The emergence, prosperity and spread of traditional Jinju Opera -- rooted in the central region of North China's Shanxi province -- is inseparable from the Jin merchants or Shanxi merchants, who were China's strongest merchant group during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

During that period, Shanxi merchants used to found or fund drama and opera troupes with their wealth.

Han Ziqian (1902-84), a reformer of modern Chinese opera, is a prime example. Born into a wealthy merchant family in Qixian county, Han was deeply influenced by his mother who was a famous actress in the Kunqu Opera, a form of opera originating in East China's Jiangsu province.

He used the drama theory he studied at the School of Arts at Peking University from 1925 to 1928 to research and reform local opera in Shanxi. During the 1930s when opera was in its heyday in Qixian county, Han formed an opera research society together with local merchants and opera performers, undertaking a systematic collation and reform of Jinju Opera -- from scripts, to music and performance styles.

The widespread spread of Jinju Opera was also partly owing to the business trips of the Shanxi merchants.

Over the past 200 years, the opera spread to the rural areas of Hebei, Shaanxi, Henan, Gansu and Sichuan provinces and in Inner Mongolia autonomous region -- as well as the major cities in North China such as Beijing and Tianjin -- as Shanxi merchants went outside Shanxi province to farther regions for more business.