Related News
Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Leaving majhong table for a theater seat
By Lin Hongming |
September 10, 2009, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
Editor's note: How to attract people from mahjong tables, pop and fast-food culture to art theaters? Shanghai Daily opinion editor Wang Yong finds out from the man who's trying to make it happen, Lin Hongming, president of Shanghai Oriental Art Center Management Co Ltd. This is the first of a two-part interview.
Q: How do you hope to attract people from mahjong tables to theaters?
Lin: I went to Las Vegas, Macau and Australia, where I often saw my fellow countrymen in casinos, but not in theaters. In China, many people kill time by playing mahjong, surfing the Internet, wallowing in bars or watching TV like couch potatoes. They seldom go to theaters.
I do not mean people's lives should revolve around theaters only, I mean theaters should be part of people's life. Shanghai has 19 million residents and stages more than 10,000 performances a year, including pop music concerts. These shows attract an audience of just 6 million.
In Broadway, New York, there's an audience of 12 million a year. In London's West End, the number is 13 million. Many Chinese people are hectic and hurried in their material pursuit. They've become money machines in their misguided search for happiness. Art is life. I hope more and more citizens will go to theaters to refine and redefine themselves as men and women.
Q: Guan Zhong (a Chinese statesman and philosopher, 723-645BC) believes people won't be well bred unless they are well off. Do you think so?
Lin: This is not necessarily right. How many people who watched Peking Operas in old China were rich? True, Peking Opera was once exclusive to the privileged few, but it eventually found itself popular among the rank and file. One doesn't have to be rich to appreciate art.
Q: Study Times, a newspaper published by the Central Party School, quoted the late Deng Xiaoping as saying in 1993 that economic development was not a panacea to China's problems. What do you make of it?
Lin: Economic development is important, but it cannot cure all ills. The ultimate solution lies in culture. Drama artist Yu Shizhi once said what distinguishes between players is their culture, not their skills or appearances. Culture also makes or breaks a nation. China is 5,000 years old, but she's well and alive because she's culturally coherent.
When the former Soviet Union collapsed, Russian people still dressed up to go to the theater. America is powerful because of its culture, not its guns or cannons. What's truly great is culture.
Many Chinese people today are not short of money. When they get together, they often talk about buying cars or houses. They hardly mention tickets to an art performance. Yes, some tickets are expensive, but would you come to our theater if I gave you a ticket for free? Hard to say. It's not just high prices that hold some people back from entering a theater, their fundamental lack of interest in art is also to blame.
Q: Some people complain about your high prices. What have you done to make art more accessible to ordinary people?
Lin: Some of our prices are high indeed. One may wonder why the same performance by a world-class troupe (usually from Europe or America) could be cheaper in Europe or America than in Shanghai.
One factor is transportation and accommodation costs. Another factor is that those performances are subsidized by local governments in Europe or America, while they are purely commercial in Shanghai. A third factor is the commercial nature of our theater.
Our operating costs are high, including the cost of electricity. We do not have favorable rates of electricity or other tax breaks that usually go to a public-interest entity.
We are not for high prices. There's no future in pushing for high prices forever. We should make our theater accessible to more and more audiences. To that effect we need all kinds of support.
I'm grateful to the Shanghai government and Pudong Cultural Development Foundation which have helped cover some of our costs in hosting world-class philharmonic orchestras. In hosting the Berlin Philharmonic in 2005, the income from our ticket sales covered only half of the cost. The rest was covered by the government and business sponsors.
In addition to hosting world-class orchestras, we've introduced many concerts affordable to ordinary audiences. The ticket price for such concerts could be as low as 15 yuan (US$2.20), the cheapest in the world for a theater of our level.
We have 52 such concerts a year, attracting an audience of 100,000 people. In other words, we have two concerts presented by SHOAC every three days on average. We make little or no profit from such concerts, as most revenues go to the performers who also have financial pressure.
Even for world-class performances, we now have student tickets as cheap as 100 yuan.
We hope the government will have different policies for art and entertainment. Pure art, such as symphonies, ballet and opera - Peking Opera etc in China's case - should have government support as well as market competition. It should not simply be left to the mercy of the market.
Entertainment, on the other hand, can be made to sink or swim solely on the market, for example, films and pop music concerts.
