Thursday, December 11, 2008

Ryan does Cantonese Opera? WTF?

Yes, i do Cantonese Opera. its something i started about three or four years ago. It started when a friend of my brother, needed more people for a show, because they were short some. So my brother recruited me and few others from the Oakland High School lion dance club. We help out a group call the Red Bean Opera house. so now every summer we help out with their variety show. Last year, thought that it would be cool to do a skit that is full of ABC (American born Chinese). Mainly to show the Chinese community that us American born are into our Chinese culture and want to learn more about it. Wanting to prove to them that even if we're born in America, we are not just Americans but Chinese as well. Even it most of us are new to the art, lot of people enjoyed our show.
This past summer we did another show called," The Swaying Reeds". here are the links to watch it on you tube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7s4X2XWQus&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_UdCfYV2Tc&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_gicpAkLug&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj1ycGuY7k0&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY-QBju9hFo&feature=channel
As you can clearly see, its in 5 parts. I'm in the first and second part. The guy in green and the large black beard.
This opera is an excerpt from the classical Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. in this show, the eastern kingdom of Wu is determined to regain the province of Jing Zhou. To lead this campaign is their military strategist, Zhou Yu, who leads with 3000 troops towards Jing Zhou. But the opposing kingdom of Shu's military strategist, Zhuge Liang, predicted this attack and was already well prepared. At Jing Zhou he stationed two generals, Huang Zhong and Wei Yan( thats me), with an army of 50000 foot soilders and 7000 calvary. They were meet Zhou Yu with the orders to not to kill him but to mock him and taunt him. Because Zhou Yu had ashort temper, he was easily overwhelmed and had to retreat to the Swaying Reeds Marsh, where he encounters Zhange Fei, another oppseing general under the command of Zhuge Liang, with the same order. Not to kill Zhou Yu, but to mock and toy with him. However Zhange Fei accidentally wounded Zhou Yu. Frightened that he was killed, Zhange Fei inspect Zhou Yu's body. Discovering that he was still alive, Zhang Fei throws Zhou Yu back to his troops for a shameful retreat.

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