Audience gets into character

With a history stretching back hundreds of years, Dian Opera, also known as Yunnan Opera, is the province's representative local opera genre. It was inscribed on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Representative List in 2008.

Niujiezhuang is widely regarded in Kunming as the "cradle of Dian Opera". It is also where 26-year-old Zhang Ke grew up.

"When I was little, no one in the family was home from the first to the eighth day of the Chinese New Year — my grandfather, father and aunt all went to villages to perform Dian Opera," Zhang recalls.