Stories that sing

West End musicals inspired a promoter and composer to bring the art form home and make it China's own. That means good plots and tunes, not acrobats, he tells Chen Nan.

Li Dun certainly has perseverance. Ever since he watched West End musicals in London in 1988, such as Cats and Les Miserables, he has been striving to make original musicals in China. The former owner of several nightclubs in Shenzhen in the early 1980s, Li also invested his own money into his musical career from Shenzhen to Beijing and Shanghai.

Despite nearly three decades of his single-minded love of this art form, he says, "even now many people still ask me what a musical is and what a Chinese musical is".