Dance and Music

China’s rich music and dance culture is difficult to describe briefly. Many styles, schools of thought and traditions exist and coexist in various areas. From the traditional to the modern and a mixture of the two, China’s music and dance culture is alive and growing.


Chinese Opera

Chinese opera combines drama and music into a uniquely Chinese blend of motifs, traditions and performance styles. Different regions have unique types of opera but they all share some things in common. Each is accompanied by a band of musicians. All Chinese operas are part drama, part musical. Costumes and make-up all vary from style to style, but in each type of opera these factors serve to tell the audience certain aspects of the characters in the opera.

Many types of Chinese opera incorporate martial arts and acrobatics. Elaborate fighting and dancing scenes, often using swords, spears and other weapons, are often incorporated into the play to heighten tension or provide comic relief.

Many types of opera were wildly popular only several decades ago, but in recent years interest has not been strong and many opera groups and actors are having economic difficulties. Some say the lack of interest is because some Chinese operas are too deeply rooted in traditions and the past. However, some reformers are working to adopt traditional performances to modern ideas and audiences in hopes of reviving the art form.

Beijing opera (jingju) is the most famous type of Chinese opera and has spread to other parts of China and abroad. Roles in Beijing opera are divided into four types. The sheng is the main male role, the dan is used to describe any female role. Jing performers play forceful, boisterous roles and the chou is a clownish, comedic role.

The dress, make-up and facial expressions of each type of role has a special meaning to Beijing opera experts. For example, a jing character with white face paint is usually evil, devious or crafty, while a young male sheng character will sing in a shrill, high-pitched voice to symbolize adolescence.

Sichuan opera, another variety, focuses more explicitly on drama and is more like a play than some other forms of opera. It includes only percussion, without wood or stringed instruments. Sichuan opera is well-known for its “face changing” (bianlian), where actors switch their painted facemasks on stage to suit the scene. Performers often stack many thin, paper masks on their faces and rip them off at high-speed at key moments in the performance.

Cantonese opera (popular in Guangdong province) places a huge emphasis on elaborate face-makeup. Every aspect of a performer’s makeup, including color, shape and position on the face, indicates something about that characters’ thoughts, motives, personality or moral character. In Cantonese opera, lyrics are much more important than melody.

Cantonese opera has two main forms: mo and mun. Mo Cantonese opera focuses on fast-paced stories and includes martial arts and acrobatics. The mun style on the other hand is considered to be more intellectual and has a slower pace. Mun plots often center on romance, morality tales, traditional myths or ghost stories.


Dragon Dance

The Dragon Dance originated during the Han Dynasty about 2000 years ago. It gradually grew into a widely popular way of celebrating various traditional holidays. In Chinese culture, dragons are seen as benevolent, powerful creatures that bestow good luck and prosperity upon people. It was thought that they had the ability to move on land, water or through air and were the supernatural masters of rain and clouds.

The Dragon Dance is a custom that symbolizes bringing the fortune and prosperity of Chinese dragons into people’s lives. First, a colorful dragon body is created from cloth, piping and other materials. It is then placed on poles and a team of performers dances using the dragon as their common thread. Typically each pole is swung back and forth to give the dragon a wave-like motion; this is the basic motion of a dragon dance. More complex dances require more complex motions and coordination amongst performers.

Dragons can range from between 25 to 70 meters. In dragon dancing competitions, teams of dancers are often accompanied by percussionists and a typical performance lasts about 10 minutes. A successful performance requires agility, coordination, teamwork and a flair for entertainment from the dragon dancers.


Traditional and Folk Music

Traditional Chinese music is played by individuals or in small groups. Traditional instruments include a variety of plucked and bowed string instruments, woodwinds such as flutes and reed instruments and percussion like gongs, cymbals and drums. Instruments are divided into several categories based on the materials used to create them: animal skins, gourd, bamboo, wood, silk, clay, metal and stone.

Traditional vocals are usually solo rather than group choruses. A thin falsetto voice is very common. Vocal traditions are rooted in poetry and it is at times difficult to draw a clear line between poetry and singing, especially with styles of poetry like the ci which have a music-like quality.

Chinese folk music is a living tradition that can easily be seen in the countryside, especially during large community activities like weddings and funerals. Various regions have unique styles. For example, Fujian and Taiwan are home to a special style of ballad known as nanyin. Nanyin ballads are sung by a woman and accompanied by a plucked string instrument known as a pipa and a flute-like instrument called a xiao. These ballads are often songs of mourning.

Another example of Chinese folk music is the jiangnan sizhu style (literally “silk and bamboo”). Traditionally played in Shanghai as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, it is performed by amateurs in tea houses. At once traditional and evolving, jiangnan sizhu is studied in China’s top music conservatories.


Modern Chinese Music

Modern Chinese music has been greatly influenced by Western pop, hip-hop and rock music. Chinese pop music started as early as the 1950s. Cantopop, a form of Cantonese-language pop music that gained prominence in the 1970s in Hong Kong, was and is still very popular throughout the Chinese speaking world. Mandopop soon followed, with Mandarin-language pop music coming from Taiwan. Taiwan and Hong Kong continue to dominate China’s modern pop music scene.

In recent years, China has seen an interest in rock music. An artist named Cui Jian performed the first Chinese rock concerts in the late 1980s, and a band named Tang Dynasty followed as China’s first heavy metal group, whose first album combined heavy metal and traditional Chinese opera.