Tian gin
Cââă giu
Tciaa huaa niuu
Veei lan lii
Tcii lei tâă
Dgie mon tâă
Lo mania
Aa tâă lii an

Well, let`s see who dares to say I don`t add local color to my articles! :-) ) )

London. The biggest city in the European Union. 7, 5 million inhabitants and a surface with the approximate shape of a circle with the diameter of 60 kilometers.
The biggest city I had been to. Until I got to China, when it quickly became the 5th. :-)

Tianjin is one of the 5 Chinese cities I have been to (I made a Beijing - Tianjin - Rizhao - Shanghai tour - Wuhan, 3300 km ;-) ) and one of the 4 bigger than London. It has 10 million inhabitants and is at half an hour distance from Beijing with the Chinese trains. With the Romanian ones it would be at two-three hours :D, the distance being of 140 km, but the Chinese trains, looking very similar to the German ICEs - I wonder how fortuitous? :D -, reach 287 km per hour. Some say they reach 320 km/h, but mine was able of only this, a maxim of 287 km/h.

Tianjin is read "tian-gin", but the second syllable should be pronounced with a jerk, you say it as if you want to bite the ear of a "ga-djica" (patootie). :-) but not in the nice manner! :D You can say it in Romanian, but at first the Chinese doesn`t understand you, than he corrects you as if wanting to bite your ear. He doesn`t do this, he just jerks your hearing a little. Of course, like most of the Chinese namings, this, too, can be translated - "tian" means "emperor, the god`s son", and "jin" means port, resulting "The emperor`s port", reputation that it got following the "settling" by boat :-) of a Chinese emperor on those lands. In Romanian, a kind of Dragos-Vodă with his bitch Molda. :-)

I like the Chinese translations, more exactly the meanings they add to some names. For instance, my host`s name is Dongqi, and that of his wife, Yuan Lei. Dong, read "don", means "east", and Qi, read "dgi", means ancient animal, a kind of dragon-god. Therefore, my host`s name is "The dragon from the east"! Yuan signifies "royal garden", Lei, "flower bud", so her name is "Flower bud from the royal garden"!

And by the way, because I told him I can say "Xiexie! ", he tried to say "Multumesc! " ("Thank you" in Romanian). After several trials, he concluded that Chinese is still easier! :-) ) )

The most typical Chinese city, namely huge, full of sky-scrapers, crowded and extremely polluted. It has Tianjin-eye, copy of the London-eye, a huge roundabout from where one can see the entire city from above. It also has a tiny but extremely interesting historical area, where you can find all kinds of Chinese stuff. :-) There are probably other areas full of the traditional Chinese spirit (because the modern Chinese style means mainly sky-scrapers, crowdedness and pollution), but in the Tianjin historical area I felt the most Chinese. :-)

Tianjin Grand Theatre is meant mainly to present theatre performances and more rarely opera, tendency present in the entire China. And the opera is first of all the traditional Chinese one, the European titles (western, as they call them), being less common. From the back side, the exterior looks like a stadium. It is big, it has the shape of a semicircle and is plated with grey metal. At the front it has a very protruding roof which conveys it a futuristic aspect. And in front of the building there is an artificial lake in which the construction reflects beautifully, the only problem being that you can see it perpendicularly from the front side only from a big distance, from a boat or swimming. :-)

The repertory of "western" opera that I saw on the posters includes "Traviata" by Verdi, "Carmen" by Bizet, "The force of destiny" by Verdi, as well as ballet, "Cinderella" by Prokofiev, "Esmeralda" by Pugni, "Swan lake" by Ceaikovski, "Anna Karenina" by Ceaikovski, but, besides "Traviata", all the others appear as productions of some Russian theatres. The tickets cost between180 and 680 yuan, which is between 100 and 400 lei, so they are not cheap at all.

Because of the cashier`s incompetency, I almost missed the show! The program leaflet was in Chinese and only the title was with Romanian letters :-) , but, when I asked about the show, she told me it was a Chinese story, the same about the music, so I was very close to not attending it! And so, because of her chatting, I missed a part of the first act, but I am glad I saw the other two entirely.

