The field of the various regional theatres, ti-fang-hsi which represent a substantial part of the traditional Chinese theatre, still remains largely unexplored. It has always been outside the scope of the interest of Chinese and European scholars, who have paid most attention to Yüan-ch'ü the drama of the Mongol era, to the K'un-ch'ü theatre, and lately also to Ching-hsi or Peking opera. The Peking opera is in fact one of the regional theatres by origin, but it occupies an exceptional position because it is distributed throughout China and is not localized in a specific part of the country like other ti-fang-hsi.