Going to know the ChineseOpera —— Culture lecture held in Cofucius Institue at University of Latvia

On 9th. March, 2016, the Confucius Institute at University of Latvia held a culture-experiencing event “Painting Facial Make ups”.

What kind of differences between Western opera and Chinese opera? What are the main characteristics of the Chinese opera? With this kind of hesitation, the students came to the class.

This event started with a lecture on Chinese Opera. In the beginning, the volunteer Chinese teacher from the Confucius Institute, introduced the basic knowledge of the long-historical art ,covering various topics such as the origin of Opera,  different types of the opera, personalities of characters of “sheng (male characters), dan (female characters), jing (male characters with painted facial make ups), chou (clowns)”, and the connotations of different colors on the facial make ups. Also, gave some brief introduction about some famous actors.

Afterwards, the students were all willing to paint their own facial make ups by imitating their favorite ones or just according to their imagination. With great enthusiasm and attention, they first used pencils to draw sketches on masks and then to color it. At that time, it was very harmonies in the classroom with the beautiful sound of a piece of Opera. After about one hour hard work, they finished painting the facial make ups, all of which were colorful and vivid.

When they finished painting, the students were so excited that every one of them took photos with their own masks in hand and tried playing the male characters with painted facial make ups by putting the masks on their faces. In the end, the teacher ask some of the students go to the front of the classroom to introduce themselves and their mask in Chinese and give some tips about different  colors using on mask means what.

This event helped the students deepen their general understanding of the traditional Chinese art and stimulate their enthusiasm in learning Chinese culture and language.