What's on

Making a splash

The classic fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, has been adapted into a Chinese play by the China National Theater for Children. By Danish theater director Torkild Lindebjerg and Danish composer Jens Tolsgaard, along with Chinese creative team members, the play tells the story of a curious and free-spirited mermaid who courageously follows her dreams and embarks on life-changing adventures to find what she truly treasures. The play, which premiered on July 6, 2019, gathers five young actresses from the China National Theater for Children to play the roles of the five mermaid sisters. The music pieces in the play feature stringed instruments, like guitar, harp and ukulele, and are performed by the composer.

7:30 pm, Aug 19 to 22. National Center for the Performing Arts. No 2 West Chang'an Avenue, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-6655-0000.

A peak performance

The NCPA Chorus and Chinese opera singers, including Zhou Xiaolin, Zhang Xin and Wang Chong, will perform the concert version of Chinese opera production, Visitors on the Snow Mountain. Adapted from a Chinese movie in 1963 with the same title, the opera, produced by the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing in 2015, was written by composer Lei Lei alongside librettist Yi Ming and was directed by Chen Yixin. It tells the story of frontier guards in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. The music features both Western classical music and Xinjiang ethnic folk songs.

Aug 21 and 22. National Center for the Performing Arts. No 2 West Chang'an Avenue, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-6655-0000.

The fine print

Key traditional Chinese printed works from non-Han ethnic groups went on show at the China Printing Museum in Beijing on Aug 11, unveiling a lesser-known part of Chinese printing history. The Special Exhibition of Chinese Ethnic Print Art, which was co-organized by the China Printing Museum and the Chinese National Museum of Ethnology, displays 125 works spanning the ancient to the modern, offering a panorama of the print art produced by different ethnic groups in Yunnan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and other provincial-level administrative regions in China. The exhibits include ancient woodblock prints that depict such cultural dimensions as astronomy, religion and medicine that range from the Yuan (1271-1368) to the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, together with famed artists' works from recent history and contemporary pieces featuring figures, landscapes and ethnic cultures. Some of the displayed copperplate etchings were created as anthropological references by Europeans following their explorations of those regions during the late Qing Dynasty.

9 am-5 pm, through Sept 15, closed on Mondays. China Printing Museum, 25 Xinghua North Road, Daxing district, Beijing. 010-8128-2770.

Block of ages

Spring Festival nianhua prints from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and ukiyo-e pieces are among the most eye-catching genres of art, both being influenced by the advancement of printing techniques in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).Woodblock Prints in Distinctive Lands surveys the differences and similarities between the two forms of art by showing 138 prints from the collection of the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. The traditional nianhua prints on display were made in some of China's best-known production centers, such as Yangliuqing of Tianjin, Taohuawu of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, and Mianzhu of Sichuan province. Featured ukiyo-e artists at the exhibition include Hishikawa Moronobu, the first ukiyo-e master, and Katsushika Hokusai, best known for his piece Great Wave off Kanagawa, from his series of works entitled 35 Views of Mount Fuji.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays, through Oct 15. Online reservation needed. 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-6326.