Every year on li dong (Start of Winter), the traditional Chinese solar term signaling the beginning of winter, the Daliangshan Theatre Festival returns to Xichang, a sunsoaked city surrounded by mountains and lakes in the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture of Sichuan province.

On the early evening of Nov 7, as the soft chime of bells echoed through the valley, an elderly man of Yi ethnic group entered the square, leading a black sheep, which officially marked the opening of the festival. Torches lit up the surrounding hillsides while ancient Yi songs filled the air, warming not only the valley's approaching winter but also the hearts of theater lovers who gathered there.

Founded in 2019 by 24 Chinese and international artists and scholars, this year's edition marks the festival's seventh anniversary. "Theater practitioners are like water, as we connect with one another across the world," says celebrated Chinese actor Pu Cunxin, one of the festival's initiators. "Even when separated by land, there are underground streams. We float up as clouds or fall as rain. The form doesn't matter; what matters is that we meet."

This year, the festival presented 110 productions, including 15 invited works from eight countries, such as the United States, Spain and Georgia, spanning drama, children's theater, physical theater, and other genres. More than 300 performances were staged, along with over 30 academic events, including international theater dialogues and master classes.

An ecological chain

"The world's cultures sustain one another. We are like an ecological chain that requires the nourishment of diverse cultures to maintain balance," says Li Ting, an initiator and executive director of the festival. She hopes Daliangshan can serve as a platform for intercultural dialogue. "It's not about what we learn from others, but about understanding what people elsewhere are thinking and doing. Others benefit from being here, too."

Li spent her teenage years in Xichang, and returns to Daliangshan to live for six months each year to run the festival. She believes the mountainous highland culture of the Yi ethnic group, which is diverse, open, and inclusive, is a natural foundation for such a gathering.

Now 67 and an award-winning playwright, Li says: "I love theater too much to stop." This year's opening production, Diary of a Madman, was inspired by a performance she saw in Georgia and brought back to Daliangshan.

One original Chinese production, Intimacy, left a deep impression on her. The play explores the intimate relationships of today's younger generation. She was pleased to see young creators expressing curiosity, questioning life, and harboring hopes. "If I went back 40 years, I was just as confused and often frustrated by roles I couldn't perform to my satisfaction," she recalls.

In the play's final scene, the young characters appear aged, seemingly free from emotional entanglements, playing guitar and singing together. Many of the young audience members were moved to tears. Li, however, smiled, knowing from experience that life will unfold in far more complicated ways than they imagine.

"As the festival's director, I'm very satisfied. Theater should express one's true self, not follow trends," she says.

Youthful utopia

Li's core standard for selecting works is simple: "Are they genuinely trying?" Even inexperienced teams are welcome. She hopes young people will come to the festival to exchange experiences, share creativity, and grow together, and for audiences to experience theater in all its forms.

"The Daliangshan Theatre Festival feels like a utopia for theater people," says 28-year-old Jiao Wenbo, who brought a play he produced to this year's event. He runs a theater studio, with 1,000 university students from 13 campus societies, and supports them in creating original productions. Their production, The Playwright and the Character, performed at the festival, emerged from this university alliance.

Jiao is also a PhD student at Harbin Engineering University, majoring in Management Science and Engineering.

"We don't treat theater as a pathway to fame or money. We perform because we love the stage," he says.

At the festival, Jiao watched the American physical theater piece, Red Tiger Tales, which interprets ancient fables through comedy and acrobatics. The performers, non-professional actors from Vashon Island near Seattle, financed their trip to China with donations from their community.

A scene depicting hope arriving like a strawberry when life seems bleak, moved Jiao to tears. "The story isn't profound, but it resonated deeply with me," he notes.

"This is my 10th year working in theater," says Jiao, who recalls a period when academic pressure forced him to pause his work. "I felt like I lost everything." Only after a friend invited him back to the theater did he rediscover his sense of belonging. "That moment made me certain that theater is what I'll do for the rest of my life."

A classroom beyond walls

Besides producing and spectating, Jiao also attended the festival's six-day international master classes, launched last year as public charity sessions. Serge Nicolai from the French company Theatre du Soleil and Marina Alexandrovskaya from the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts served as instructors.

"They are considered charity classes because our teachers are unpaid," Li says. She invited Nicolai to Daliangshan after visiting his innovative teaching class in France. Although only 30 spots were planned, 40 students participated.

Nicolai taught using masks, asking students to follow the instincts of the prop rather than their own identities. To help Chinese students understand his method, he incorporated characters from Romance of the Three Kingdoms into improvisation exercises.

Alexandrovskaya introduced the theory of Mikhail Chekhov, telling students that the ultimate goal of an actor is to elevate their craft until they can embody anything — even a door or a tree.

The master classes offered Jiao exposure to theater thinking outside the Chinese context: "This was the best course I've taken this year."

During his class, Nicolai insisted that all doors and windows remain open and students' shoes not block the entrances, so that anyone who may not be involved in theater could come and go freely — even for a fleeting moment of connection.

He emphasized that, throughout history, from ancient Greece to the Renaissance period, theater was performed in marketplaces, church courtyards, and other public spaces. "Perhaps today's theater must return to where people truly live."

At the opening ceremony, he noticed many residents in the audience. "When people see their lives performed on stage, they recognize themselves," he says. "The purpose of theater is to allow people to experience emotions together, not alone."

Jiao summed up the festival with three keywords: "Passion, purity, and connection." During the festival, Jiao made many new friends, with whom he shared worries, discussed dreams, and promised to visit each other's cities to watch performances.

The festival concluded on Nov 16. As Jiao says, when theater people say goodbye, they say, "See you at the next theater".