Four hours before the curtain lifted for opening night on December 2, 2011, a group of sexagenarians hosted a gathering at the Cultural Center of Tai­pei Metropolitan Hall, that was somewhere between a press event and a class reunion.

The 30-plus classmates in attendance were an energetic, impeccably dressed bunch, and as they chatted animatedly the room basked in an afterglow of celebrity.

Charlie Chin, best known for his early portrayals of refined young men in films adapted from the romances of author ­Chiung Yao, took the podium to make some remarks on behalf of the “expatriate contingent.” The MC introduced him as a “former Golden Horse Award winner,” and immediately the crowd exploded into laughter and applause. But Chin’s opener revealed the talented actor’s unassuming side: “I’ve been away from the stage for so long, my tongue isn’t as glib as it once was. I take my hat off to my classmates who are taking the stage today. I once noticed that [famous singer] Fei Yu-ching drinks a lot of water when he performs, and I always figured it was to lubricate his voice, but now I think it has as much to do with nerves as anything!”

Aside from the aches and pains expected of people in their 60s, everyone looked as vigorous and debonair they did in their heyday. Former wu­jing (martial artist roles) actor Qi Fu­qiang, who worked as program director for the production, offered a nonchalant explanation: “When something takes seven years of training just to lay a foundation, it stays with you. Even though some of us never entered the professional ranks, we never lost our zeal for opera. When we watch a show, the fibers of our body twitch sympathetically. Around the house, we sing and rehearse our facial expressions and body language. All this keeps a person young!”

The redoubtable “fu” graduates are as charismatic as ever. From left to right, front row to back are Liu Fu­xue, Chang Fu-jian, Charlie Chin, Qi Fu­qiang, Frank Yeh, and Tsao Fu-yung. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju) (left photo) Though still children, trainees faced a heavy schedule of performances at home and abroad.

Fu Hsing School of Dramatics was founded in 1957. Founder Wang ­Zhenzu was a passionate patron of Peking Opera who left Shanghai for Taiwan in 1949, where he started a theater troupe and later on established a school in order to cultivate subsequent generations of performers.

In the early days the academy’s recruitment focused on the bottom end of the social ladder. Officials scoured daycares, orphanages, and military dependents’ villages in search of prospective students. The children were offered tuition-free study that even included room and board, but accepting also meant being subjected to seven years of rigorous training and a disciplinary regimen that made liberal use of corporal punishment.

Tsao Fu-yung began his training at the age of nine. He has vivid memories of how their Bei­tou dormitories had a pipeline that brought in water from the hot springs and how that feature provided a measure of solace at the end of the day when they retired from the rigors of training. “The boys used to see who amongst us had the worst bruises on the back of the hands, the legs, or the butt. We’d have water wars or swim, or sometimes we’d cover the ground in soapsuds and slip and slide across the floor. That’s how we used to unwind in our time off,” recalls Tsao.

Because of inadequate funds, Tsao and his classmates were subjected to a harrowing schedule of public fundraising performances, a hardship from which later generations of students were spared. That along with the overseas tours for the benefit of Chinese expatriates guaranteed an interminable cycle of training, rehearsals, and performances and no real vacation worth mentioning.

Of course, the adulation that performers­ receive both onstage and off can only be purchased with hours of accumulated sweat and toil.

Wang An-chi, artistic director of Guo­guang Opera Company, reflects that that initial crop of students to which Tsao belonged had the special significance of being the first produced by Taiwanese society. As a result, audiences viewed them as their own children, investing themselves deeply and personally in their artistic growth.

“At every performance people would fawn over the kids like relatives, ­mussing their hair and asking with anxious concern: “How come you’re so skinny? Aren’t you eating well?” or “You mustn’t strain your voice like that—you’ve got to take care of it!”

Xie Fu­xing, a wu­jing performer who commenced his training at the age of 14, remembers audiences comprising largely government officials, people with a keen understanding of the genre. Performing for the cognoscenti was stressful but also, in his words, “exhilarating.”

“For example, if someone in the audience recognizes that you’re about to perform a difficult maneuver they might shout out encouragement. If you nail it, the inevitable ‘bravo!’ that follows is so visceral—it just seems to emanate right from the person’s guts.”

In 1968, the Ministry of Education assumed control of Fu Hsing, which was renamed the National Fu Hsing Dramatic Arts Academy. The transition to public institution involved significant restructuring vis-à-vis the curriculum, the old mode of corporal punishment, and the structure of the performance troupe. The unique intensity experienced by the first wave of students was never again to be matched.

In 1999, Fu Hsing merged with Guo­guang Arts School to become a technical college. In 2006, it was upgraded and renamed National Taiwan College of Performing Arts. The “fu” graduates went on to achieve success in a number of different milieus. Some continued to forge ahead in Peking Opera; others plied their skill in the martial arts movies that were popular years ago; still others focused their attention on pedagogy or arts advocacy.

“These kids grew up in the shadows of a tenuous political climate they couldn’t possibly fathom, which resulted in a depth of expression and solid technical grounding that has made it possible to perpetuate the splendor of Peking Opera in Taiwan.” So comments Lin Ku-fang, chair of the Fo Guang University Graduate Institute of Art Studies, on the historical significance of the “fu” generation.

