Promotional material for You Yan Tong Xian Photo: Courtesy of Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts

The red-themed Tea-Picking Opera You Yan Tong Xian, or Sharing Salt Together When You Have It, hit the stage at the Tianqiao Performing Arts Center in Beijing on Saturday and Sunday nights. The performance by the Ji'an Tea-Picking Song and Dance Theater is inspired by the true stories of the Red Army in East China's Jiangxi Province during the 1930s and expresses the idea that as long as the Red Army has salt to eat, the ordinary people's food bowls will also be salty. 

Written by the playwright Luo Zhou and directed by Tong Weiwei, the opera stars Yu Weigang and Wu Feifan. Wu said that for her, as a Cantonese Opera singer, the performance has not been easy. A biggest challenge was getting the Jiangxi local dialect right, which took her quite a long time. 

Tea-Picking Opera has been listed as an intangible cultural heritage in Jiangxi. It originated in the tea-growing region of Jiangxi, where tea pickers would sing lengthy songs to each other while undertaking the monotonous task of tea-picking.

Basing on the revolutionary spirit of Jinggangshan, the performance focuses on ordinary people and reflects on big themes across six scenes: "Distributing Salt," "Burying Salt," "Transforming Salt," "Drinking Salt," "Knowing Salt" and "Singing Salt."

Centered on the main characters Qi Xiu and the Red Army company commander Yang Hongfei, the opera focuses on the former's growth to expand the entire storyline.