As Chinese national treasure, Beijing opera is the most famous of the many forms of the art with a history of 200 years. Although it is called Beijing Opera, its origins are in Chinese provinces of Anhui and Hubei. In 1796, the four big Huiban opera troupes performed on Emperor Qianlong's 80th birthday. Through over a half century of combination and integration with various kinds of opera there, Huiban evolved the present Beijing Opera, the biggest kind of opera in China,

There are four types of actor's rolls in Beijing opera: The sheng (male, scholars, officials), dan (female, but are usually played by men), jing (painted-face, male, warriors, heroes, statesmen, and demons), chou (male or female, clown). Language is archaic Chinese and the screeching music is searing for Western, but the costumes and make-up are really magnificent. Every evening, there are several shows in different opera house of Beijing. The starting time is 7:30pm.