Streaming through

Changsha Huagu Opera is a major school of Hunan Huagu Opera, which has five other schools. In 2008, Hunan Huagu Opera was declared a national intangible cultural heritage.

Chen was in the 10th year of her learning Huagu Opera in 2019. "But some people thought it no longer existed. That urged me to pay more attention to popularizing it to tell the audience that the traditional art form is still prosperous," Chen says.

In 2009, when Chen was 14, she was recommended by her teacher to apply to an art school in Youxian county, Zhuzhou, Hunan, where she was born, and was admitted to a Huagu Opera class, embarking on her learning journey. Some of her classmates then had family members who were in the profession or had been influenced by older generations who loved the opera. Chen says, "I started from zero. I did not know much about it before, didn't have any relatives in this field and I didn't even learn how to dance."

After learning Huagu Opera for three years, she continued her studies at Hunan Vocational College of Art in Changsha and later became a trainee at the Changsha Huagu Opera Center in 2012. At first, she had small parts in shows, and was eager to play a bigger role, but the competition was fierce. "Every performer wants to stand on the center of the stage, but there are only two main characters, female and male, in each show, so obviously there is competition," says Chen.