你听说过“打笼开箱”吗？

Have you ever heard of Da Long Kai Xiang, or Making An Escape From the Box?

它是湖南祁剧的一项高难剧目。剧中的主角是一位书生，他身负冤屈，被人囚于箱笼之中，欲抛弃荒野。但他没有放弃生的希望，不断跳出箱笼，又不断被打回去，最终成功出箱，挣脱束缚。

It's a repertoire of Hunan Qi opera challenging to play. The main character is a scholar who was wronged, imprisoned in a box and about to be abandoned in the wilderness. But he didn’t give up on survival and tried to make an escape by keeping jumping out of the box. Although being beaten back into the box again and again, he managed to get out and freed himself eventually.

为了展现书生对生的渴求和不放弃的精神，演员需要在短短几分钟内，完成“三跌四出”“箱内换衣”等多个高难表演技巧。因此，《打笼开箱》被誉为戏曲界难度最高的剧目之一，全国能完成表演的不足5人，剧目几近失传。

To best show the scholar’s thirst for survival and his perseverance of not giving up hope, the actor needs to perform within a few minutes several rounds of difficult skills, such as “jumping in and out of the box three or four times” , “changing clothes in the box”,etc. 

As a result, Da Long Kai Xiang is known as one of the most difficult Chinese opera repertoires. Today throughout China, there’re less than five people who can perform it.The play is on the verge of becoming extinct.

视频素材源自湖南省祁剧保护传承中心。