Shows of solidarity

Inevitably, the novel coronavirus outbreak has had a massive impact on China's performing arts market. According to a report released by Beijing Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau on Wednesday, in the capital alone over 4,300 cultural activities have been canceled since Jan 23, including 17 temple fairs during Lunar New Year. Beijing's 372 cultural centers and libraries, along with it 183 museums have been closed. Over 5,000 performances, which were scheduled to be staged in the city during Spring Festival, have been canceled.

"The impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the capital's performing arts market is huge. With performances canceled or postponed, the revenue could potentially fall by 25 percent or more this year," said Chen Dong, director of Beijing Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau during a news conference to discuss the findings of the report on Wednesday. He said that over 22,000 performances were held in Beijing in 2019, which attracted audiences totaling more than 10 million and generated over 1.7 billion yuan ($242.5 million) in box-office revenue.

For example, more than 80 shows and 60 public activities hosted by the National Center for the Performing Arts from Jan 26 to March 1, including workshops, movie screenings and exhibitions, have been canceled, and nearly 50,000 tickets are expected to be refunded. From Jan 25 to April 5, over 20 performances at the Forbidden City Concert Hall have been canceled, according to the venue's website, and ticket holders can apply to refund their tickets online.

Those disappointed by the decision to cancel shows extended far beyond Beijing.

Stereolab, a UK-based band, has announced the cancellation of their China tour, where they were due to play in Beijing on March 21 and in Shanghai on March 19.

"It is with heavy hearts and a deep concern for the people of China that we announce the cancellation of the Stereolab tour in March. The tour has been a long time in the works…we (are) still hoping to reschedule these shows," announced the tour organizer, Splitworks, an independent music promoter in China.

Though the coronavirus outbreak has closed the doors of many performance venues, many art institutions, including Beijing Symphony Orchestra, China National Acrobatic Troupe and China National Peking Opera Company, have released performances online through social media platforms. Museums and libraries, too, have opened online channels in an effort to offer their cultural services to the people.

"Nearly 20,000 performances have been canceled from January to March across the country and the box-office loss is over 2 billion yuan," a report issued by China Association of Performing Arts on Feb 7 stated.

On Feb 17, the China Association of Performing Arts released a proposal encouraging the online streaming of performances that are affected by the outbreak, as well as promoting charity performances and offering free shows to medical workers on the front line of the fight against the epidemic. About 60 performing arts venues in Beijing and over 100 performing arts venues from other Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Tianjin, signed the proposal.

According to Chen, the municipal government of Beijing has also launched policies to support and help performing arts companies financially. After the novel coronavirus outbreak, the government will provide subsidies and allowances to performing arts venues. "About 500,000 tickets with low prices will be offered for 2,500 performances," a quote that appeared in Beijing Youth Daily on Thursday stated.

On Wednesday, 28 measures for helping and supporting the cultural enterprises regarding the current novel coronavirus outbreak were released by the municipal government, including the theaters' rent subsidy and the increasing of loans to cultural enterprises.

As part of the effort to tackle the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak on the performing arts market, Beijing Culture and Arts Fund, which was founded by Beijing Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau, has extended its application date and adjusted the schedule of performances of fund-supported projects. The fund will also increase financial support for smaller performing companies.

One of the projects, which received money from the Beijing Culture and Arts Fund in 2019, is a music education program initiated by Chinese folk singer Gong Linna. According to Zheng Honglin, who is in charge of Gong's program, it is about training young talent to adapt traditional Chinese poetry into songs as a way to promote and preserve traditional Chinese poetry.

Consisting of three parts: vocal training, traditional Chinese poetry research and anthropology of music, the program was scheduled to be launched on Feb 10 in Beijing, but has now been commuted into an online course through popular podcast platform, Himalaya FM.Since Feb 10, the online program has been listened to about 80,000 times.

Zheng adds that the future of the singer's upcoming tour of 10 performances－in which she will sing songs written by her husband, German composer Robert Zollitsch, about the 24 solar terms, a traditional Chinese calendar that summarizes different seasonal phenomena and helps to guide agricultural production－is still under discussion and may be postponed or even canceled.