Peking Opera of the Late Qing Dynasty 晚清時代的京劇

The item, "Peking opera" was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.

Peking opera is a performance art incorporating singing, reciting, acting, martial arts.

Although widely practised throughout China, its performance centres on Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai.

晚清時代的京劇 Peking Opera of the late Qing period…

The concept is to recreate the exact scenes from the late 1800s based on actual historical paintings and those colored rice paper drawings sold to wealthy European tourists…

Everything is original, including the 4 backdrops, 3 which are hand painted painted and 1 consisting of old embroidery and silk.

Took me months to plan this…

Took avid costume collector Master Tang years to collect and repair the antique costumes…, and spending huge amounts of money buying useable antique clothings and accessories for this purpose.

The costumes are then reassembled according to what is seen on old drawings and paintings from the same era.

Not an easy feat because fabric degenerates over time and many artefacts were lost during the wars and the cultural revolution. Sourcing for exactly the same marching historical pieces to recreate the same look is a very tedious and expensive task.

And then we need a makeup artiste who can recreate the Qing Dynasty style of face painting…

The models are real Peking opera actress picked especially to match the look.

Just a very sincere photo project by a bunch of people doing what we love…