"All of them are very patient with me and they were the reason that this mission was possible and the grand finale owes its success to them," says Diab, mentioning that Bai told him that "Peking Opera is a like a small door. Unless you unlock it, you won't realize the vast space that lies behind it".

"The stage setting is minimalistic and the plots are relatively simple so the onus of entertainment falls squarely on the performers and their artistry," he says, adding that he had physical therapy and multiple hospital visits on three separate occasions during the training.

The 32-year-old Diab, who came to China in 2012 for his master's degree in global business journalism at Tsinghua University in Beijing, had his first encounter with Peking Opera a few years back when he watched a workshop online that Mu Yuandi gave in the United States in 2014. The Shanghai-based actor Mu specializes in the art of nandan (a male who plays a female role). This tradition was forged out of necessity. For much of its history in the old, feudal society, women were forbidden to perform Peking Opera.

"He started from zero to perform as a Peking Opera actor, which was very difficult, such as leg stretching exercises," says Liu, 41, who, born and raised in the city of Jilin in Jilin province, was trained to become a Peking Opera actor as a child by his parents, both professional Peking Opera performers.