The Moon Opera

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For Qiao Bingzhang the dinner party was like a blind date, and it was half over before he learned that the man sitting across from him ran a cigarette factory. Qiao was an arrogant man and the factory boss was even more so, which is why their eyes hadn’t really met. One of the guests asked “Troupe Leader Qiao” if he’d been on the stage in recent years. Qiao shook his head; now the other guests realised that he was none other than Qiao Bingzhang, the celebrated Laosheng of the Peking Opera, who had been wildly popular in the early eighties, his voice heard on transistor radios day and night.

They raised their glasses in a toast.

“Actors these days,” a guest quipped, “find their looks are a faster road to fame than their names, and their names will get them there quicker than their voices. Apparently, Troupe Leader Qiao was born at the wrong time!”

Bingzhang laughed agreeably.

“Isn’t there someone called Xiao Yanqiu in your troupe?” the large, heavy-set man across from him asked. Then, on the off chance that Qiao Bingzhang didn’t know who this was, he added, “The one who played the lead role in the 1979 performance of Chang’e Flies to the Moon—The Moon Opera.”

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