The Red Boat shows launch of Party

A century ago, in 1921, the first National Congress of the Communist Party of China was concluded on a red boat on Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing city, Zhejiang province.

Today, a century later, an opera, The Red Boat, depicting the Party's founding story with a focus on that first, fateful gathering, was staged on Thursday and Friday in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province.

The two-hour opera, which made its debut at the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, used more than 50 stage scenes to tell the story, which, according to the opera's chief director, Huang Dingshan, symbolizes the revolutionary spirit of the CPC.