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Description
A performance of Sichuan Opera at the School for Performing Arts in Chengdu. This second of three pieces performed during my visit told of a young man who had gone off to the capital with his father’s money in order to find a job. But instead of doing that he had wasted all the money in a brothel, where he met a beautiful prostitute (pictured). They fell in love and he decided that he would take her back home to his parents’ house, where they would get married. But on the way home he got cold feet, terrified of his father’s reaction at his having squandered all his money and at bringing a prostitute home with the intention of marrying her. And so he arranged to sell the girl to a rich friend. When the girl discovered his intentions she was distraught, for she was truly in love with the wastrel, and therefore decided that her only choice was to commit suicide by flinging herself into the river and drowning. True tragic opera fare, worthy of Puccini himself. Maybe that's where he got his ideas from!
Photograph taken June 1992.

Description
A performance of Sichuan Opera at the School for Performing Arts in Chengdu. This second of three pieces performed during my visit told of a young man who had gone off to the capital with his father’s money in order to find a job. But instead of doing that he had wasted all the money in a brothel, where he met a beautiful prostitute (pictured). They fell in love and he decided that he would take her back home to his parents’ house, where they would get married. But on the way home he got cold feet, terrified of his father’s reaction at his having squandered all his money and at bringing a prostitute home with the intention of marrying her. And so he arranged to sell the girl to a rich friend. When the girl discovered his intentions she was distraught, for she was truly in love with the wastrel, and therefore decided that her only choice was to commit suicide by flinging herself into the river and drowning. True tragic opera fare, worthy of Puccini himself. Maybe that's where he got his ideas from!
Photograph taken June 1992.