Beijing Travel Review 2012-5-31

For tourists of Beijing tours, the Peking Opera Show is a good choice in the Beijing night and it is also a good way to experience traditional Chinese culture.

The excellent Peking Opera Show will be showed in the famous Liyuan Theater. Liyuan Theater is the first tea house style theater opened by Beijing Qianmen Hotel and Beijing Peking Opera Theater in October 1990. It is praised as the "best night stage" in Beijing for seven years. For more than ten years, the Liyuan Theatre performed a total of more than 3,800 games. There are famous and traditional Peking Opera Show troupes every day. The Three Divergences, Farewell to My Concubine, Picking up Jade Bracelet and Steal Silver and so on are all the main plays here. Millions of people leave footprints in the audience including former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, former Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, Estonian President Lennart Meri, Government officials and other world leaders and famous people.
Liyuan Theater is consisted of play hall, exhibition hall and fairs and sales hall three parts. The play hall is consisted of the stage and audience seats. The stage is eight meters high, twelve meters wide and seven meters deep. On the two sides of the stage, there are the couplets wrote by dramatists Weng Ouhong and Liu Bingsen. Surrounding the auditotium, there are eight large scale Beijing opera facial makeup and 14 Beijing opera figures colored drawing screens. There are totally three ticket sections including 800 seats. The Liyuan Theater is similar to the old opera theater custom. Audience can taste various Beijing snacks and tea when you are enjoying the Beijing opera show. You can also know the more than 200 years' development of the Peking Opera there. If you don't know much about Chinese, it doesn't matter. Most of the audiences in the theater are foreigners and the lists of plays are highlights from operas. In the hall, there is electron show screen. The words of the play can be shown on the screen with both Chinese and English. After the Peking Opera Bus Tour, you will deeply know the Chinese famous opera and enjoy this art.
There are the displays in the exhibition hall about the development of the Peking Opera. Tourists also like to buy some opera handiworks and souvenirs. The unique experience of Peking Opera Show will leave a deep impression on your Tour Beijing.