With 5 years of preparation and 3 years of rehearsals, the complete version of "The Palace of Eternal Youth," in which more than 4 million RMB has been invested, has been on stage for two weeks. The Kunqu Opera has opened to strong ticket sales and audience members have included celebrity Yang Zhenning, as well as foreigners.

However, potential risks still exist. After its 20 performances, the play will probably be shelved; the only plan for it is to take part in the Shanghai International Art Festival in October. In contrast, Bai Xianyong's youth version of "The Peony Pavilion" has achieved the aim of 100 performances; "The Peach Blossom Fan (1699)," which performed five rounds just in Beijing, has already performed around Korea, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.

Vague marketing orientation

Actually, Shanghai is full of artists but short of support staff; maybe introducing professional drama producers and public relation companies will make this high class troupe more influential.

The marketing of "The Palace of Eternal Youth" is always not clear; there should be no doubts that an important project, with such a large budget, needs corresponding marketing. However, before starting this play, the producer stated that the meaning of performing "The Palace of Eternal Youth" is to show the complete version that never be shown since 1704, because the value of the Kunqu Opera is its cultural heritage but not the market value at the box-office. "It is wrong to try to create a play with mass appeal," said Gu Duhuang, a well-known expert of Kunqu Opera from Suzhou. "Anyway it is a genre favored by the intellectual elite. Many of today's works fail to suit the refine taste, neither (do they suit) the popular (taste).", So, should the play aims at its cultural meaning or market value? The vaguness led it to an embarrassing situation in the market.
Wide gap between financial investment and players' payment

Another question: is it necessary to spend huge money on stages and costume design?

An old fan of Kunqu Opera, Wu Haiyun, who works in media fields, said that what should be passed on are stagers' performing skills but not the gorgeous costumes.

It costs huge money to pay for the director, designers and dozens of hand-embroidered costumes. A jade green plate, which costs tens of thousands of RMB, just appeared in the part "Dancing Plate" for several minutes. In contrast, all the players' pay average to 200 RMB per person per performance; they were paid nothing in three years' rehearsals, although some of them are aged artists.

Moreover, finding the talent to produce costumes took months. Hong Kong stage and costume designer Yip Kam-Tim, who is world-known for his design in Ang Lee's movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" which won at the Oscar Awards in 2001, said: "We scoured Suzhou looking for craftsmen and women. The sheer volume of work and demand for only the highest quality, together with the fact that traditional embroidery skills are already slowly dying out, made this a particularly difficult task." One example was a single Suzhou craftswoman took more than two months to create one costume.