The Beijing Opera Costume Factory, the only State-run opera costume producer in the capital, lies at the northern end of a small lane, a 5-metre-wide street. Next door is a construction site where the factory bosses are building a four-story hotel. It is hoped the hotel will boost the factory's financial performance, a much-needed sideline to keep tradition, if not booming, then at least alive.

Everything nearby is a mess. Debris and dust are everywhere along the small alleyway. It's a sight for sore eyes.

This is the historic home of the country's opera costume business. But out of the ashes, the legacy holds firm...just.

Back in the 1940s, long before Zhang Junqiu (1920-97) became famous as a danjue, the Chinese name for the female role performer in Peking Opera, he was so poor that he had to order his costume on credit from the famous Jiuchun shop, which lies in Xicaoshi Alley in today's Chongwen District of Beijing.

The costume was for his performance in Shanghai which would ultimately put him on the road to fame.

The night before he left the capital for the port city, a shop assistant from Jiuchun, surnamed Liu, dropped by his house. Zhang believed the visitor was calling for payment. "Master Liu, I really don't have any money for you now," he said.

Liu replied with a smile: "I am not here for payment, but to see you off and wish your performance a success."

Much has happened since that conversation to the shop situated on one of Beijing's well-known streets. Not too long after, the shop was closed and the brand discontinued.

But half a century later Jiuchun was reopened and in 1996 Zhang Junqiu returned to the store. The moment he spotted the brand-new Jiuchun signboard, he could not contain his tears, recalls Zhang Baojun, the fourth-generation manager of Jiuchun.

Zhang Junqiu is just one of many famous Peking Opera stars who ordered their opera costumes from Jiuchun, an opera dress shop boasting more than 100 years of history.

It is situated along Xicaoshi Alley, its first and only location since its launch during the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Stepping out

Xicaoshi Alley is better known by all as "opera costume street." It lies at the southeastern corner of Zhushikou, the center of the southern part of old Beijing.

To one's surprise, this street runs through a rundown hutong, and the alley is only 5-meter-wide. Many visitors easily mistake the street as any other small alley that runs through the old capital's dwellings.

Today, as before, some 20 or so small opera costume shops flank each side of the lane. Most are revered as the capital's Peking Opera costume specialists. There are no delicate exterior decorations. Only a simple sign declares their existence and their wares.

The shops typically occupy a floor space of some 50 square meters. Different styles of opera costumes -- dresses, headdress, shoes and imitation weapons, are either hung on the wall or displayed in showcases.

In each shop, a space is usually separated from the sales room to serve as a simple kitchen. Cooking the daily meals and managing the business are of equal importance -- characteristic chores of a family business.

Shopkeepers in this trade are the offspring of tailors who hail from the late Qing Dynasty. The skills have been handed down the generations. It followed that if you were born into the trade, then you worked, lived and died in the trade.

Important shops

Liu Senpu, 80, is the only resident craftsman in the alley who can make a "kuitou," an opera headdress with a requisite color and style.

He started work as a young apprentice at Sanyiyong Opera Costume Shop, located near Xicaoshi Alley, in 1940, and has worked in the trade for 65 years, never straying far from the site.

He has witnessed the ups and downs of costume craftsmanship and the alley itself.

He still remembers the prominent opera costume shops who plied their craft along the alley over 60 years ago.

"Jiuchun (meaning 'forever spring') was the first-rate opera costume shop then," said Liu, adding that Jiuchun is the oldest brand in the street.

In the late Qing Dynasty, three other great opera dress shops -- Sanshun ("Three Lucks"), Shuangxing ("Double Prosperity") and Deguang ("Virtue Promotion") -- shared similar fame with Jiuchun.

Among the four, only Jiuchun still operates.

Over 100 years ago, Jiuchun was an ordinary dress shop among the other pioneering shops specializing in opera wear. It occasionally helped out the pawnbrokers selling opera costumes to hard-up actors.

The owner, Zhang Huating found the pawnshops could not keep up with demand so after careful consideration, he boldly decided to turn his dress shop into an opera specialists.

