Photo: Courtesy of National Excellent Musical Performance

The second season of the National Excellent Musical Performance recently opened in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province.

This performance brought together 18 musicals, among which the musicals The Ideal City and In the Distance, produced by the Beijing Performing Arts Group and performed by the Beijing Opera and Dance Theatre, stood out from nearly 100 participating works. The two works were staged at the Minnan Grand Theatre in Xiamen from November 13 to 18.

In the Distance focuses on the development and changes in the express delivery industry during a period of more than 20 years. Taking the struggle of young people as its center, it seeks to give audiences the persistence to chase their dreams and inject new vitality into original domestic musicals.

The "pioneering" musical has entered many first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and won the double affirmation of the market and word-of-mouth.

In September 2021, the original musical The Ideal City started brewing, and after two years of creation and polishing, it met audiences at the end of May, 2023. 

The play takes a female perspective, playing out various workplace struggles in contemporary society. The ups and downs of the story vividly show the struggles of young people in Beijing.

 The musical is adapted from a popular film and a TV show, based on realistic workplace ecology. With fashionable and novel artistic expression and avant-garde texture of the stage presentation, it won praise from all sides as soon as it premiered, and was hailed as "a surprise work of Beijing realistic musicals" by the public.