International musicals and homegrown works share a stage on Tianqiao

The wine banners are still out along the southern Central Axis, and the drums have not stopped. Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, the quarter where Beijing's street performers once made their names, is being rebuilt around a different kind of stage.

The district has become the capital's home for musical theater, with international productions and Chinese works sharing the same houses in rotating seasons. Theaters on the southern stretch of the Central Axis — inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2024 — now go far beyond Peking Opera.

Open days are part of the pitch, letting audiences walk backstage, meet cast and try workshops; organizers describe the aim as turning an old entertainment district into a "living room" for the city's culture.

The shift is being framed as the southern counterpart to the 2026 Beijing Culture Forum, which puts performance at the center of how the Central Axis is experienced. The banners, in other words, are the same. The repertoire is not.