Through years of successful management, he finally made his brand famous. Besides Zhang Junqiu, Peking Opera masters like Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) and Yuan Shihai (1916-2002) were all patrons of Jiuchun.

Although the Zhang family trades the brand to today, it has lost the prosperity provided by the golden age 60 years ago.

Zhang Baojun, 59, manages the shop with the aid of her 80-year-old mother, Liu Ruihua.

From its exterior, Jiuchun looks no different from other shops in the alley, except for the glittery oblong bronze signboard with the brand name written in large black Chinese characters by contemporary calligrapher Mi Nanyang.

According to Zhang, her father Zhang Jimin, who died two years ago at the age of 82, told her many anecdotes about Jiuchun and its related famous opera masters.

Dying tradition

"There is great difference between the past and the present in Jiuchun," said Liu Senpu, who is an old friend and long-term colleague of Zhang Jimin.

In the 1940s, Jiuchun had a front room as its sales room and the room behind as its workshop where around 20 craftsmen turned out splendid costumes. Opera master Yuan Shihai often dropped by to see whether his opera armors were finished.

Nowadays, like other shops in this street, the workshops are silent and Jiuchun buys in costumes from factories in neighboring Hebei Province. Only the brand remains. Zhang admitted that following the death of her father, no one in the family knew how to carry on the craft. Jiuchun is today only engaged as a buy-and-sell business.

Likewise, Liu fears that the craft of opera headdress making, to which he devoted his working life, will be lost forever when he dies.

Young people are not willing to study this craft, because it is a tough and profitless job, he laments.

"That's why my apprentices usually came from poor villages," said Liu.

Among almost 20 students only six that he taught remain in the industry.

He says headdress making is very complicated. Different schools of Peking Opera have their own styles.

"Some core skills can not be expressed in words or theories, but only be perfected through experience and inspiration," said Liu, adding that dress making is even more difficult.

Although his three experienced apprentices have practiced it for over 30 years, Liu still doesn't think they are eligible headdress craftsmen.

"They all lack drawing and designing ability due to their deficiency of operatic knowledge."

He feels a little satisfied when seeing his second-generation apprentices learn the craft faster than the first.

"Nowadays young people are clever and more knowledgeable than before," he said. He has only three young apprentices in their 20s, and doesn't know whether they will quit just like many others before.

Whenever shopkeepers in this street meet with problems concerning the special knowledge of opera costume making, they would come to Liu for help. He is not only ready to give peers a hand, but most importantly, he tries to keep the traditional craft alive.

With Peking Opera performances ever-dwindling as the lives of the Chinese rapidly modernizes, costume makers are finding it hard to survive financially.

According to Liu Senpu and Zhang Baojun, opera costume only accounts for 50 per cent of their business. The other half is composed of costumes made for Chinese folk dance and Western ballet, films and TV serials.

Zhang Baojun thinks adding new products to the shop is the right way forward.

Foreign friendship

Today, customers in Xicaoshi Alley are not only professionals from Peking Opera troupes across the country, but also Peking Opera fans from home and aboard.

Foreign customers are no strangers to the shopkeepers. Opera costumes such as delicately embroidered dresses and refinely handmade headpieces, are often chosen as gifts.

Zhang Baojun said in the past several years, many foreigners from Japan, the United States and France have bought opera costumes from her shop.

The Zhang family has a good Japanese friend with the Chinese name Li Bingwen. She has been working in a Japanese costume company trading with China since 1996. They knew each other through the business, and soon became good friends.

Zhang Baojun still remembered this Japanese woman's tears and three Kowtows in memory of her father's death.

In 2002, the young woman dropped in on Jiuchun after a business trip, looking around for Zhang Jimin, ready to give him a big hug as usual.

"When she learned that my dad passed away not long ago, she burst into tears," recalled Zhang Baojun.

In the Spring Festival last year, the woman visited the Zhang family again.

"She knelt down before my dad's memorial tablet, and kowtowed three times just like our family members did," said Zhang.

For the Japanese woman, as for hundreds of others including Liu Senpu, Beijing's "opera costume street" will live on forever, whatever the changes time brings.

(China Daily September 6, 2004)