(gentle music) - Why do I like it?

I don't know, is it because of the costume and the way that express that most of the Cantonese opera telling a story.

(cymbals banging) (performer singing Cantonese opera) - A lot of the Chinese opera have a little bit of history, a lot of poetic verses.

(performers singing Cantonese Opera) (audience clapping and cheering) (cymbals banging) (broom sweeping) (John speaking in Taishanese) - Yat Sing is actually is two Chinese word.

Yat is mean Cantonese, and then sing is the song, the voice.

So Yat Sing is the Voice of Cantonese.

- [Narrator] Born and raised in Hong Kong, Richard Kwong joined the Yat Sing Music Club in 2008.

He learned from older members that the club began as fundraising to support China's war efforts during the Japanese invasion.

- [Richard] Playing those patriotic kind of story would help people donate money to help the war.

- [Narrator] Cantonese opera emerged out of southern China in the late 19th century, and when waves of immigrants from Guangdong arrived in North America, it became their go-to entertainment.

Before and after World War II, top performers from China brought their dazzling costumes to cities like San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.

(light music) John Lee has been with the Yat Sing Music Club longer than any other member.

- At that time, most the people here were restaurant workers, laundromat workers.

Club had not stopped, except for occasionally.

The club had practiced religiously every weekend since 1942.

- [Narrator] Shirley Yee moved to the U.S. in the '60s for university.

Back in British Hong Kong, she was trained in playing piano and singing chorus.

Though she often listened to Cantonese opera on the radio, she never sang it.

That changed in Portland when she was introduced to the art form more than a decade ago.

(Shirley singing) - There is one gentleman, a master musician from Yat Sing, he was one of the pioneer who converted a lot of songs from the traditional musical notes into the Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So.

Now I can look at the music sheet, I can actually see how the note, the melody and the rhythm, how it goes, and I sing it I feel like I am saying a poem out and then it's something that you really enjoy.

It's beautiful.

(Shirley singing) - And I never learn piano and violin, so you only observe me playing the percussion, which is like a drummer.

- [Narrator] When Richard Kwong was 15, he begged his dad to let him learn Cantonese opera, instead of studying.

(cymbals crashing) His dad said no.

50 years later, he is the rhythm keeper at the Yat Sing Club that practices every weekend.

(Cantonese opera singing) - In Cantonese operas always the one that holding that erhu is the leader, the lead musician.

He will start all the music by himself.

And so if you notice, the other musicians should play around half a beat behind him.

Can never be in front of him, but always half a beat behind him.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] But Cantonese opera isn't just music, it's storytelling.

Like Western opera, every piece is rich in plot with lyrics that bring the story to life.

Often stories of heroism in times of conflict, which would've resonated with the community when the club was performing during World War II.

- Unlike the pop music, a song end up in five minutes, right?

But somehow when you listen to the lyrics, it doesn't tell a story.

Cantonese operas are not the same.

They're talking about how they fight the invader, and all these things, and how to be nice to a family.

(Shirley singing) - [Narrator] Here, Shirley plays the heroine Diū-sìhm out of the classic novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" set in the wars marking the end of the Han Dynasty in the second and third centuries.

- The song I'm singing is about one person that is very evil, wicked and control the king.

And other officers want to assassinate him or break down the power clan.

And so they solicitated a female heroine and she would try to take both the father and the adopted son of this strong official to make them both fell in love with her.

(Shirley singing) (gentle music) I like to sing songs that has the character that I like to be, and I wanna sing songs that project the female character in that song, kind of like I can identify myself or associate myself with it.

A very daring person that want to be an equal of the man and very intelligent.

- [Narrator] In 2009, UNESCO listed Cantonese opera as an intangible cultural heritage.

(Shirley singing) But that prestige hasn't made it any easier for the Yat Sing Music Club to pass this art form onto the next generation.

At most performances, seniors make up both musicians and the audience in the hall.

(light music) - What I really worry today is it's difficult to continue this tradition.

We can hardly find younger people, attract young people to come in and sing.

It is hard, it's difficult to.

And then nowadays the people are so used to fast paced, everything have to be fast, just like TikToks.

And I really want this to carry on, but I find that we're fighting an uphill battle on that.

But in Asian country, you have seen the government try to train younger generation of performers.

But for people like us in Portland (sighing) it's very limited we can do.

(singing) - [Shirley] I always tell people that we cannot live in a world of our own.

We must branch out to the outside world, even though we're just musicians.

I think whoever stay we, we try, we put up the best part of ourselves and eventually it goes back up and coming up again.

(audience clapping cheering) (audience chatting and laughing) (light music) (cymbals clanging) (audience chatting) (light music)