Sichuan play on old order now in Beijing

Dance drama Family is adapted from Ba Jin's famous novel of the same title. Photos provided to China Daily

The late Chinese writer Ba Jin wrote his famous novel Family in 1931.

It's a tale of three brothers from the Gao family, whose aspirations and love were crushed in an old family of three generations under the reign of the patriarch, grandfather Gao.

The book, based on the writer's childhood in a rich family in Southwest China's Sichuan province, inspired many young Chinese to examine and rebel against the feudal society back then－and the story continues to inspire today's readers.

For He Chuan, the artistic director of Sichuan Song & Dance Ensemble, the novel is perfect for stage adaptation.

In 2009, He, a Sichuan native, began to work on the dance drama Family. Six years later, it premiered last fall during the first Sichuan Art Festival.

This week, Family will be staged at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

The four-act dance drama, which unfolds in the course of two funerals and two weddings, highlights the oppression of the old social system and how a young generation tries to break it. He focuses the idea of the drama mainly on life and death, old and new.