Peking opera, also called Jingju, is the dominant form of Chinese opera. It combines singing, instrumental music, miming, martial arts, dance and acrobatics. It emerged in Beijing in the mid-Qing dynasty and was fully developed by the mid-19th century. Performers belong to four main role types: sheng for gentlemen, dan for women, jing for rough men and chou for clowns. The stage is sparse, so the costumes and face paint carry much of the visual meaning, and each movement is symbolic rather than realistic. The repertoire includes over 1,400 works drawn from Chinese history, folklore and, increasingly, modern life. Its music is built on the xipi and erhuang styles.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.