Mainland college students present Kunqu classic 'The Peony Pavilion' in Taipei

TAIPEI -- Two decades after a youth version of the Kunqu Opera masterpiece "The Peony Pavilion" debuted in Taipei, a special "campus youth" edition performed entirely by college students from the Chinese mainland was staged in Taiwan for the first time on Thursday.

Created by renowned Taiwan-based novelist Pai Hsien-yung, the youth version of the 16th-century romantic tragicomedy features the refined costumes and stage design of the original youth Kunqu production, which premiered in 2004 and has since been staged more than 500 times.

The campus production is an abridged performance of the nine-hour youth version, which is usually staged over three consecutive days. It began with a project that was initiated in 2024 to encourage young people to participate in the passing down of Kunqu, a 600-year-old Chinese opera style inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

The project selected 50 students from 29 universities and colleges. With little prior professional training in Kunqu, the students undertook nearly nine months of instruction before bringing the campus version of "The Peony Pavilion" to the stage in Suzhou of the eastern Jiangsu province, the birthplace of Kunqu, in April 2025.

"The campus version represents a new model of today's young people passing on fine traditional Chinese culture," said Zhao Tianwei, the production's chief planner and a professor of art at Southeast University in Jiangsu.

"We hope that young audiences in Taiwan can enjoy and learn more about Kunqu by watching their peers performing the art on stage," Zhao said.

Young people have always been the primary target audience of the youth version of "The Peony Pavilion." Since its 2004 premiere, the production has toured more than a dozen universities. "The aim is to help college students appreciate the beauty of Kunqu and therefore grow closer to our traditional Chinese culture," 88-year-old Pai, who has spent years promoting Kunqu, said in a message written ahead of the campus version's Taipei performance.