White-haired girl as young as ever

This year, Xi'er will be 50 years old. The old team that helped deliver her in 1964 is grayer than she is, and some of them can only applaud her continuing success onstage from the other side now.

There are black frames around many of the names that appear in the credits on the program.

The White-Haired Girl is a model drama, one of eight approved and allowed to be performed during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). But it had actually been created before the full force of that counter-tradition movement gathered strength in 1967 and it was a thing of beauty, then, as it still is now.