Hong Kong Chinese opera event files 2019 : A year of celebrations and restlessness

2019 was a year of significance for Hong Kong Chinese opera. The opening of the long-awaited Xiqu Centre at the West Kowloon Cultural District, the Chinese Opera Festival reaching its first tenth year, Cantonese opera enlisted on the UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity for a full ten years.... Reaping the harvest after a decade of hard work and living through ten years of prosperity, Chinese opera productions in 2019 were plentiful like letting a hundred flowers bloom, witnessing a year of celebrations.

Meanwhile, waves of social protests in the city emerged since June gradually hit various performing arts domains. Some performances and activities toward the end of the year were either cancelled or rescheduled until further announcement as a consequence of the social protests that ured global attention.

Looking back at the hundred something years of recorded history of Hong Kong Chinese opera, all the celebrations and restlessness, negotiation between tradition and transformation, fast on the high road to China and furious in the journey to the west, Hong Kong Chinese opera has survived, lived, and is staying alive.