The roots of Chinese opera can be traced back 3,000 years, with elements of song and dance, religious ritual, court music, acrobatics, puppetry and shadow plays, balladry, and farce.

Without financial backing for large props and scenery, actors relied heavily upon stylized movement and symbolic action to portray events and characters. The material limitations of Chinese opera during the Qing formed the basis of the Chinese opera aesthetic, which is still the case today. This aesthetic is often called xieyi or, literally, freestyle writing with brushstrokes. Like a brush-created character which only approximates the standard printed character in exact form, performers portray movement, behavior, and mood through a set repertoire of acting forms. They do not strive for realism. Ornamentation permeates Chinese opera, from props, to movement, to acting. A horse whip, for example, is made to look beautiful for the stage with tassles. A young woman sewing might aestheticize her actions by the way she poses her fingers in the act of sewing. Laughter and crying might be ornamented, depending on the role category of the character, and the type of crying or laughter.

Today, as in the past, a student of Chinese opera must master a wide range of performance skills, broken down into the four categories: chang (singing); zuo (performing); nian (speaking); da (martial arts). What makes up a Chinese opera role--whether that of the dan (young woman), xiaosheng (young man), laosheng (old man), or chou (clown)--is defined by the set of performance skills to be mastered by the performer of that role. An actor, after mastering the skills of his or her role can, in the course of his or her career, create and add new ones. Mei Lanfang, the preeminent Peking Opera actor of the twentieth century, who travelled throughout the world to present Chinese opera to people inside and outside China, was highly innovative in developing roles.