The third concubine = bad singer?

This is Peking Opera, a branch of Chinese Opera popular in the palace in the Qing Dynasty, and remember the third wife was an opera actress before marriage. In most Chinese Operas lines are presented in a manner half-spoken and half-sung, that's why the third wife sounds like that when she plays. If it has traditional Chinese music as the background music when she plays it should sound very good.

Yeah, it's a cultural thing. Consider that to some Asian ears Britney Spears and other great singers of our culture might sound unpleasant.

Not sure it even qualifies as "singing"; it´s more like a horrible high pitched whine.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

Agreed. It was awful.

agree, it was annoying as hell, i fast forwarded through her "singing" scenes, awesome movie though





so many movies, so little time

Chinese opera is highly stylized, emphasizing enunciation, emphasis, and order in its delivery. Listen to English oratorio and chamber music of the Jacobean era, I think you'll see many similarities. Now, according to the original novella on which this film is based, Songlian and Feipu may be the only true intellectuals in the Chen household. Maybe Meishan really is a borderline singing talent (though it seems unlikely), and this simply makes no difference in the end run, since the household thinks whatever Chen thinks. He thinks she's a diva, and that's really all that matters.