Peking Opera treat

Paying tribute to Zhang, Ba Tu, the president of the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts, says: "She left the stage at the peak of her career and devoted herself to teaching the younger generation. And our goal is to keep the tradition alive while training a new generation of Peking Opera performers."

Zhang, who was born in Baicheng, a city in Northeast China's Jilin province, was first exposed to the stage when her father, a veteran performer of Pingju Opera, which is popular in northern China, began to teach her about the art form when she was 9 years old.

And she started to learn about Peking Opera when she heard pieces from the opera on cassettes brought to her by her elder brother Zhang Huoqian, who was then studying the art form in Jilin.

At the age of 10, Zhang Huoding auditioned for a Peking Opera training school but failed. And by the time she was 15, she had failed four annual auditions. However, she did not give up and her father took her to Beijing to study Peking Opera with the performer Wang Lanxiang.

By the age of 16, Zhang was enrolled to study Peking Opera at an art school in Tianjin.

Then, before her graduation, she decided to devote herself to the Cheng School of Peking Opera, a performing style founded by Cheng Yanqiu (1904-58), one of the great Peking Opera masters of the 20th century.

Like famous Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang (1894-1961), Cheng mastered the techniques of playing female roles, which is called nandan.

The Cheng School is known for interpreting tragic female roles with frequent changes in rhythm.

In 2015, Zhang Huoding made her debut in the United States, and caused a sensation by performing two famous Peking Opera pieces, The Legend of the White Snake and The Jewelry Pouch, at the Lincoln Center in New York.

At that time, Zhang Huoding's US debut was compared by the media to a performance by Mei Lanfang, who appeared in New York in 1930.

Speaking about that performance, Wang Xiuqin, the general manager of the China Performing Arts Agency, which organized the show, says: "I can still recall the devoted fans at the venue welcoming her, since she rarely performs in public now,"

In 2016, Zhang Huoding performed The Legend of the White Snake, marking the end of the Meet in Beijing Arts Festival for that year.