The ten Chinese characters shown on left is from a song sung in a Chinese New Year Eve television program. It probably says everything about the roles in Beijing Opera. The first five characters list the five role catagories. The rest tells what roles appear in the plays, from the powerful supernatural beings to animals like tigers and dogs. There are currently four main role catagories in Beijing Opera. They are

Any role in these catagories or sub-catagories can be the leading role in a play. Except the second catagory, the other three catagories are for male charactors.

As for why the role catagories take the names of Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou, there is an explanation. It is said that they were chosen to mean the opposite. Sheng in Chinese may mean "strange" or "rare", but the chief male is a character of most seen. Dan, which means "morning", "masculine", is in contravory with the femiline nature of the characters. Jing means "clean". In fact, the paintings on face make the charaters look like unclean but colorful. And Chou in Chinese sometime represents the animal "Cow", which, in some aspects, is slow and tardy. In contrast, Chou charaters are usually active and quick.

First edition: February 20, 1996
Last revision: September 30, 1996
Maintained by Xu-Ming Wang