The Peony Pavilion, a romance based on a 400-year-old epic masterpiece of Kunqu opera, has been adapted into ballet by the National Ballet of China and took the stage at Lincoln Center on Wednesday night. As one of the most famous love stories in the Chinese canon, The Peony Pavilion was written as an opera by Tang Xianzu in 1598, the same year as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, to which it is often compared. Han Meng / For China Daily