Bicycles, sunglasses and groups chatting in a Beijing dialect, watching these elements on stage you would naturally connect it to a modern Chinese story, and you would not be wrong. The story tells of the love between two young Chinese people in modern society, however in its essence it delivers the spirit of the great British playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

At the rehearsals for the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet, director Tian Qinxin said she wanted to show the true meaning of what Shakespeare thought about love, and to convey the ideas within this classic play to Chinese audiences in a more acceptable way, to adapt the original classic into a local story.

Known for plays such as The Beauty (2012) and Green Snake (2013), Tian is one of the most famous theater directors in China today. Last year she was invited to perform her play Green Snake at the 41st Hong Kong Arts Festival, and Tian's new play Romeo and Juliet has been bestowed the same honor this year.

On the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birthday, Tian said her adaptation is a way to honor the great playwright. Romeo and Juliet will usher in a bumper year of collective works and activities to commemorate Shakespeare, whose plays were first introduced to China more than 100 years ago.

Chinese story, Shakespeare's spirit

Beginning with a fierce scuffle between two groups of young people, the play underscores the conflict between the families of Romeo and Juliet from the opening scene. "In Shakespeare's original version, he set a very extreme tone in terms of the conflicts and the characters' emotions, foreshadowing the tragic ending for the protagonists," said Tian.

To stick to the writer's thoughts on love and its expression, Tian maintained the original play's poetry and encouraged the actors to deliver their lines with dramatic displays of emotion. "The core of a Shakespeare play lies in its spirit and the structure of the story," said Tian.

Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays are fairly common in China, however local audiences still have limited knowledge of his work. Nevertheless there is a feeling that previous adaptations of Shakespeare's plays had not been properly tailored for Chinese theater lovers.

"We want to tell a love story that Chinese audiences can understand," Tian stressed. The original Romeo and Juliet is set in the 15th century in an Italian city. Understanding such a story set so faraway both in time and space would be really difficult for Chinese audiences. Tian developed the story to include typical Chinese elements such as bicycles, hazy weather and local dialects.

"Boundless hazes, it serves you to love death!" Lines like this while being full of Chinese characteristics, are very similar to the poetic readings of Shakespeare's lines. Drawing from the classic translation by Zhu Shenghao (1912 - 44, the most renowned translator of Shakespeare in China), the lines in Tian's version are very close to that of Shakespeare's original play.

Delivering the spirit of Shakespeare's plays in a local setting may inspire other Chinese directors to follow the same route.

"Since 1943, when Zhu first translated Romeo and Juliet into Chinese, many domestic directors have attempted to adapt Shakespeare's plays, but most of them ended up just copying the story lines instead of delivering his thoughts," said Tian. "Actually this is not just limited to Shakespeare's plays, Chinese directors tend to have this problem when adapting classic Western plays."