We shared home-cooked dinners while discussing Beijing opera, went behind the scenes at China’s most famous opera theater to photograph actors painting their faces with iconic masks and posing in elaborate costumes. The young woman and her multi-generational family of Beijing opera actors welcomed us warmly into a world centered around one of China’s most iconic art forms. These elements take me back to a chance encounter between my daughter and the daughter of a Beijing opera star in a market in Beijing, China, that led us down a rabbit hole into the core of Chinese history and culture. The film is placed in modern San Francisco, but draws on elements common to Beijing opera – Kungfu sword fights, saturated colors, heroes with superpowers, dramatic music and clever lines. The new Marvel movie, Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings, has a murderous henchman in a Beijing opera mask who moves at lightning speed and engages in a martial arts fight with the movie’s hero.
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