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Around 70 expats living in Beijing, including embassy staff, international chamber of commerce personnel and students, attended a Peking Opera salon on Saturday to get a taste of traditional Chinese opera culture.

A professional Peking Opera artist  performs at Fenglei Opera House on April 25, 2015, during a "Beijing Salon -- Experiencing Beijing" event. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

The Peking Opera salon is the latest "Beijing Salon -- Experiencing Beijing" event. The series of activities is organized by the Beijing Foreign Cultural Exchange Center to give foreigners living in the Chinese capital a chance to have hands-on experiences with the city's charming and unique culture.

At the salon held at Fenglei (“Wind and Thunder”) Peking Opera House, these expats were given a tour of the opera house's backstage area and its dressing rooms, where Peking Opera costumes, headpieces, makeup and stage props were stored. Later, they got the chance to paint their own faces and perform on stage following instruction from professional performers.

This was a first-time experience for most of the foreigners attending the salon, though some had previously attended Peking Opera performances, especially since coming to live in Beijing.

While Peking Opera is losing its charm for many Chinese due to the influx of foreign cultures and the development of Chinese pop culture, there is still a significant group of people who regard Peking Opera as an appealing art form.

"We do have a group of what we call 'persistent Peking opera fans,' who are not necessarily older people. While they attend our performances, they also send their children and grandchildren to our weekend training school. In this way, the art form will never die and will be inherited from one generation to another," said Song Yan, head of the Fenglei Peking Opera House.

Meanwhile, Peking Opera has never lost its appeal to foreigners, because to them, Peking Opera is the quintessential representation of Chinese art.

"Peking Opera offers a mix of history, art and drama in its performances. It's sort of like history-telling," said Santida, an Indonesian student who has been in China for more than three years. He said Peking Opera is "very close to people in Bali," his home, which has a similar art from.

"Experiencing Beijing" has a different theme every month, with previous events focusing on tea culture, the Lantern Festival, photography of Beijing's landmarks and other genres of traditional Chinese opera, said the organizer.

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