STREAMING THROUGH

Chen Yuqing still remembers the day in 2019, when she posted a video of her singing a song of Changsha Huagu Opera ("flower-drum "opera), a traditional art form of Hunan province, while playing on four cups to produce rhythmic sounds, on the balcony of her apartment.

Chen, 27, had earlier posted photos of her onstage performances and rehearsals at the Changsha Huagu Opera Center on short-video platform Douyin, and was followed online by 20 people. Some asked if she could sing onscreen, and Chen made the video. Soon she had more than 20,000 followers.

Today, with 440,000 followers on Douyin, Chen posts more videos on the art form and livestream shows.

Chen says an online comment got her attention. It said, "So the local opera of my hometown still exists? I thought it died out."

Changsha Huagu Opera is a major school of Hunan Huagu Opera, which has five other schools. In 2008, Hunan Huagu Opera was declared a national intangible cultural heritage.

Chen was in the 10th year of her learning Huagu Opera in 2019. "But some people thought it no longer existed. That urged me to pay more attention to popularizing it to tell the audience that the traditional art form is still prosperous," Chen says.

In 2009, when Chen was 14, she was recommended by her teacher to apply to an art school in Youxian county, Zhuzhou, Hunan, where she was born, and was admitted to a Huagu Opera class, embarking on her learning journey. Some of her classmates then had family members who were in the profession or had been influenced by older generations who loved the opera. Chen says, "I started from zero. I did not know much about it before, didn't have any relatives in this field and I didn't even learn how to dance."

After learning Huagu Opera for three years, she continued her studies at Hunan Vocational College of Art in Changsha and later became a trainee at the Changsha Huagu Opera Center in 2012. At first, she had small parts in shows, and was eager to play a bigger role, but the competition was fierce. "Every performer wants to stand on the center of the stage, but there are only two main characters, female and male, in each show, so obviously there is competition," says Chen.

"I learned to play hua dan (young female role), which many others learned as well. In order to win recognition from the audience, I had to be very hardworking, and practice and learn more."

An unexpected accident happened when she was practicing her dance in 2012. Chen hurt her leg badly after colliding with another performer during a rehearsal. Chen needed a big surgery, and initially the doctor was not sure if she would fully recover.

"It was a heavy blow to me. I felt like my dream was drifting away," recalls Chen.

"My hair used to be as long as my thighs, and when I was at a loss then, I cut it. When I saw my hair fall to the ground, I felt like my career as a performer was falling as well."

After receiving treatment, she rested for a while, adjusted her mood and returned. She had to give up the complicated acrobatic movements that rely heavily on legs, and intensified her efforts to practice other skills, in areas such as singing and "water-sleeves dancing" (a dance in long, white silk sleeves attached to the cuffs of a female character's costume), and was officially recruited by the Changsha Huagu Opera Center in 2018.

Chen continues to improve her skills, and takes part in competitions to prove herself. In 2021, she won prizes in an annual competition of the art form in Changsha for her outstanding performances and efforts to spread Huagu Opera. Now, she is one of the hua dan performers at the center and delivers the most performances each year.

After reading audience comments to her first video in 2019, she started livestreaming acts of Huagu Opera. As her popularity increased, more of her colleagues joined, and the center started group livestreaming sessions in September.

According to Wang Yong, director of the center, the first livestreaming on Sept 15 attracted an audience of more than 3.5 million, 70 times the audience size of some 160 offline shows by performers of the center in 2021.

Chen says livestreaming is different from performing in a theater. "In terms of performances in theaters, everything is organized during rehearsals, and we just follow it, which means we always know what we need to do. But livestreaming requires adaptability."

To make their performances more suitable for online audiences, Chen and her colleagues have made changes to the presentation of the art form, so that it can be more interactive. Now, the center organizes livestreams once every two days, with high audience numbers.

The popularity of online performances has brought her new hope of spreading the traditional art form. Before Huagu Opera was brought online, Chen and her colleagues usually performed in rural areas and communities, where the audience generally consists of elderly people.

But statistics from Douyin show online audiences for their performances are mostly in their 30s. "Attention of young people makes us hopeful for the future of Huagu Opera," says Chen.

"The popularity of online performances, and the fact that netizens are relatively young, urge us to consider how the spread of the art form can be achieved through the internet, and how cultural inheritance can catch the eyes of young people surfing online. As long as we use the internet constructively, we can inherit traditional culture in a creative way, and as long as young people follow us, we can develop it in a proactive way," says Wang.

Zhu Youfang in Changsha contributed to this story.