Elderly opera troupe shoot to fame in Kunshan

The Hefeng village art team perform Chinese opera at a local event in Kunshan, Jiangsu province. [Photo from WeChat account zjxflj]

For Sun Jianfen and her friends in the Hefeng village art team, performing Chinese opera started out as a passion and a way of passing the cold winter afternoons in rural Jiangsu province. Now, the group have become local celebrities invited to perform in towns across the region.

The group started life in 2012, when Sun and a handful of other elderly residents began meeting at a community center in Hefeng.

Despite their advanced ages, all the group members shared a love of Chinese opera, and they devoted all their spare time to their beloved art, rehearsing tirelessly each day.

The team members rehearse at their local community center in Hefeng village. [Photo from WeChat account zjxflj]

Before long, the group had performed classic pieces like the Wuxi operas Pearl Tower and Lady Mengjiang and Shanghai opera The Thunderstorm hundreds of times, and they were starting to become a seriously tight ensemble.

After stealing the show at a local arts event, Sun and her team started to get invitations to perform in other towns and districts around Kunshan, and the group has never looked back.

From a ragtag group of friends, the group has evolved into a well-drilled and versatile team of 12 performers and 8 accompanists skilled in a range of instruments, from the erhu, a traditional two-stringed instrument, to the Chinese flute and cello.

The team's accompanists practise during a rehearsal. The group are skilled in a range of musical instruments. [Photo from WeChat account zjxflj]

Their repertoire has also expanded from traditional opera to folk songs, modern dramas and even original comic sketches.

And thanks to the support of the local government, the team now arrives at each performance fully-armed with professional-standard cameras, sound boxes and stage curtains.

The team has now performed on a number of big stages at the Kunshan Mid-Autumn Lantern Fair, Lexi Park and Dianshan Lake Town, among others.

But the group is not going to stop there. "As long as there is a stage, we can give you a wonderful show," said one team member confidently.