Chinese singer Zhang Zhou plays leading roles in three operas

Chinese singer Zhang Zhou performed the leading roles in three Chinese operas, which were staged during the Fourth Chinese Opera Festival.

One of the roles she played was Xia He, a woman soldier in Chinese opera Yimeng Mountain, which is based on real-life stories in the Yimeng Mountain area in Shandong province during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).

She also featured in Chinese operas Knot Heart and The Quilt of a Red Army Soldier, both as patriotic female heroes during the war time.

As a singer of China National Opera & Dance Drama Theater, Zhang trained to become a singer as a teenager and launched her career as an opera singer in 2002. In 2010, she gained her master's degree from the Academy of Opera of Peking University.