Everything is perfect in the trailer for the tragically beautiful drama Winter Begonia 鬓边不是海棠红. Yin Zheng stars as a Peking Opera star in Republican Era China while Huang Xiaoming plays his soulmate in this bromance drama about their love for each other, for a dying art, and for the world around them.
Thanks to my love-hate-relationship with Zhang Yunlei, I finally understood the Republican era craze for Chinese opera stars, so even the fan-cam of this trailer released a while ago made me tear up. Plus, Zhang Yunlei and Yang Jiulang are like the definition of an irl bromance that’s as close you can get to romantic love without actually being one.
sounds gonna be tragic ending. life …
The trailer reminds me of Farewell, My Concubine.
I just read a question whether Winter Begonia will be to TV drama like Farewell My Concubine is to film. Character dynamics are very different though.
Ying Zheng is definitely watchable. Huang Xiao Ming might be iffy. Beijing Opera itself is not my cup of tea, not only because it sounds like a foreign language.
Fun fact: Peking opera actually began as Wuhan dialect sung by Anhui opera troupes.
It was originally only called Peking Opera by Shanghainese people. That’s why even though it’s called Peking opera it has no Beijing dialect and most of us can’t understand it.
But Anhui have its own dialect. So Beijing (Peking) Opera is in Wuhan dialect with Anhui accent?
I actually have no idea what other dialects influenced the sounds of Peking Opera, and it’s probably hard to tell since modern Wuhan dialect will sound different from old Wuhan dialect.
Peking Opera is really picky on pronunciation though and students often get taught syllable by syllable how to sing every line, so I imagine the actor’s personal accent wouldn’t be too big of an issue?
I listen to a lot of Chinese audio dramas. Voice actors/actresses trained a lot to remove their personal accents, which a few of them ended up losing. I also read that non-American singers are trained to sing in American English accent to make their songs more marketable to Americans.
The linguistic roots and evolution of Beijing Opera might be interesting.