In the spotlight

Chinese theater reaches a narrower audience compared with the country's cinema, but it is no less vibrant and chaotic, as Raymond Zhou discovers in a bid to chronicle it.

Chinese theater has seen uneven development in recent decades as live performances are concentrated in bigger cities and touring companies disappear from small towns and rural areas.

This isn't unique because even the far more popular entertainment - movies shown in theaters - has vanished from a large swath of the Chinese population that derives now its main recreation from TV.