RED BOAT TROUPES AND CANTONESE ... - University of Georgia

Peking opera fa dan (leading female role). Perhaps it is the aesthetic and training that made Mei
and others women.
Male singers who play leading woman roles are increasingly rare in Chinese Opera
today. 151 Women opera singers cross-dressing as male-leads are widely accepted, with female
stars such as Yam Kim Fai. But men playing women seems difficult to accept. Paris Wong (b.
1981) is a man who performs as a woman. Wong’s desire to enroll as a student singing zi hau in
an art school as a cross-gender actor/singer was denied. His mother was embarrassed by his
performance as a woman. But Wong was undaunted and continued to perform and teach
students. He said that he had to “follow his heart to excel in art.” 152 Wong describes Chinese
opera as a formulaic art. Each character, either a dan or sheng, has to follow set patterns. A
performer’s gender is less important than her mastery of theatrical gestures, recitative, and
singing skill, “Even if you are a woman, it doesn’t mean you can play a female part on stage. I
hope one day audiences can understand more about namdan 153 through my performances.”
I asked Wong the question as I had asked Ms. Tse Suet Sum, who played male roles: what did he
have in mind when he was about to play the female role? “I have more feeling of ‘acting’ than
when I play a male-role. As a namdan, I am more concerned with aesthetics of my singing. I
have to renew the recognition of myself as a female.” I asked Wong why women playing men
was so acceptable in Cantonese opera today while there was ambiguity with women playing men
in Purcell and Mozart’s operas. He said,
Unlike Western culture, in Chinese women’s mind, a desirable man needs to be one who
understands woman, a character that is not as macho as in the Western woman’s mind. A
scholar who is gentle and calm is the ideal man in Chinese female audience. The
character of Fai Yu, the male court student is gentle and often being lead to places by Li
Wai Leung, a woman strong in mind and weak in appearance in the Reincarnation of the
151 Males still play old lady-roles in recent productions, not many women want to play the old lady roles.
152 Kit Wai Lau, “Return to Gender,” South China Morning Post, June 2, 2009, Life section, Hong Kong edition. .
153 Namdan is a man who plays young female roles.
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