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In March 2007, when David Gockley, the artistic director of San Francisco Opera, visited Beijing, he went to the National Center for the Performing Arts, which was still under construction. He was simply curious to see the site.
Earlier this month, Gockley visited the NCPA again, this time to attend the World Opera Forum. He watched the premiere of Sunrise, an original Chinese opera commissioned by the NCPA.
The venue's grand architecture impressed him, he says, but so did the performers - soloists, chorus and orchestra.
"The big change is how quickly the NCPA has grown into a major player promoting opera. Chinese artists take great pride in their own opera, not following the style of Europeans and (they want) to have their voice," says the 72-year-old, once described by The New York Times as the man who "shaped the destiny of opera in America".
In an interview with China Daily, he recalls his visit to the NCPA eight years ago, describing how he had to walk through puddles in the parking lot to get to the theater area that was being built. Portions of the floor hadn't been laid with marble and the seats of the theater weren't in place.
But even then, "it was clear that it was an amazing facility and had impressive architecture", Gockley says.
During his latest visit, Gockley introduced plans for a new opera by his company, calling it "groundbreaking".
He has commissioned Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng, Taiwan director Stan Lai and Taiwan designer Tim Yip to distill Dream of the Red Chamber into a three-hour opera, which will have its world premiere in fall 2016. The operatic work is based on the Chinese classic novel A Dream of Red Mansions.
Written by Cao Xueqin in the 18th century, the book centers on the tragic love story of Jiao Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, and the ups and downs of an influential family during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
The composing team will share the story of the opera's creation at a three-day symposium, beginning on Monday at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The Chinese Heritage Foundation in Minneapolis, a non-governmental organization, had proposed the idea to him in 2013.
The saga, one of the greatest classics in Chinese literature, contains all the elements needed for an opera: love triangles, jealousy, death and more.
But reading through 120 chapters of the novel translated into English, with more than 500 characters, was a challenge for Gockley.
He says he even asked his Chinese friends in San Francisco if the attempt was crazy. They answered, "No. It's a fabulous idea!"
His friends told him that a good way for Americans to understand China was to understand A Dream of Red Mansions.
When the project took off last year, Gockley asked Sheng for two things. First, the music - both vocal and instrumental - should relate to Chinese music, so use Chinese instruments. Second, it must be "beautiful" and avoid traces of European modernism in the score.
In February, a few songs from the opera were previewed at the 2015 Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival in Stanford, California, by Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. Gockley says that was enough to convince him the composer was on the right track.
This isn't the first time that Gockley commissioned an opera adapted from Chinese literature. In 2007, he commissioned Stewart Wallace's The Bonesetter's Daughter, based on Amy Tan's novel and featuring a libretto by the Chinese-American author.
He talks of San Francisco Opera's association with China. In 1987, Western Opera Theater, the annual touring program of San Francisco Opera, performed Tosca in Shanghai and also gave master classes at Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
"When I return to China again, I would like to have specific programs where our skills and resources in San Francisco could be in collaboration with Chinese opera houses and conservatories," he says.
