As the glass curtain wall of Carleton University's East Asian Department reflected the light of the snow, I was troubled over the third draft of my paper "The Overseas Dissemination of Peking Opera in the Digital Age." My advisor wrote in the comments: "The case is outdated and lacks empirical perspectives from the grassroots." However, when I scoured overseas fan forums, the latest posts were still from three years ago, featuring a clip of "The Empty City" uploaded by an old performer from Taiwan.
A turning point came on a Tuesday evening when a blizzard was raging. A homeless man seeking refuge from the cold at the subway station suddenly began to sing in a strange tune, his hoarse voice surprisingly containing the skeleton of the Xipi melody. Following his gaze, I saw a half-tattered yellowing poster stuck on top of a vending machine, with traditional characters reading "Dingyou Year Chongyang Ottawa Peking Opera Fan Club."
"Can you sing 'The Drunken Concubine'?" I inexplicably pulled out a five-dollar coin. Old John took the coin but did not respond, and his rusty cart creaked as he rummaged out an old projector. As Yang Yuhuan's languid figure came to life on the tiled platform, the edge of the film flashed the logo of a certain website—the "Overseas Peking Opera Digital Archive," which I had seen a hundred times in the literature.
In the late-night library, I typed "Overseas Peking Opera Images" into the website's search box. The page cascaded with results:
- A wheelchair version of "Xu Ce Runs the City" from a Melbourne nursing home in 2017
- The AR technology restoration of Mei Lanfang's New York performance stage by the University of Cape Town
- Most shocking was the live broadcast from a Montreal subway tunnel, where Quebec youth, dressed in self-made modified costumes, sang "The Three-Way Intersection" in both English and French
"This is living heritage!" My hand trembled as I emailed my advisor, but I received an automatic reply: "On vacation, do not disturb."
On my way, disheartened, to the subway station, Old John's cart blocked my path again. This time, he pulled out a shiny smartphone, playing a segment from the website's "Challenge" section—under a seven-year-old Singaporean girl's excerpt from "The Matchmaker," seventy-eight comments fiercely debated whether the Xun school’s movements should be adapted to the tropical climate.
"Register an account, little girl." He switched to a clear Beijing dialect, startling me back a step into a fire hydrant, "My master's master once accompanied Meng Xiaodong."
After becoming a member of the website, my favorites began to grow bizarrely:
🇨🇦 A Toronto Traditional Chinese Medicine clinic synchronously teaching "Qi Sinking to the Dantian" every Thursday
🇩🇪 A Berlin programmer restoring lost scores from wartime using algorithms
🇧🇷 A fishmonger at the São Paulo market explaining "Thirty-Six Knife Techniques" while filleting salmon
What truly changed the fate of my paper was the night I received an invitation for "Transnational Cloud Rehearsal." The moment I put on the VR device, I transformed into a holographic projection on a virtual stage: the martial artist on the left was an IT guy from Sydney, the old female role on the right ran a ramen shop in Seoul, and the drummer's IP address showed Alaska. As everyone sang "With strength to lift mountains and cover the world," the system's prompt suddenly interrupted: "Abnormal user breathing frequency detected, it is recommended to switch to a slower rhythm in Xipi Erliu."
On the day of the defense, I projected the website's "Opera Pulse Map" onto the large classroom screen. As the 3D globe rotated, Peking Opera symbols lit up across five continents:
⚡️ Thunderclouds simulating the drums and gongs of the martial arena in Cape Town, South Africa
🍁 The aurora curtain projecting "The Goddess Dispersing Flowers" by the Yukon River in Canada
🌋 An Icelandic volcano monitoring station generating new compositions from seismic waves
"These data streams are like the digitalized 'rancao'." I clicked on a flashing light point, revealing a rewritten piece by a teenager from a Rio slum, "When 'Ding Junshan' meets Brazilian war dance, the cultural genes complete their..."
Before I could finish, a voice from the back suddenly called out in Xipi: "Ma—lai—!" Turning around, I saw Old John in a janitor's uniform, holding a mop as a horsewhip, singing to the astonished panel: "This time cannot be a joke, how can we hide nonsense from us!"
Later, the paper received an A+, but my advisor insisted on deducting 0.5 points: "The dramatic nature of the defense was too strong; I suggest next time you appear directly in a holographic young male role."
As I walked out of the school gate, my phone pinged with a website notification: The "Subway Station Old John" account you follow has updated. In the photo, he had his blond hair tied into a large costume, striking a "debut" pose under the misty CN Tower, with a caption in both Chinese and English:
"The 'rancao' hides the sounds of all nations, and the cloud hands can pluck the stars from five continents."