The Mother of Chinese Operas

March 31, 2015

Kun Opera is the most refined and literary form of Chinese opera with a six hundred year history.  This opera is known as the mother of a hundred Chinese operas.

Kun Opera ushered in the second Golden Era of Chinese drama and almost vanished when it was suppressed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.


a scene from The Peony Pavilion, a classical Kun Opera

When Kun Opera was dying in China during Mao’s rule, it was still being performed in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong.  Prior to the Cultural Revolution, there were over 500 classical Kun Operas. Today there are about 100 that have survived.

Kun Opera is known for the tenderness of the actor’s voices, delicate hand gestures, dramatic facial expressions, beautifully abstract movements, gorgeous costumes and stage design.


The Peach Blossom Fan is considered to be a landmark in this form of Chinese opera.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Finalist in Fiction & Literature – Historical Fiction
The National “Best Books 2010” Awards

Low-Res_E-book_cover_MSC_July_24_2013

Honorable Mentions in General Fiction
2012 San Francisco Book Festival
2012 New York Book Festival
2012 London Book Festival
2009 Los Angeles Book Festival
2009 Hollywood Book Festival

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline


China’s Huangmei Opera

October 8, 2012

Anqing, in Anhui Province, is regarded as the hometown of Huangmei Opera and Hui Opera. Anqing was first built in 1217 and is almost eight-hundred years old, but Huangmei Opera first appeared about two centuries ago as a simple drama of song and dance.


Huangmei Opera Troupe

Huangmei opera did not involve the traditional opera gestures which often-used sleeves and step movements. The music is performed with a pitch that hits high and stays high and does not sound like the typical rhythmic Chinese opera.

The fairy tale of the Cowherd and the Weaving Girl is one of the four most famous folktales of ancient China. It is a classic love story between a fairy and a human being and has a widespread influence. The Qixi Festival is said to have something to do with the fairy tale, and the seventh day of every seventh month of the lunar calendar has become the Chinese Valentine’s Day.

Chinese opera together with Greek tragic-comedy and Indian Sanskrit Opera are the three oldest dramatic art forms in the world.

Discover Peking Opera

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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