Master on big stage

Ming playwright Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion, revived in more recent times, is staring at a new lease of life with a Shanghai troupe embarking on a major tour, including of Prague and New York. Zhang Kun reports.

When Liang Guyin spent 18 months' salary on tuition, to learn an episode of the play Peony Pavilion, she could never have foreseen that half a century later, she would still be performing the play.

It was the summer of 1976, and Liang was a hardworking young actress with more than a decade of training in Kunqu Opera, an ancient local art form of southern China.