Hebei Bangzi: A 16-year-old leading actress takes a brick to save the opera, a madman breaks his ribs protecting the score, and a shocking birth secret lies hidden in 40 years of devotion to the stage!
At the 1985 Caohe Temple Fair, Zhang Chunxing had just opened the show with a powerful aria from The Female General Mu Guiying when half a brick came flying toward the stage. "Actors don't deserve to sing the old tunes!"
Gousheng'er threw himself in front of her as if he didn't care whether he lived or died. Blood ran from the back of his head, but he still clutched the coarse cloth handkerchief he had prepared for her. "If you want to hurt her, you'll have to go through me first!"
That one act bound the fates of three people to the strings of the bangzi opera.
Chunxing was the living soul of the Zhang family troupe. Her voice could withstand the winds of Caohe, but not her father's lung cancer diagnosis. She took the family's ancestral Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers costume to a dealer, who sneered, "That isn't enough to buy you a mouthful of food!"
Gousheng'er had saved 1,280 yuan over three years of collecting scrap. He chased the dealer for three miles and broke two ribs getting the costume back. All he said was, "Your father is waiting to be saved."
Li Qiuyue secretly practiced her stage steps backstage, digging her nails into her hands until they bled. But her father shoved her into a coal magnate's wedding car. She threw her opera shoes out the window, and one embroidered with intertwined lotus vines landed beside Chunxing's feet, an unspoken plea for help.
Who could have guessed that the old bangzi master, who spent his whole life declaring, "The opera must not die," would keep going to Caohe to record the old melodies even in the late stages of lung cancer, still clutching his opera score when his banhu sank into the river? And no one knew that Gousheng'er, who had spent 20 years crouched beside the stage repairing banhus, was hiding the old master's secret. A note fell out of the banhu. It read, "My son, Shuanzhu, I have failed you."
At the 2025 Baoding concert, Chunxing took the stage in the Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers costume and began to sing. Gousheng'er walked on with an old banhu in his arms and suddenly choked up. "Dad, I kept the opera alive."
A man suddenly stood up in the audience, holding a new banhu. "Sis, your brother's back to sing bangzi too"
