Acrobatics in China grew out of temple fairs and military training displays, and the repertoire is old - juggling, balancing, contortion, tumbling and feats of strength - but the staging is contemporary. Beijing has three or four permanent houses that run a show almost every night, most of them inside the Third Ring Road, and they are the most reliable evening entertainment in the city for a group that does not speak Chinese, since the acts need no translation.
What a show contains
A typical ninety-minute programme runs a dozen or so acts with almost no interval. Expect spinning plates on flexible poles, a bowl-balancing routine, foot juggling with tables or jars, aerial silks and hoop work, tightrope and slack-wire balance, a comedy act built around a pole or a chair stack, and the set piece that most houses keep for last: riders on motorcycles circling at speed inside a steel mesh globe. The quality varies, and the best houses rehearse year-round rather than only for tour groups.
Choosing a show
The larger houses seat several hundred and sell tickets by band, with the front rows closest to the ring; the smaller ones are more intimate and often better value. If you want the kung fu and martial-arts style of production instead of pure acrobatics, that is a separate genre and usually performed in a fixed theatre with a narrative, live drumming and a larger cast. Both are family-appropriate, both last around an hour and a half, and both start between half past five and seven in the evening so that they can be paired with dinner.
Practical notes
Book a day or two ahead through your hotel or an agency, since the good bands sell out in high season; seats are usually unreserved within a band and filled first-come, so arriving twenty minutes early matters. Photography without flash is normally allowed. The theatres are inside the ring road and easy by taxi and metro, but the last shows finish after the metro has thinned out, so plan the ride home. Shows generally run nightly, with some houses dark on Mondays.
