Peking opera, known in Chinese as jingju or "capital drama," is China's best-known form of traditional theatre: a stylized blend of song, heightened speech, mime, dance, and acrobatic combat performed on a nearly bare stage. It took shape in Beijing across the 1800s, after touring troupes from Anhui and Hubei merged their tunes with older styles, and it is younger than its grand air suggests. Its performers specialize in fixed role types, and painted-face characters wear bold, color-coded makeup. Once court and popular entertainment, later a national symbol, it was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.
A warrior strides to the front of the stage, and before he sings a note the audience has already read him. His face is not quite a face but a mask of paint laid onto the skin, a broad sweep of red across brow and cheeks. In this theatre red means loyalty and courage, so the crowd knows at once that here is a hero to trust. Had the paint been chalk-white, they would have braced for a schemer; a jet-black face would promise rough, blunt honesty. The colors are a code as fixed as the roles that wear them, painted so that the inner nature of a character can be seen from the very back row.