Peking OperaⅣ

The painted face, in Chinese called “jing”, is a name for the male role that has some special characteristic or appearance. The role must have a strong voice and be able to exaggerate gestures, and the Jing’s face should be made up in strong colours such as red, white and black to express their characters.

The Chou is easily understood from the role’s name as a clown with an ugly appearance. His function in a performance is to provide light relief and comedy.

Instruments
The instruments which are used to play the music can be divided into two parts. One is the percussion instruments, including drums, gongs and so on. The other one is orchestral instruments and the most typical one is jinghu, a small high pitched two stringed spike fiddle. With the musical backing of these instruments, the roles sing or speak their dialogues with the rhythm or perform Kong-fu.