Garden Kun Opera and Cultural Tourism

With a history of over six hundred years, Kun Opera is one of the oldest types of opera still actively performed in China today. In some Kun Opera plays, the story is set in a garden, which becomes an important narrative motif. Such plays were frequently staged in gardens, usually for private gatherings. The twenty-first-century revival of this type of garden Kun Opera took place during a strong wave of cultural tourism, aligning cultural preservation with economic development. A prototypical example is Six Records of a Floating Life, which, since 2018, has been performed at Canglang Pavilion, one of the classical gardens of Suzhou. An inventive yet historically informed production of garden Kun Opera, Six Records of a Floating Life provides an immersive aesthetic and more broadly cultural experience, situating Kun Opera in the economic, cultural, and social context of contemporary life.