Today's tea: Green Jasmine, from Liu Xiang Ge Tea Shop, in Tianzifang (Shanghai).
Jingju as a style wasn't something I knew a huge amount about before starting the course - so I really went into it not knowing what to expect! I've seen Opera in Britain, so I guess I was really expecting something along those lines, but I was proved wrong about that pretty quickly.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnaa1gv-iEh1VGGKUgP68GSsH_CZY2nLcM_fyiJ8o6FTqe6yrdEKLQUKSvnsEs_ZfNfL_n0RyAILe5vOjs812VmKSKjWX4g6MsxvxYwMWr1ubcYRz-pbWTX2K9Y3w-VgsNNkDrPdOLf7M/s400/45584_10201706121519841_589494946_n.jpg)
Not only was it difficult to get used to singing in that style - we we're also singing in Chinese! My Mandarin gets me no further than 'Thank you' and 'Excuse me', so again, no easy task. The extract I performed was from 'The Fisherman's Revenge', which is one of the older Jingju Opera's performed, and was in an ancient Chinese dialect, as opposed to modern day Mandarin.
The manner of speaking was again different to anything done before. The whole style of performance is as
far away from anything naturalistic as possible - and the voice used for my character role type () is a high
pitched, nasally, quite 'girly' voice - nothing like my own northern accent! As I had very little idea of what I
was saying, my delivery was copied of that of my teacher, and honestly at times felt like I was just making
sounds - and hoping they were in Chinese!
The costumes were beautiful, and though the hair and make-up process took an absolute age, the end
result was great! Here is a video of the process, sped up, as it actually took hours!
i find your blog :) hope to next time you learn and experience korean opera, it will be fabulous!
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