Now China Children Arts Theatre will move the sacred land onto the stage: The musical Shangri-La will play at the theatre from Friday to next Sunday.

Ouyang Yibin, director of the theatre, created the story after he toured Diqing Tibet Autonomous Prefecture in Southwest China's Yunnan Province last year.

"I got inspiration from the local people who live smooth and agreeable lives and maintain a harmonious relationship with nature," said Ouyang.

"Living in Diqing for several months and talking with the local people made me understand what the 'Shangri-La' legend really means and resulted in the story," he said.

The musical involves people's dream for a happy life as well as evil desire, love and hate, human beings, animals and a witch.

A young man named Dawa and his brother Nima look forward to discovering "Shangri-La." A golden peacock also longs for the earthly paradise so much that she flies down to the human world and turns into a pretty girl.

The witch desires to control the world and does everything she can to prevent people from finding "Shangri-La." But she is afraid of the emerald on the peacock girl's forehead, because it could eradicate her evil power. So she wants to kill the peacock-turned-girl.

Dawa and his friends help the girl fight the witch. She finally kills the witch with the emerald and turns into a light that illuminates the way to "Shangri-La."

The music was composed by Zou Ye who travelled to Diqing with Ouyang to collect local folk music.

"I was really amazed by 'Shangri-La' when I arrived there. It is a queer combination of bare craggy threatening peaks which give way to sweeping spreads of dainty bright pink flowers carpeting mountain slopes that overlook crystal blue lakes twinkling in the sunlight," said Zou in his rehearsal room, his eyes still glistening with inspiration.

"Although the material side of life is not as comfortable as in the cities, local people live and work in peace and contentment. Their lives are full of songs and dances," he said.

Shangri-La is not the first musical the theatre has produced, but it is definitely the largest so far. It is also the theatre's first production that is not only for children but for audiences of all ages.

The theatre has made every effort to produce a hit. According to Ouyang, they have invested 3 million yuan (US$362,319) in the production's lighting, costumes and other elements.

To ensure the artistic quality, the theatre also invited students from the Musical Department of the Central Academy of Drama to perform, as the theatre employs no performers who specialize in musicals.

"The art form is not easy for a common drama performer who has not received professional training in singing and dancing," said Ouyang.

The production crew is actually a gathering of high-quality talent, including Xu Xiaozhong as artistic director, Feng Yuan as set designer, Xin Xing to handle lighting, and Wan Su from the Beijing Academy of Dance as choreographer.

"Everything we've done was to produce a hit musical," Ouyang said.

Chinese audiences have looked forward to Western musicals such as Cats and Phantom of Opera for a long time. There are also people trying to import these hit works into China. But Ouyang wants to create original musicals: “Musicals of our own," he said.

According to him, Shangri-La is China Children Arts theatre's first step towards this goal. The theatre also just established a musical centre inside the company.

However, the theatre which used to only create plays for children has faced a lot of difficulties on the way. Since musicals were introduced to China in the early 1980s, how to develop musicals has become a topic of discussion for many Chinese theatre professionals.

Zhong Hao, director of Shangri-La, said: "It's a challenge for me and an experiment for the theatre. I do not want to say much about it until it is shown."

The courage and ambition of Ouyang, Zhong and all the others involved in the production deserve encouragement and admiration.

"No matter if it has a successful premier or not, we will continue to work on it until 'Shangri-La' becomes known as one of the best Chinese musicals," said Ouyan.

(China Daily October 24, 2002)