The rationale behind this differentiation is that audiences often need to be taught to appreciate things high-brow. You can't always follow their tastes. Left to their own choice, audiences may well stoop so low as to go after raunchy photos and sensational scandals
Q: How do you hope to attract people from mahjong tables to theaters?
Lin: I went to Las Vegas, Macau and Australia, where I often saw my fellow countrymen in casinos, but not in theaters. In China, many people kill time by playing mahjong, surfing the Internet, wallowing in bars or watching TV like couch potatoes. They seldom go to theaters.
I do not mean people's lives should revolve around theaters only, I mean theaters should be part of people's life. Shanghai has 19 million residents and stages more than 10,000 performances a year, including pop music concerts. These shows attract an audience of just 6 million.
In Broadway, New York, there's an audience of 12 million a year. In London's West End, the number is 13 million. Many Chinese people are hectic and hurried in their material pursuit. They've become money machines in their misguided search for happiness. Art is life. I hope more and more citizens will go to theaters to refine and redefine themselves as men and women.
Q: Guan Zhong (a Chinese statesman and philosopher, 723-645BC) believes people won't be well bred unless they are well off. Do you think so?
Lin: This is not necessarily right. How many people who watched Peking Operas in old China were rich? True, Peking Opera was once exclusive to the privileged few, but it eventually found itself popular among the rank and file. One doesn't have to be rich to appreciate art.
Q: Study Times, a newspaper published by the Central Party School, quoted the late Deng Xiaoping as saying in 1993 that economic development was not a panacea to China's problems. What do you make of it?
Lin: Economic development is important, but it cannot cure all ills. The ultimate solution lies in culture. Drama artist Yu Shizhi once said what distinguishes between players is their culture, not their skills or appearances. Culture also makes or breaks a nation. China is 5,000 years old, but she's well and alive because she's culturally coherent.
When the former Soviet Union collapsed, Russian people still dressed up to go to the theater. America is powerful because of its culture, not its guns or cannons. What's truly great is culture.
Many Chinese people today are not short of money. When they get together, they often talk about buying cars or houses. They hardly mention tickets to an art performance. Yes, some tickets are expensive, but would you come to our theater if I gave you a ticket for free? Hard to say. It's not just high prices that hold some people back from entering a theater, their fundamental lack of interest in art is also to blame.
Q: Some people complain about your high prices. What have you done to make art more accessible to ordinary people?
Lin: Some of our prices are high indeed. One may wonder why the same performance by a world-class troupe (usually from Europe or America) could be cheaper in Europe or America than in Shanghai.
One factor is transportation and accommodation costs. Another factor is that those performances are subsidized by local governments in Europe or America, while they are purely commercial in Shanghai. A third factor is the commercial nature of our theater.
Our operating costs are high, including the cost of electricity. We do not have favorable rates of electricity or other tax breaks that usually go to a public-interest entity.
We are not for high prices. There's no future in pushing for high prices forever. We should make our theater accessible to more and more audiences. To that effect we need all kinds of support.
I'm grateful to the Shanghai government and Pudong Cultural Development Foundation which have helped cover some of our costs in hosting world-class philharmonic orchestras. In hosting the Berlin Philharmonic in 2005, the income from our ticket sales covered only half of the cost. The rest was covered by the government and business sponsors.
In addition to hosting world-class orchestras, we've introduced many concerts affordable to ordinary audiences. The ticket price for such concerts could be as low as 15 yuan (US$2.20), the cheapest in the world for a theater of our level.
We have 52 such concerts a year, attracting an audience of 100,000 people. In other words, we have two concerts presented by SHOAC every three days on average. We make little or no profit from such concerts, as most revenues go to the performers who also have financial pressure.
Even for world-class performances, we now have student tickets as cheap as 100 yuan.
We hope the government will have different policies for art and entertainment. Pure art, such as symphonies, ballet and opera - Peking Opera etc in China's case - should have government support as well as market competition. It should not simply be left to the mercy of the market.
Entertainment, on the other hand, can be made to sink or swim solely on the market, for example, films and pop music concerts.
The rationale behind this differentiation is that audiences often need to be taught to appreciate things high-brow. You can't always follow their tastes. Left to their own choice, audiences may well stoop so low as to go after raunchy photos and sensational scandals
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
