In China, the story teller is a lively tradition that has come down to our days from very old times. One may meet him in the streets, in village squares and tea houses, strumming his instrument, the San-xian, which resembles a lute, and telling the history and stories of his people with its wars, its sagas and legends, with tales of love and death.

Laohan, the main figure of the opera of the Chinese composer Qu Xiao-song, is such a story teller, and he is blind. He has never seen the world and tells those, that can see, their stories through his art. As an orphan he learned it in days past from his blind master who, in order to comfort him over his blindness, had left him a slip of paper in his instrument and had instructed him: "Play your San-xian reverently, and break your strings one by one with honesty. When you have broken one thousand strings by sincere playing, open your instrument and take a piece of paper from it. Bring the paper to a doctor, and the doctor will help you."