The hall is big and round, has 1600 seats, doesn`t have a chandelier, but a large round belt of lights, on the walls there are chains of green lights, hanging from the centre of the ceiling down to the floor, up a balcony, and today it is full. The chairs are light brown, the walls are made of brown wood, streaked with vertical rows of lights. Above the scene there is a wide red tape on which it is written "2015" and, in Chinese, "Tianjin opera and ballet festival, second edition".

About "Traviata", I read that in 1978 it was presented in the Workers Cultural Palace in Tianjin in a 2000 seats hall, 14 evenings in a row, and each time the hall was full! Also, on a Chinese website I saw "Traviata, September 30th 2008, Angela Gheorghiu, Ramon Vargas, Roberto Frontali"!

The mounting resembled the traditional Chinese style, which is what I wanted. On the sides there were red vertical Chinese carpets. In front of them there were several chairs on which sat the party attendants, who were also wearing Chinese clothes, loose pants, made of yellow silk, looking like baggy pants, garments specific to each zodiac sign, matching dresses, and some were with their faces painted in pink and red. Violetta was wearing a white kimono, having already been dressed for the morning practice. :-) (The Chinese do stretching exercises every morning. The pupils from 9.30 to 10, this being a national program, and even at Tianjin I saw the football field of a school - yes, the school had a standard size football field and real grass of a better quality than that of a team from the first league in Romania! - full of pupils in uniforms -white shirts, the bottom part with dark blue - and doing exercise almost in unison. The others, the adults, do sport how and when they want. And many of them want, I saw many Chinese in parks and even on the sidewalks doing exercise! )

Alfredo is Chinese. Young, dark-haired, with a good voice, white shirt, brown costume, including a vest of the same colour.

If I hadn`t figured it out already from another article about Traviata (the new mounting from Bucharest), I would ask... where does the second act takes place?! :-) Alfredo, in brown trousers with braces shoved in black rubber boots, with a white shirt, is coming back from fishing. The next question would be... From which lake? Or river? Or maybe even from the river Hai He, the one flowing through Tianjin? This is the most probable, as there I saw Chinese with their fishing rods in the water right in the middle of the city! Or maybe he was coming from Bohai gulf, the Eastern Chinese Sea, at about 60 km from Tianjin? "Huang He ("the Yellow River") or "Yang Tze" ("the Blue River") are not far either, and even if they were, he could have come with the high speed train, catching 287 km an hour. ;-) But Alfredo is an amateur fisherman, he has no fish, so we don`t have any clues, not even if the lake was a sweet or salty water one. :-) Hei, his booths are not even wet, I think Alfredo dressed like that only because the director asked him to. :-)

Behind him, leaving just a small space between it and the orchestra, there is a brown Chinese house occupying all the scene from the left to the right and behind it one can see a green garden with a lop-sided tree on a side. The house has four big hexagonal windows, a door in the middle, a kind of porch and a beam as a fence on its all length. Anina, green kimono, brings him the fishing rod and gets out. (So Alfredo was going fishing, not coming! :-) )
Violetta has a pony tail and is wearing a Chinese dress, made of dark yellow silk, touching her feet. Germont is bald, dressed in the European style, in a grey large overcoat. He gives Violetta a picture, "una figlia comme un angelo".

"Piangi! Piangi! "
I am writing some Chinese letters on my piece of paper, but let`s see how I am going to type them! :-) To the left and to the right of the scene there are vertical screens for the Chinese translation, like in Beijing.

"Aaaamaaami Alfreeedo! "
Alfredo is in his knees next to her, Violetta kisses him and goes out. The messenger brings the letter and receives a few yuan from Alfredo. :-)

There is no break, the performance goes directly to the ball of Chinese Flora. :-) On the laterals and at the back the walls of the ballroom are made of dark brown wooden panels, windows having the same height as the door in the upper part. At the back there are big red lanterns, sending out a soft light, lanterns specific to China and spread almost all over the country.

"Noi siamo zin-ga-reee-le! "
The gypsy women have long purple dresses, Chinese style. They are at the back on a small scene and a purple light is falling over them, while at the front, where, at five tables, the guests are sitting, the light is blue. The bull is a Chinese in a green costume, the matador, another Chinese, but in yellow, holding a spear and brandishing it in a kung-fu style. Four girls in blue silk are dancing holding swords.

