A top Chinese Peking Opera artist believes promoting the traditional opera genre overseas is the best way to introduce China to the world and could improve the nation's image in the hearts of foreigners.

In an exclusive interview with china.org.cn, Sun Ping said: "Most foreigners never get a chance to see something like this." Sun is attending the annual session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing.

She continued, "Foreigners may not feel amazed when seeing Chinese people cook Western-style food, or seeing Chinese ballet, films and stage dramas, and so on. However, they will be amazed to see Peking Opera, because it is so fresh to them."

She pointed to the national Peking Opera competition for overseas college students every year held at Beijing Foreign Studies University where Sun is dean of the Institute of Arts. Foreign students throng the competition every time.

"Isn't it easier to plant Chinese seeds in the students' hearts when they come to China to study? You teach them Chinese language, and they may end up speaking some Chinese. However, if they learn Peking Opera while learning Chinese, they may forget the language eventually, they will carry Chinese opera, art, culture inside them forever. The images, the costumes, the music, are more powerful than textual words."

Sun cited the fact that China receives more than 300,000 overseas students every year. If 20,000 or 30,000 students of them could learn some Peking Opera, then, they would all be the ones who know and love China and its culture. "When they get older and start to influence mainstream worlds elsewhere, they will also plant a clearer image of China," Sun said.

Sun is a well-established Peking Opera performer whose performances have been seen and applauded by former U.S. presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. She is also a renowned scholar engaged in the theoretical research of Peking Opera; and has held appointments as a guest professor at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.

Her first adapted work was "King St. Laszlo." She added elements of Peking Opera, such as acting techniques, simple stage layouts and face-mask painting into the classic Hungarian opera. The show has been performed more than 300 times around Europe.

In the current century, she tried combining Peking Opera with various art genres in the United States. The most notable example is probably her mix of Peking Opera's vocalization and symphony, where the orchestra played substitute instruments that sound similar to Chinese traditional opera instruments.

"When you perform Peking Opera, no matter what the instruments are or what modern elements are involved, it is still definitely Peking Opera. It will never become the other side's culture, but must be our culture," Sun said.

Sun's main work now is touring, lecturing and promoting the art form all around the world. She is proud to be the opera's ambassador when seeing how many people in the world get interested in it. However, she says that, although China is strengthening opera promotion abroad, there are still much more to do.

"Now, opera troupes often go abroad to give two or three performances, or at most about ten, and that's not enough." She remembers the glorious days when Peking Opera legend Mei Lanfang toured North America and other parts of the world in the 1930s. Along with the theatrical arts of Konstantin Stanislavski of Russia and Bertolt Brecht of Germany, the Chinese theater represented by Mei came to be regarded at the time as one of the world's three great performing arts.

"We also don't have enough professional talents, especially some crossover talents like me, who can understand acting, the arts in general and directing," Sun said, "When I toured Europe, I could talk to their stage designers about how to set up the stage and the lighting, etc., based on my experiences, and they listened to me and were convinced. However,currently, we lack such talents, and China needs to train and nurture more of them."

She said, "Peking Opera needs agents and managers when going abroad. In China, opera troupes are managed under a government system; however, when we need to negotiate with foreign promoters, we need professional agents."

At the same time, she hopes to establish Peking Opera schools around the world, just like the widespread system of Confucius Institutes promoting culture.

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