For a gorgeous riot of color one might recommend a play acted by Yang Hsiao-lou, Peking’s most famous actor of military plays, who is beginning to command the same salary as Mei Lan-fang. He is known not only for his ability in fighting, but also because he can sing well and enunciate very clearly. The tourist can tell the home folks that he has seen something if he has watched Yang Hsiao-lou with a face painted in heavy reds and blues, wearing tall feathers on his head, dressed in a garment embroidered in rich colors and studded with little mirrors, mounted on shoes with very thick soles, strutting about the stage in martial attitude, and finally engaging in combat a similarly dressed hero to the end that both whirl about the stage with lightning speed, while the orchestra supplies the excitement by means of a terrific noise which threatens to take the roof off the building. It makes a truly exciting spectacle of which even an untrained Westerner can feel the thrill. The two types of _ching-i_ and _hua-tan_ are both young women characters. The difference made between them is that the former represents an honest and simple girl generally playing a sad part in which great emphasis is placed on the singing, while the _hua-tan_ represents a woman of doubtful reputation or a maid servant in a comedy part, requiring great skill in acting. It is one of the merits of Mei Lan-fang that he acts both types and thus breaks down one of the stiff rules of the Chinese theater in the interest of developing it into a freer art. Indeed, for over ten years he has been the supreme artist in both types. It is said of him by Peking critics that he sings as beautifully as a nightingale, that he has a pretty face, that he dances gracefully, and that his acting, in the Chinese simile, is like quicksilver which fills up every crevice and crack of a hole into which it is poured—that is to say, satisfying to the last detail. Teh Hing, a man over sixty years old, is another famous _ching-i_; however, he scorns to play the rôle of the _hua-tan_, the flowery maiden who treads the primrose path. Still another type in which Mei Lan-fang appears at times is that of _wu-tan_, or warrior maiden, a rôle comparatively rarely seen. [Illustration: A DEMI-MONDAINE Chinese Character Type]