi and probably would never have had the interest of getting to know Zhuangzi in his lifetime.
But the philosophy behind Zhuangzi is something I think most people would find interested in, because it asks a lot of common questions in your life, like what is right and wrong?
How do you balance your pride versus something else?
So we have a similar debate on another podcast that we aired during this Chinese New Year.
So I think it's asked a lot of common philosophical questions.
And that is the tricky part when it comes to when we're trying to publicize a lot of this Chinese dramas, also local dramas on a world stage is that just taking the part that can resonate with the international audience And you just make sure you adapt the storyline, you adapt the cultural elements so that they can it's accessible for a non-Chinese speaker?
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, I saw two performances in Xi'an.
One was the I don't know what the official term would be, but the mask performance, where 舞舞, or dance of like they dance with masks on.
And then the mask changes and I don't know how it changes.
Oh, face changing.
Face changing mask thing.
Yeah.
What's the official term for that?
Thank you.
So and apparently the secret is nobody knows how they do it.
Exactly.
Right.
Because that was my first question.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
How do you do that?
Everybody said, nobody knows.
It's a cool, beautiful thing to watch.
And the other thing that I saw was and I apologize because I don't know the name of this either, but they have like a white thin screen.
And behind that white thin screen, they do a puppet show.
That was so cool to see as well.
Now, did I know what was going on?
No.
But I didn't care that I didn't know what was going on, because I really enjoyed that cultural experience.
And I agree with you about having these types of things overseas.
It's just another door, an artistic door that's opened to Chinese culture for people who don't know anything about it.
But for here, why do we need?
You know we talk about these new plans and these.
You know quality control and troops and mentoring young people.
Why now?
Why do we need these types of things?
Because we need a step further.
Like you said, art and performances.
It's a type of people to people exchanging, for people to get to know China and China get to know the world by importing the good ones.
And in recent years we do see that the overall development environment for the theater industry has gradually improved here in China.
Actually, this is, according to the British Council, that 2024 marked a record-breaking year for box office sales in China's performing arts, and the market size reached 816 billion pounds in that year, up almost 40 since 2019, and that 70 of the ticket holders are young people aged 18 to 34.
So that's all good news.
And after decades of infrastructure building and global engagement, we see that Now the focus has gradually shifted to audience development and domestic content creation.
How can we really make good shows for the modern day young people?
So we see there are still challenges in that domain, and one of them would be the shortage of high quality masterpieces.
Especially among traditional art forms such as Peking Opera.
Because back in the days and many, many years ago, in the past, troops had their own creative departments with stable in-house writing teams.
And each school we know the Mei Pai, the Cheng Pai, and there are four leading schools in terms of Peking Opera.
Each of them feature a very unique style of singing and performing.
They all have their own troops and a very systematic training system.
But nowadays, in recent years however, a lack of creative vitality has kind of led to a very curious situation where the theaters have old operas and they are performed in old ways over and over again.
Like people think about one opera type of performance, like 贵妃醉酒.
A lot of Chinese, if not everybody, knows this piece as a very iconic Peking Opera piece, but everybody knows that it's that story.
They know what to expect from it and they know who are the best in this industry of performance when it comes to this particular show.
So how can we change that stereotype is one thing that really got us thinking and what this new action plan is forcing on.
So here is where I think I can be a little bit critical about is also about the storyline.
A lot of the stories coming from, because all of the operas is based on some sort of story and a lot of storylines has been told for the past 500 years.
So everybody knows, everybody knows, and nothing, nothing really new.
Nothing can relate to current life, to modern.
How many times can i hear the story journey to the west?
Yeah, before i get bored of it?
Yeah, for example yeah, and.
And then thinking about modern chinese literature on stage, they are also only a handful, especially in contemporary cases.
There are only a handful of them that can be said as masterpiece, that can be worth passing down for generations.
And so I think that's the reason in this action plan they also emphasize a lot on the role of script writers is that you need to come up with stories that can relate to the modern society life.
And also, you know, your own culture as well.
Telling modern, telling stories of modern life through classic methods.
Yeah, a peking style opera of working nine to six and dating online or something like that.
Exactly that's what they're heading to.
I remember a few years ago there's a peking opera, new style of production.
It's picking up reform, but it's adopting a script from a western stage drama.
Imagine that a western story, modern day story, being adapted into peking opera.
We found it so alien, so strange when Chinese people first heard that.
But again, it was a start.
And, according to the experts who mentioned this as an example in this year's two-session speech he himself is also a CPCC member said that that's where we're aiming at.
That's how Peking Opera as a national treasure kind of pride that China takes can really get to resonate with people outside of this country, how you find the communal value in the stories we're telling.
And also artists are supposed to be bold.
You are supposed to be testing boundaries, asking questions?
Just poking uncomfortable questions into people's face.
And that's the jam of ours, I would say.
And I think that's also why a lot of experts, so to speak, are calling for boldness in their production.
Don't be afraid of certain things.
Don't just feel comfortable in your comfort zone.
Don't be boring.
That's also the reason a lot of artists lose their attractions to the public.
Because nobody wants to go anymore to the theater because it has become stale, so to speak.
Yeah, I really enjoyed this conversation on theater and the arts here in China.
We talk a lot about industry and AI on the show, so it was nice to take a little break from that.
