Without your visit to an ancient village, you will not know how wonderful spring is. If you fail to enjoy traditional operas, you will not know how beautiful Jiangnan is. In recent years, enjoying operas has remained popular. In Haiyan, Haiyan Opera, “a source of all operas”, has shown its great vitality.

With a melodious tune and a long history, Haiyan Opera has become popular once again in this ancient county, Haiyan. Several days ago, an opera exchange activity “Melodious Tunes · Charming Operas” was held in Liuli, a village of the county. The inheritors of the operas as intangible culture heritages of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai gathered in Haiyan to present a wonderful opera feast to local audiences.

Haiyan, the birthplace of Haiyan Opera, once again becomes the exchange center of the opera art. Written on the intangible cultural elements and folk arts, the Haiyan Opera “Clam King” attracted audiences’ great attention. Xu Xiaoping, a representative inheritor of the municipal-level intangible culture heritage “Clam King Lantern Dance”, cleverly integrated Haiyan Opera into traditional lantern dances, and acted as the Clam King of the opera to dance gracefully on the stage, singing the pleasant melody, opening and closing the clamshell, perfectly telling the story in the rhythm of Haiyan Opera.

After the performance, Xu Xiaoping and Xu Pin, two intangible culture inheritors, guided the children audiences present to wear props, the clamshell, to learn the unique steps of lantern dances in an interactive form.

Additionally, other art performances were conducted as well that day such as the Kun Opera puppet show, Suzhou Pingtan (an opera of Suzhou telling stories and singing ballads in Suzhou dialect), and shadow puppet shows. The puppet show fully demonstrated the art charm through Kun Opera and the puppet.

As an important southern opera in the evolution history of Chinese operas, Haiyan Opera, inheriting traditional tunes and the tunes of Kun Opera, is of great historical and cultural value. “This opera exchange set up a platform for intangible culture inheritors to learn from each other for opera art innovation, and injected new vitality into traditional opera arts,” said Xu Xiaoping.

In recent years, Haiyan has intensified efforts in inheriting opera culture. In the past 40 years, the county sorted out more than 500 tunes, opera programs and pieces of music, which contributed a lot to the protection and inheritance of Haiyan Opera. Moreover, inheritors’ vivid performances made more people feel the charm of this ancient art.

This opera exchange injected new vigor into the inheritance and development of local opera culture, built an important platform for Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai to make opera culture exchanges and provided an opportunity for opera artists and intangible culture inheritors to exchange ideas to jointly promote the inheritance and development of the opera culture.