By Zhang Nan

In a little yard permeated with the smell of the past, the early-morning cool is just starting to vanish in the autumn sun. I am here to meet a legendary hero, wrapped up in all kinds of mystique by newspaper stories without number. Instead, I meet Ghaffar Pourazar.

To many Beijingers, Ghaffar is a household name. His experiences in learning to perform Peking Opera have been recounted many times in the media, which finds him either intriguing proof of the great attraction of traditional Chinese culture, or a romantic who "ran away to the opera."

To Ghaffar, rather than "running away to the opera," he was finding home to answer his life's longing. Recollecting the moment in 1993 when he was dumbstruck by a performance of the China Youth Troupe in London, he says: "Right at the moment I knew I could never leave the opera for my entire life."

Ghaffar followed the troupe's tour around Britain. Touched by empathy with the young man's passion, Wang Yongzhen, leader of the troupe, finally decided to help him realize his dream in China. Thus Ghaffar, at the age of 32, became a student at the Beijing School of Opera, where most of his classmates had begun as little children.

When Ghaffar left London, he bade farewell to a fairly successful career as a computer animator and drama teacher. But his skills in pantomime and his mastery of three languages helped him in approaching Peking Opera and the Chinese language. "I had never learned any Chinese before coming here," he says, "But learning Chinese is the same as learning the opera, just if you can endure and survive the initial pain."

Ghaffar seems to have assimilated into the culture quickly. Observing him sitting opposite at the table, talking in fluent local Chinese, what impressed me was not the accurate pronunciation and vocabulary, but rather the whole manner and attitude that have emerged out of an understanding of the culture and the way of thinking underneath.

His enthusiasm and efforts have started to pay off, although he still considers himself a beginner at this art form. Ghaffar made his first stage appearances as Ren Tanghui, Wu Song and Monkey King — his favorite characters, who indulge in exciting and exacting acrobatic fighting. In 1996, he won the CCTV Gold Dragon Prize for his Monkey King in "Havoc in Heaven."

However, despite his understanding and deep concern for Peking Opera, Ghaffar still feels something of a stranger, frustrated by publicity that plays on the novelty of him as "a laowai (foreigner) learning Peking Opera."

In 1997, Ghaffar directed the National Troupe of China in a performance of Act One of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the People's Theater in Beijing. In his production, Athenians, representing Reality, spoke Shakespearean English and were dressed up in Elizabethan fashion, while the dream world of Titania and Oberon was presented in the style of Peking Opera. China Central TV (CCTV) described the production as "a dream come true in preserving traditional Chinese opera within a Western play." CNN International commented: "This is the way to promote Peking Opera, not only in China, but in the west."

Ghaffar is planning to perform the full version of the Monkey King's "Havoc in Heaven" in Beijing for Christmas. Foreign children in the capital will for the first time be able to see the Monkey King in a language they can understand.

"Peking Opera is a dream, a perfection of art. It's the only suitable choice to present the dream motifs in Western literature." However, adding his own signature to his theater's productions is not his ultimate goal.

"Beijing Opera is not an easy art. It's losing audience because it takes time and effort to learn to appreciate it, while people today are too much obsessed with the kind of quick comfort from sitting in a movie theater or in front of a TV or VCR. I wish people who have never loved Peking Opera would be intrigued by the operatic art presented in my production and finally turn to the traditional stuff. This is the highest of all art forms; nothing would even come close."

Efforts to promote Peking Opera in "updated" versions are not new, nor free of failures. Ghaffar is confident this does not mean his efforts are in vain: "Integration of different art forms does not equal to juxtaposition of them. A successful cooperation of eastern and western cultures should be on an artistic level, instead of formal. Besides, art is for everybody, not just the journalists and the wealthy."