Who could have anticipated that half a century later the same assemblage of classmates would don makeup and take the stage once again?

Tsao Fu-yung took charge of contacting classmates who lived in Taiwan while Charlie Chin tracked down those who lived overseas. For the performance, nine of the performers still resided in Taiwan with three living overseas. Their ages were all between 62 and 67.

Chin found it particularly marvelous that two classmates, Liu Fu­wen and Xu Yu­lan, returned from overseas expressly to perform the principal female roles.

Liu was born into a theatrical family—her father was the well-known xiao­sheng Liu Yu­lin. She began her career in the Hai Kuang Opera Troupe, but later worked for 10 years in the movie business under the stage name Jia­ling. Blessed with physical beauty and a good voice, she achieved notoriety as a dao­ma­dan (female martial artist usually depicted on horseback and armed with a short sword) that had casting directors constantly knocking at her door. After retiring from the business, she settled in the US where she raised her family, though she still entertains friends with the occasional snippet of a song or two.

After so many years away from the stage, Liu had never contemplated returning. She initially refused to be a part of the production on the grounds that performance anxiety would be more than she could handle; she would restrict her participation to attending the reunion. That changed when she received a visit from her fellow Taiwanese transplant, Charlie Chin, also a Los Angeles resident. After hearing an impromptu aria, Chin was moved to tears, exclaiming, “After all the years you put into forging such tremendous skill and all the hardship you had to endure along the way, truly it would be a shame for you not to share your talents!” In the end, she let herself be persuaded by this moving admonishment.

The daughter of onetime air force commander Xu Huan­sheng, Xu Yu­lan loved opera so much she sought training without her parents’ knowledge. Even though she never had to rely on performance for a living, she nevertheless developed into a commanding singer who reached scores of fans through her frequent presence on Taiwan Television’s opera programs. Ten years ago she took lessons from the renowned Mei Bao­jiu, son of Mei Lan­fang of the Mei Lan­fang Opera School, in order to further enrich her craft.

Getting Xu onboard presented no challenges. Things hit a snag, however, when their handpicked jinghu accompanist for the two female roles, with whom they shared a long collaborative history, unexpectedly had to bow out of the program. For her part, Xu wasn’t certain if she could continue. Chin explains that the chemistry between accompanist and actor is essential: “A quality accompanist is attuned to the particular style of the singer, and is able to follow their every extemporization, moving together as a seamless unit to create moments of scintillating brilliance.”

Fortunately, their sympathetic classmate Tsao Fu-yung was at hand, and tapping into his vast network of artists was able to woo Song Shi­fang, widely acknowledged as one of the three best jinghu performers of the day, and Ma Lan, the resident jinghu accompanist for Guo­guang Opera Company, into joining the production. The actresses came to Taiwan ahead of time to rehearse with Song and Ma, and thus what initially seemed a crisis became a windfall.

“A tremendous amount of human and material resources went into the production to create the conditions for the best, most relaxed performances from the actors. For instance, all of those pretty female students that filled in the bit roles really added luster to the show—don’t tell me that it was tawdry theatrics!” says Chin.

They ended up filling the venue to 70% of its capacity. On the days of the show, in the audience sat veteran opera fans (some of whom undertook long treks to be in attendance), drama students and instructors who wanted to be on hand to bask in the splendor of opera’s elder statesmen, and, of course, the classmates of actors onstage, fidgeting in anxious anticipation in their seats of honor.

Before the curtain rose, the audience and indeed the performers themselves couldn’t help speculating as to whether the performance might betray the performers’ many years away from the stage. But even in the midst of such misgivings the aura of excitement and enthusiasm was undeniable.

Wang An-chi grew up idolizing the men and women from that era of opera, yet even she initially feared the skills of these erstwhile stars may have been blunted by the passage of time. A report from the pinch-hitting jinghu, however, was enough to dispel her doubts. According to Song, the two ladies “have lost none of their former beauty, and moreover, their voices have attained greater perfection with age.”

They say that one minute on stage requires 10 years of preparation. For this group of classmates, reuniting after 40 years wasn’t about closure, but new beginnings.

Chang Fu-jian, also from the same crew, is best loved for his contemporary dramatic work, but in his view Peking Opera is something that stays in your bones: “Seven years of training taught us the value of being loyal to each other and our art. That’s what this performance was really about. Our love for opera can never age; to the contrary, we’re all committed to expanding its horizons.”

Tsao Fu-yung, long accustomed to the life in opera, confessed to the audience at the close of the second evening that he felt “ambivalent about tonight” because he feared it meant saying goodbye all over again in the manner of graduation, each individual galloping off into the future with nary a backward glance. “I hope,” he said, “we can bring back even more of our fellow graduates next time for an even grander production.”

Present from start to finish, Lin Ku-fang said, “The reunion of this constellation of stars created a resplendence to equal the days of old. Art is made great by people. Culture cannot exist in a vacuum—it needs history and legend and romance to make it come alive. We hope this performance can inspire even more people to imagine opera’s future.”