To stay healthy and fit, Chinese students do group exercises every day at school. Most of you probably do the same set of exercises. But some school exercises have grown popular online due to their local and innovative designs.
Singing in Sichuan dialects with energetic movements and unique mask-changing is not just a Sichuan Opera performance. It's the routine exercise for students of Mianyang Foreign Languages Experimental School in Sichuan Province.
"Sichuan Opera is a local opera, and it is now facing a gap in inheritance (传承). Therefore, we cooperated with Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Centre of Mianyang to create a simple and easy-to-learn Sichuan Opera exercise," said Shen Junhua, who is in charge of organising the school's exercise between classes.
According to Shen, this new type of exercise has been practised since 2017 and has been popular among students. When students enrol (入学), they will spend several weeks practising it. At present, almost all of the students and teachers have mastered it.
"In fact, we had hardly heard of Sichuan Opera before teachers taught us how to do the Sichuan Opera exercise," said a student in eighth grade who also joined the school's Sichuan Opera club out of interest. "It's very different from normal exercises. After practising it, we found it very beautiful and became interested in it. Now, almost all of the students look forward to our daily exercise time and feel excited to do it. "
"By combining the opera with daily exercise, the daily interclass activity allows students to perceive and understand Sichuan Opera culture," Shen said. "After years of continuous effort to spread the seeds of traditional culture, the younger generation is finally catching on."
