IT WAS SAID THAT Chou En-lai was an opera fan. It is not surprising therefore that the Beijing Opera (Peking Opera) flourished after he and Mao Tse-tung and the Communist Party came into power in 1949. Great fights instigated by Monkey caught stealing the fruits of Heaven, Mei Lan-fang as the legendary concubine Yang Kwei-fei, and the sword fight in the night were exported to delighted audiences all over the world. 

And it was such extracts that the Beijing Opera brought to Penang; the real opera, long drawn out with plenty of hearty singing, would have been as attractive to locals as Mozart's Queen of the Night to his contemporaries, the hoi polloi of Beijing. But then, even the extracts failed to fully hearten a suffering correspondent of The Star newspaper who complained of the "wailing" of the accompanying orchestra. 

What the locals were served with were bits of fighting scenes from various operas and, exceptionally, and perhaps daringly, as if to test the local tolerance, a scene from 'Farewell to my Concubine', where the concubine was played by a woman (a modern innovation). It was not surprising that Liu Jingquan, who acted and sang the Emperor, failed to get the applause that he well deserved. The fighting scenes, where the actors show off their skills in daring combination of ballet, acrobatics, and acrobatic combat, were executed with verve; however, the grandeur and the excitement of the battles were dampened by the small stage of Dewan Sri Pinang which rather cramped the style of the score or so fighters permitted on stage. 

    From "The Fight in the Dark"

That masterpiece  of mime, acrobatic skills, syncronised movement and sword play, the Fight in the Dark, where two men, not knowing they are on the same side, conduct deadly warfare in the dark. The tension was palpable, the audience kept on the edge of their seats. The innkeeper, Wu Jiangping, with his lightning movements and an infectious sense of comedy; recalled the magic of the Marx brothers.

The Chinese must improve their subtitles; the translation was poorly done.

THE BOOKSHOP has started poetry reading as well as book launches. The first reader was the poet Muhammad Haji Salleh, who read extracts from his recently published book of poems "Rowing Down Two Rivers".. The book launches were Ghulam-Sawar Yousof's the "Mirror of Hundred Hues" and Datin Grace Chang's personal notes of a visit to China