Remaining the rain falls upon the steam like lake,

The broken bridge, with the silk sunshade, my sighing for you paled into black and white.

Who on the boat ,is writing about my past?

a line of vow, but on paper was all about parting.

Rain, ah, standing at the edge of the lake,

rain, ah, I look at the north bank in the distance.

...

impression west lake


It is the theme song of Impression West Lake, one of three real scene performances directed by Zhang Yimou's teams. Zhang, as one of the most celebrated film director, through great search and study, developed on three beautiful landscape locations cultural performances. His other two, which I have enjoyed greatly,in Lijiang and Guilin respectively are huge successes. For his most recent works, Impression West Lake is attracting more and more audience too.

But actually not until recently I watched the show,although it has been on for about two years. Too proud of Zhang's reputation, the show has very high ticket price ( 220, 450, 600 RMB, or 32, 65, 90 US dollars) besides no discounted prices for tour groups and no free tickets to guides, which made it so distant to tourism circle for a while. But since early this year, they have become much more welcoming, maybe faced with tougher competition from other hugely popular cultural shows in Hangzhou. They hand out pamphlets, offer free entry to tour guides and discounted prices to groups.

Compared to other impression shows, this one is a little abstract to apprenhend . It's a love story but instead of household love stories related to the west lake, tells two cranes turned boy and girl. Their encounter, their love, sweetness and pains of departures. The lake or Yuehu part of the west lake, surrounded by forests, lit up colorfully, enshrouded in artificial water mist,with pleasure boats decorated brightly is for sure the genius choice and creation. As well, the platform, hidden inches under the lake surface, makes possible all dancing dream-like.

I found it visually stressful, the colors, pure bright, blue, red, purple being so sharp and contradictory; its hundred actors making the lake so crowded, creating strange senses like love affairs and dishonesty. The ugliest is the water screen, paramid shaped, is never better than a flat one.

And my favorite part is still the music.Hitaro, the Japanese writes a superb melody for the lake, romantic, sad and silky, which is equally superbly intrepreted by Jang Zhang, the Chinese idol.