Between National Theatre and Beijing Opera : Beijing Opera as the representation of Chinese National Performing Art

This paper is going to study how the Peking Opera had become the representation of national art of China and how the meaning has been changing. In early 20th century, in front of western civilization, Asian countries ashamed of their own traditional arts, including performing arts. When Mei Lanfang and Qi Rushan established "Association of National Opera.", they put emphasis on Peking Opera and the study on Peking Opera was carrying. The title, National Theatre is exclusively related with Peking Opera since then. After Taiwan and mainland China was divided, because Taiwan used the name National Theatre for Peking Opera, so they couldn t use it in mainland China and called it Beijing Opera.But in P.R.C. Beijing Opera had a hard time during the period of Reformation of Traditional Opera, and was asked to create new repertories reflect people s contemporary life. It surely have to express the ideology of Communism according to the socialistic realism. So called 8 repertories of "Model Plays" are just the climax of the political drama led by government or the political power. In 21C, there was a Renaissance of Chinese culture. In the field of performing arts also, the P.R.C. government launched a big project of National brand of performing arts. Another big issue was that Beijing Opera was selected one of the oral and intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in the year 2010. Because in Communist countries they put emphasis on historical materialism, it s hardly possible to keep their tradition of folklore in many fields. But the project gave them a good reason to find out and protect the items of traditional heritages. The problem is all these reforms and projects were led by government, not by the performers and people themselves. It s the serious reason why Beijing Opera is lack of vitality and cannot produce good new repertories.