Peking Opera shows its true colors

Profound portrayal

The new book is a collaboration between Liu, a 45-year-old veteran collector of Peking Opera costumes and props, and 81-year-old Liu Lianlun, who initially began his career as a Peking Opera actor focusing on clown roles.

Over four decades, Liu Lianlun has worked at television stations including China Central Television, making programs and documentaries about Peking Opera. One of the programs he made at CCTV focused on offstage stories, costumes and props included, which was quite popular.

Based on his decades of accumulation, he decided to write a book about Peking Opera costumes and invited Liu Fei to join him.

An ICU doctor from Peking University Third Hospital, Liu Fei has been a fan of Peking Opera for many years.

When he went backstage accidentally, he was immediately fascinated by the strict rules of costumes and their orderly management, so he decided to learn the management of Peking Opera costume trunks and dressing skills from experts at the Jingju Theater Company of Beijing.

"But how to use words and pictures to present the traditional rules about the managing system and making of Peking Opera costumes, which have been passed down orally among professionals over more than 200 years?" he asks, introducing the origin of the book.

Other questions he needed to answer were how to present Chinese culture embodied in Peking Opera costumes and how to introduce the profound, seemingly tedious, and distant knowledge to the public in a novel and accessible way.

In the end, a 340-page encyclopedic book about Peking Opera costumes materialized, containing more than 500 high-definition photos and pictures to showcase the characteristics of different kinds of attire, which vividly and profoundly display traditional cultural genes.

"The book not only documents the system of Peking Opera costumes, but also links the costumes to their respective roles and stories, uncovering the ritual culture embedded within them," says Liu Zuyan, editor-in-chief of the book's publisher, Jingban Beijing Education Culture Media.

Beneath the splendid appearance of Peking Opera costumes lies a heritage of ritual propriety. Whether in the use of colors or the choice of styles, these costumes follow the norms of traditional cultural rituals, as pointed out in the preface of the book.