Guided by a legacy

"She doesn't perform from templates," Wang Mengting says. "She performs from the given situation. Every gesture grows organically from the moment. That is where her artistry lives."

The tribute program includes The Butterfly Dream, Silang Visits His Mother, excerpts from You Sanjie, Romance of the Dragon and the Phoenix, and Stealing the Soul Bell. Among them, The Butterfly Dream represents the most delicate reconstruction effort. Its performance history is fragmented, with incomplete documentation and stage tradition largely absent from contemporary repertoires.

Wang Mengting describes the process as navigating "without a complete map". Some references exist in overseas recordings, including versions reconstructed by Tong Zhiling's daughter, Tong Xiaoling, in the United States. But much of the staging must be rebuilt through interpretive logic and an understanding of how a character thinks, hesitates, or expresses joy or fear within Tong's artistic system.

The scene in which the emotional reunion of husband and wife after years apart became central. Wang Mengting didn't ask, "How did she move her hand?" She asked,"What emotion produces that movement?

"It's less about copying her," she says, "and more about understanding the inner movement that generates the outer shape."

Wang Mengting, 36, born in Shenyang, Liaoning province, is a leading Peking Opera actress of the younger generation, specializing in the Xun School hua dan roles. Her journey began at age 7 and culminated in her joining the Beijing Peking Opera Company in 2009.

For Tong Xiaoling, Tong Zhiling's daughter, her mother's life was less biography than continuous motion.

"She was always inside Peking Opera," she recalls. "Even at home, she was rehearsing, thinking, and refining. The stage never ended for her."

Immersed in the art from a young age, Tong Xiaoling moved to the United States in the early 1980s. There, she carried forward her mother's legacy, touring Europe and the US, collaborating with composer Tan Dun, and presenting master classes in schools and cultural centers.

In childhood, Peking Opera was a constant presence. While other children read stories from books, Tong Xiaoling absorbed them through sound — arias rehearsed endlessly in the next room, and scenes repeated until they became involuntary memory. By the 1980s, the family home had become an informal creative laboratory where senior artists gathered to test, dissect, and rebuild scenes.

Yet, outside this world of artistic labor, Tong Zhiling remained quietly austere. "She never cared about appearance," her daughter says."Only about whether the role was right."

Even in her later years, Tong Zhiling rarely repeated a role the same way twice. For Wang Mengting, this becomes both a challenge and a method: study deeply, then re-activate rather than reproduce.

"The key," Wang Mengting says,"is not to look like her, but to think like her on stage."

Wang Mengting has also championed digital outreach, introducing Peking Opera to younger audiences through rehearsal videos, interpretive explanations, and livestreamed performances.

"Young audiences are already close to this art," she says. "They just need a way in. Appreciation has no universal standard. Peking Opera is diverse, just like people's tastes. Our job is to provide that window."