Photo by Cecily Liu / China Daily

The first Peking Opera actor Shavrova met was Liu Zheng. He introduced Shavrova to others.

"I became friends with these people," Shavrova says.

"We went out to dinner together and socialized."

Opera troupe tours remote Henan villages

Big shoes to fit

She came to realize the financial difficulties they face as the genre's popularity declines.

"They're doing lots of work for very little money," she says.

"They have the fan groups and followers on blogs, but a lot fewer compared to big pop stars. But they don't do it for the money. They're doing something entirely beautiful and they love what they do."

She once asked Liu to dress her up as the female role in The Drunken Concubine, which tells a story of the famous Yang Yuhuan, a concubine to Emperor Minghuang in Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907). Liu's mother helped Shavrova dress up. It took two hours.

When it was done, Shavrova stood up and felt dizzy.

"Literally, I couldn't move. And these actors, on top of all this, they have to sing and dance, and they have to do a sword dance. It's really tough," she says.

But while contemporary performances have stolen the stage from Peking Opera, Shavrova believes the genre is modern, rather than archaic.

"I thought of it as being modern on an intuitive level," she says.

"It is like contemporary art, which you wouldn't understand unless you put time into understanding what the artist means. It was very charming and very beautiful."

She also believes it operates according to its own rules.

"It has nothing to do with this life," she says.

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