Guo Junying teaches a student in one of her public Yueju classes. [Photo provided by Guo Junying to Tide News]

This year marks the 120th anniversary of Yueju Opera. In Shengzhou, Zhejiang province, where the art form was born, one of its most unusual classrooms arrives by car.

After retiring from the Shengzhou Yueju Opera Troupe, Guo Junying turned down lucrative commercial performance offers and instead signed up as a "cultural envoy" for Yueju. For around 300 days a year, she travels to towns and villages to give free classes. Her students range in age from 4 to 80.

Guo does not drive, so wherever the class is held, her husband, Ma Jian, takes her there. The couple met decades ago in the troupe. Guo graduated from the Shengzhou Yueju Art School and joined the company 40 years ago, while Ma worked there as a composer, conductor, and orchestra musician.

Guo Junying (middle row, fifth from left) poses for a photo with her students and her husband, Ma Jian (middle row, far left), who supports her volunteer work. [Photo provided by Guo Junying to Tide News]

Today, locals sometimes call them a Yueju couple, but their work is less about romance than routine: loading the car, making the trip, teaching the class, heading home, and doing it all again the next day. Their mobile classroom requires a different skill set from the professional stage.

Troupes select performers by height, appearance, singing, and dance ability. Guo's public classes turn no one away.

One day, as 5-year-old Ma Chengxi practiced singing, she asked, "Mrs Guo, the dan tian you always talk about — is it in my stomach?" Dan tian, which translates from Chinese as "field of elixir", is believed by some to be the seat of life force energy in the body.

Guo did not brush the question aside. She showed the girl, step by step, how to breathe in slowly, support the breath with the diaphragm, and send the sound upward from the lower abdomen. After a few lessons, the child was no longer forcing the voice from her throat and had begun to control weight and emphasis in her singing.

At first, Guo expected classes of 70 or 80 people. Sometimes nearly 200 show up. As interest has grown, venues have expanded from ordinary rooms to larger spaces and, at times, open-air sports grounds.

That has not made the work easier. Guo is sensitive to sunlight and develops itchy skin after exposure. Even so, she puts on sunscreen, opens an umbrella, and finishes every class.

Some of the longest trips are to Gulai, a town 90 minutes away round-trip from the couple's home. They travel in all kinds of weather and always arrive on time. The students notice, and often bring vegetables from their own gardens, filling the car trunk with seasonal produce before the couple leaves.

Children join Guo Junying's public Yueju class. [Photo provided by Guo Junying to Tide News]

Guo said, "In the past two years, I have taught 30 pairs of complete beginners to perform Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai on their own."

The classic love story, better known in English as The Butterfly Lovers, is one of Yueju's signature works. For beginners to perform it independently is no small achievement.

Guo's role does not end when class is over. She also works to secure opportunities for her students to perform in public. In 2025, one of them, 8-year-old Yao Yihan, performed at a game of the Zhejiang Provincial City Basketball League.

For Guo and Ma, the classroom on wheels has become a shared cause and for dozens of new performers, a pathway into the art form itself.