The singing , dialogue , acting and martial arts on the stage evinced the cream of Chinese performing arts and also the Chinese concept of changing . Dreams were an important factor of the Chinese classical operas . To the ancient Chinese , the two metaphors “Life passes like a dream” and “Life acts like a play” bore the same significance . In both operas and dreams , the ancient Chinese derived the wisdom of life.
Why were the ancient Chinese playwrights zestful of “dreams”? Probably it was related to the playing attitude . the term “play” could be annotated “play with” and “play about” , and “show on the stage” . So culturally . “play” means the guise of the real life , or the 
dreams . As remarked by Tang Xianzu , a renowned playwright in the Ming Dynasty : “Watching an opera , I could see both the departed ancestors and the activities in my dreams .” Here , Tang undoubtedly correlated the operas and the dreams . The presentation of the classic operas can break the borders of time and space . A short opera might cover all the vicissitude in life . So , opera acting is akin to dreaming . Wang Shifu wrote in his drama “ The Western Chamber” : “Into the dream I see the mansion of the number one scholar ; out of the dream I stay at a thatched inn ,” implying that this drama was but a long dream . It seemed to be another delusion . In the “Story in Handan” , another drama written by Tang Xianzu : The immortal Lv Dongbin , induces scholar Lv to transcend the worldly life by sleeping on a magnetic pillow .
Scholar Lv then enters a dream , in which he undergoes marriage , service examination , admission into government , river taming , military service on the western frontier , banishment , promotion to minister , given the rank of the Duke and finally death . As he wakes up from his dream he is conscious that he has passed sixty years of life if a short dream . Consequently , he is converted and follows the immortals . At the end of the opera , scholar Lu and Eight Immortals hold the following dialogue :
Lu : Sirs , I am stupid enough to suspect as if our meeting today were in dream as well !
Though awaken now , I am not yet sure!
The Immortals : Why are you fascinated by the spirit and the soul? So , you are stupid enough to be unable to distinguish the truth and the dream . After all , you have become an immortal through the dream ..
Scholar Lu awakes to find the pot of millet still being cooked . His suspicion reveals the underlying essence 
beneath the opera , --this opera is a dream itself , and the dream of scholar Lu is a dream in the dream .
The dream drama on the stage transforms abstract mental activities into concrete images . As Tang Xianzu contended in his “Forward to The Peony Pavilion” : “ Why should the activities in a dream be not true? Are there not many dreaming people in the world ? To get married or be a self confident official is actually irrelevant” . According to Tang Xianzu , what is hard to realize in the world can be fully realized in the dreams . In his drama , “A Dream in Handan” : two allegorical themes are present . One theme is the religious nihilism , or the conviction that man’s life is like a dream . The other theme is : All the beings in the world , from the emperor to the officials , etc ., live in dream , which is an exposure of the corrupted bureaucracy toward the decline of the Ming Dynasty . The playwright that lodges his ideal in the dreaming operas is on a higher level than those talking about ethical theories emptily .
