In fact, the paintings on face make the characters look like unclean but colorful. Dan, which means 'morning', 'masculine', is in contrary with the feminine nature of the characters. Sheng in Chinese may mean 'strange' or 'rare', but the chief male is a character of most seen.

The reason the role categories take the names of Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou is that it is said that they were chosen to mean the opposite. Except the second category, the other three categories are for male characters. They are Sheng - Male Role, Dan - Female Role, Jing - Painted Face Male and Chou - The Comedy Role.Īny role in these categories or sub-categories can be the leading role in a play. There are currently four main role categories in Beijing Opera.

The rest tells what roles appear in the plays, from the powerful supernatural beings to animals like tigers and dogs. The first five characters list the five role categories. It probably says everything about the roles in Beijing Opera.

The ten Chinese characters shown on left are from a song sung in a Chinese New Year Eve television program.

Roles and characters of peking opera