![]() Some college students are inspired to reach out to old performers to complete oral histories. The restored photos Yu has shared online have led many Gen Zs to learn more about Peking Opera. "The world is moving forward, but I want to go back to the roots and grasp its most beautiful moments."įortunately, with China's growing national confidence and interest in traditional culture, an increasing number of young people are learning about and becoming obsessed with Peking Opera. ![]() This is partly why Yu has decided to keep restoring old Peking Opera photos. "But today Qi School inheritors usually only perform 30 plays at most." "Zhou was the founder of Peking Opera's Qi School, and he performed some 650 plays in total," Yu noted. "Senior performers worry that Peking Opera will gradually fade with their departure," Yu said. Yu, whose father also works at the Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company, said he is lucky to be able to reach many senior performers over 80, who he finds are very willing to share the stories of their early years with the youngster. Yu usually has to research newspapers from the 1920s and 1930s at libraries to find possible clues.Īnother way is talking to living Peking Opera artists from those years. Yet finding out when and where a photo was taken is even more difficult, as information about Peking Opera performances has gone missing over the years, with some being destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Restoring a single photo can take Yu hours, or even days. "The more I learn about them, the more I admire the grit they showed in those turbulent years."Ī stage photograph of Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang's in 1935 Photo: Courtesy of Yu KaiyiPhoto restoration takes patience. "There were many Peking Opera masters who insisted in creating and performing anti-Japanese aggression plays under the threat of death," Yu told the Global Times. Zhou performed the play, which tells the story of the final collapse of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), to call on the Chinese public to bravely fight back against Japanese aggression. For example, a photo of Peking Opera master Zhou Xinfang performing Mingmoyihen, (Lit: Eternal Regret of the Late Ming Dynasty), was taken when Zhou performed the play soon after the September 18 Incident, also known as the Mukden Incident, which marked the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45). He also learned how to better clean and store historical photographs and negatives, which involves small details such as maintaining a storage room at a certain temperature and getting the composition of cleaning fluid just right.Įach photo Yu has restored is a decades-old story. "I don't want to 'damage' the original photos," said Yu. Instead of directly altering the original photographs, Yu first scans the old photos and then restores them by using software like Photoshop. "I had to learn everything by myself," Yu recalled. With little theoretical or practical experience at the beginning, Yu, who majored in international politics, spent long, hard days learning how to restore old photos when he first started in 2015. Yu, 31, is probably the only staffer at a Peking Opera theater engaged in Peking Opera photo restoration. Through painstaking effort, they now have a refreshing new look. Zhou Xinfang (1895-1975), Mei Lanfang (1894-1961), Ma Lianliang (1901-1966)… Numerous photos of the brightest names in Peking Opera history have become faded, smudged or damaged over the past decades. Restoring old Peking Opera photos has been Yu's main hobby since he started working at the archives room at the Shanghai Jingju Theatre Co in 2014, where he has access to more than 200,000 historical photos in the theater's collection. In his eight-square-meter office, Yu has restored more than 20,000 Peking Opera photos taken in the early 20th century. Photo: Courtesy of Yu KaiyiSitting at his desk as a bright light burns overhead, Yu Kaiyi taps on a computer screen with a pressure sensitive pen, carefully erasing the stains on a scanned copy of an old photograph of a Peking Opera performance. Yu Kaiyi restores a scanned copy of an old photograph of Peking Opera master Zhou Xinfang.
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