Welcome to New Times Square Theater! As you know, our theater has a long history, about 90 years old! You can enjoy yourself here because we have the latest films, the largest screens and the most comfortable seats. The theater is open from 7:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. It's usually very crowded on Saturday and Sunday, though the ticket prices are a bit higher. If you want to avoid (避开) the crowd, come on weekdays and you can buy the tickets at half price on Wednesday! Look at the following movies for this week. Come and watch your favorite film!

Beijing Opera appeared in the Qing Dynasty (朝代). In 1790, many opera troupes (戏班) went to Beijing for performances to celebrate the birthday of Qianlong. This kind of unusual performance touched the hearts of the people deeply. While in Beijing, the troupes created a new kind of opera called Beijing Opera. It was on the basis (基础) of Anhui Opera by taking in the advantages of other operas.

Beijing Opera is quite unique (唯一的) in role shaping because it divides the roles into different kinds. They are sheng, dan, jing and chou which are quite different in many ways.

A popular song goes like this, “Foreigners call Jingxi Beijing Opera.” In fact, Beijing Opera is different from opera. Opera tells the story and expresses the thoughts by singing instead of speaking. But Beijing Opera stresses (强调) chang, nian, zuo and da. Chang means singing, nian means musical spoken parts, zuo means dance movements and da means martial (武打) skills.

Mei Lanfang is an excellent performing artist of Beijing Opera in China. In 1930, he led an opera troupe to America and presented Beijing Opera before western people. Today, Beijing Opera has become the sign of Chinese culture. It is changing with the development of different musical styles.

My city has a cinema showing all the newest films. It’s near where I live, but a year ago, I realized something was missing. That is the experience of discussing a film with a group of people after watching it with them. So, I decided to start a film club with my friends!

Each month, we choose a different place in the city to show films.

Last week, we chose an old factory to show a film about Antarctica (南极洲). It was freezing cold in the factory, and this created the perfect environment for the film!

Each time we show a film, we manage to make things a bit easier for us. Now, we are very clear about the number of people who will come every time—no more worries that the seats are not enough! We still have plenty to do, but when people of all ages come up at the end to say what a great experience they’ve had, we feel what we have done is all worthwhile.

We’ve made a website to let people know about our club because we know that now most people go online for information rather than read local newspapers. We've also tried putting up a few posters (海报) in coffee shops.

However, nothing’s as successful as our audience (观众) telling their friends about the club by spoken communication. And people love the surprise activities we put on with each film—last month it was a small movie test, which everybody enjoyed.