 Tang Yunhao or Deng Manchai as it's pronounced in Mandarin and Geng Tianyuan are two very distinguished performers of traditional Chinese opera, both the traditional Peking opera and the earlier more lyrical Kunchu, and they recently came and gave an informal recital at the CIW auditorium in front of a rather enthusiastic audience. During them they sang a variety of arias from Kunchu from Peking opera and especially by request of the director of CIW, Professor Jeremy Barme, they sang some numbers from the revolutionary operas that were so popular during the Cultural Revolution. A lot of Westerners think that Peking opera, in fact Chinese opera in general, is a form of glorified circus performance with lots of acrobatics and a huge amount of noise. It's actually a very high art form, blending movement, singing, makeup and especially music and percussion into one seamless whole. I think Western audiences appreciate Japanese theatre for its highly sophisticated approach to the whole dramatic concept but very little has been achieved in this regard with Chinese theatre and this is one of the goals of Miss Tang's PhD thesis because in addition to being a star, she's also a PhD student at the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific and she's about to complete her thesis on the aesthetics of Chinese theatre which will be a groundbreaking work.