Alfredo is wearing tails, cream-coloured bow tie, black shiny shoes. Violetta, ankle-long Chinese dress, slightly stretched on the body, vertically cleft on both sides, orange-grena with patterns, has white shoes, and in her hair a narrow white tiara. The baron is old, wearing cream-coloured clothes in the upper part and brown in the bottom one clothes with Chinese patterns. He is wearing glasses and is half bald. The merry-makers have traditional Chinese clothes in all the combinations of colours allowed by the Chinese law. :-) Cream-coloured with green, violet, orange with grena, light-blue-grey with light grey, dark violet with pink, pink-purple, white+black+red, blue with purple flowers, red-green with black... and I haven`t noted all of them. :-)

Violetta is on the floor, as if fainted, Alfredo throws her in the face, literally, banknotes of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 yuan. :-)

During the break I chat with a Chinese woman. Her English is Chinese style, so she asks me "Do you speak Chinese?" I tell her I only know "Ni hao! ", namely "Hello! ", and "Xiexie! " (read "sie-sie"), which is "Thank you! ", and she exclaims candidly-catastrophically "Oh, my God! " :-) ) )

The truth is the girl was right... I don`t speak the most spoken language in the world, ... Oh, my Buddha! :-) ) )

The fourth act, the opening intermezzo. At the front, on a canvas, an European street is projected, probably a Parisian one. Big snowflakes are falling. Violetta`s room has three walls, the one at the back purple, and the lateral ones, obliquely built, are dark green. In front of them there are four big statues, also dark green, frowning, Chinese deities, also lit in green. In front of the statues, towards the centre of the scene, there is Violetta`s bed to the left, a small table and a wooden chair to the right.
Doctor Grenvil has matching clothes - Chinese, dark brown for the bottom part and cream-coloured for the upper one. Anina, too, has Chinese clothes, but green-blue. Violetta is in a white silk nightgown, has long black hair and doesn`t really look Chinese. (She wasn`t, from the main roles only Alfredo being a native, Violetta and Germont-the father were invited from oversees.)

"Addio del passato! ", although well interpreted, doesn`t receive applause. Violetta`s delirium, represented by a few Chinese in white who are crossing the scene carrying on top of some sticks a white dragon, in the traditional Chinese style. Alfredo is in a modern brown business suit, as well as later fuucin, namely his father. :-)
"Parigi, o, cara! " doesn`t receive applause either. Maybe if it were "Tianjin, o, cara! " :-)

From the ceiling are falling small squares of paper like in the old mounting of "Traviata" from Bucharest directed by Mr Cristian Mihailescu. Violetta collapses, the curtain falls, the applause come, they are not very frenzied, but, on the other hand, one could hear some cheers.

The songs were in Italian and I didn`t notice any neglected areas. I agree, it would have been interesting and I would have liked to listen to "Traviata" in Chinese. But not in traditional Chinese, which I consider complicated, I would have accepted only simplified Chinese :-) ) )

Cââă giu = Opera
Tciaa huaa niuu = La traviata
Veei lan lii = Violeta
Tcii lei tâă = Alfredo
Dgie mon tâă = Germont
Despre Flora nu am intrebat. :-)

From [Tian gin] for [Lo mania] wrote [Aa tâă lii an].
From Tianjin for România wrote Adrian. :-)

PS: From the Tianjin Opera I have received pictures, but... from another version of the opera, not the one I saw! But, considering their originality, I added these ones, too, at the end of the article`s photo album.

Distribution:
Violetta: Ekaterina Bakanova (Rusia)
Alfredo: Wang Zenan (China)
Giorgio Germont: Paolo Coni (Italia)
Flora: Yang Yanting
Gastone: Li Xiang
Anina: Bai Huidi
Dr.Grenvil: Wang Meng

Conductor: Muhai Tang
Translator: Dong Fangfang
Costumes: Zhong Mei
Lights: Qin Yushan

Nota actuala: 9 (din 1 note acordate) - Acorda o nota!

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