Kunqu Opera Club Opens in East China

The club offers its registered members, usually the high-end business leaders and successful people, with the opportunities to temporarily escape from their tensed commercial competitions, to taste tea and delicious dishes, and most importantly, to enjoy Kunqu Opera, an elegant art performance with more than 600 years history. The club is named after a traditional play of Kunqu Opera, "You Yuan Jing Meng" (Interrupted Dream in the Garden). The venue of the Kunqu Opera Club was the relics of a former Kunqu training school in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province.

In 1921, a group of Kunqu Opera fans invested their energy and money in the establishment of the first Kunqu Opera training school in Suzhou. The school played an important role in the development of Kunqu Opera in China. In June 2005, preserving its original construction flavors, local government in Suzhou repaired and renovated the buildings of the 1,343 square meters' Kunqu Opera training school with the tradition construction techniques.

With the organizing works from Cai Shaohua, the president of Suzhou Kunqu Opera Troupe, and the investment from Zhang Rongming, a Kunqu Opera fan and also the president of the Aimer Lingerie Groups, the Kunqu Opera Club began its operations here in Oct. 2010. People can view an exhibition showing the development of the Kunqu Opera.

At the same time, people have the opportunities to listen to the professional introductions on Kunqu Opera's Performance, and to watch different activities and procedures of the performance, such as the make-up works and the Pai Qu, which is an undressed-up rehearsal.

The most attractive thing is that people can watch the classic play of Kunqu Opera "You Yuan Jing Meng" (Interrupted Dream in the Garden), which is adapted from a famous play script "Mu Dan Ting" (Peony Pavilion) written by Tang Xianzu some 400 years ago, under real-scenes in a classical Suzhou Garden of the club.