Across the harbor, in Tsim Sha Tsui, another kind of flower show made an impression. “Dream in the Peony Pavilion,” a new version of the famous Chinese Opera, triumphantly concluded the monthlong Hong Kong Arts Festival. The contemporary dance performance was held in the Cultural Center, which, as an aside, is truly a strange building to enter and exit. It reminds one of a giant indoor swimming pool complex. But it manages the large crowds well. And what heights of music and dance can be found in the pleasant halls tucked therein! 

“The Peony Pavilion” was written at the end of the sixteenth century by the playwright and poet Tang Xianzu, the literary titan whose influence and acclaim is often compared to William Shakespeare. “The Peony Pavilion,” one of his four dream plays, is one of the longest examples of Chinese kunqu opera, with fifty-five original scenes, intended to be performed over two to three days. The love story explores the defiant depths of dreamworld, the numinous power of unspoken human emotion, and the limitations of reality. In 2012, Tan Dun, the composer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, adapted it in a shortened form for the Met. 

“Dream in the Peony Pavilion” premiered in Suzhou in April 2025 and was already on its 72nd performance this week, selling out in Hong Kong. The adaptation, produced by the He Shang Dance Theater and directed and choreographed by Li Xing and Huang Jiayuan, honored the historic opera from the beginning. Lines of Chinese poetry were projected on stage, and the high-pitched, ethereal song of a kunqu singer was recurrently played. Behind the dancers and the fabulous moving set of squares hung mesmerizing backdrops. They were filled with abstracted colors and bursts of light, like the haunting oil paintings of the modernist Chinese-French artist Zao Wou-Ki.