Bulletin No. 2, 2011

Sowing Seed in Chinese Opera   9  Prof. Pai Hsien-yung Prof. Hua Wei Hong Kong Cultural Centre for the public. The project team also carried out interviews with Pak Suet-sin , famous Cantonese opera artist, and Prof. Pai Hsien-yung . To help school teachers promote Kunqu and Cantonese opera, the project has set up a website ( www.cuhk.edu.hk/rih /mingqing / kunqu-yueju/ ) containing useful information. Around 300 DVDs for that purpose have been produced and distributed to secondary schools in Hong Kong. Professor Hua described the project as seed sowing. ‘It won’t produce immediate results. But we’ve sown many seeds. Whether they will grow or not will depend on whether they are watered continuously by school teachers.’ She was deeply impressed by one of the secondary schools she visited. ‘Their school building was old and the auditorium wasn’t equipped with a subtitling system. But all the students were so engrossed. It’s because their teachers had given them a lecture on it beforehand. And they all had a printout of the lyrics, which was prepared by their teachers. You can see from this example that school teachers, who have direct contact with the students, are more effective promoters of the art than we are if they’re willing to water the seeds we sowed.’