China re-opens

Ningbo Tianran Stage Theatre

This weekend, I was giving an online class to Rose Bruford students. Because the classes are done remotely, there are students all over the world, including China. One of them, Xuyu Zhang, lives in Ningbo, a city to the South of Shanghai where I used to go quite often to lead work for the University of Nottingham's campus there.

The class was about the effect Covid has had on theatre, using Rustom Bharucha's wonderful lecture series as a start point.  Towards the end of the class, the image of Xuyu went dark.  It turned out that she was in a taxi - although the connectivity remained perfect and she was still able to share a presentation while travelling!  She explained that the Grand Theatre in Ningbo was finally re-opening that evening, with a play called The Face of Chiang Kai-shek, and she simply had to be there.  I hadn't really taken into account the different speeds of re-opening, and the huge amount of pressure people in China must have been under as the rest of the world returned to social activity and performance, while they remained in their apartments, masked and isolated.  

As the class ended, the taxi drew to a halt, and Xuyu turned her phone towards the theatre.  She walked up the imposing staircase, and joined the very long queue at the Box Office.  It was wonderful to be there.  

The Face of Chiang Kai-shek