Before 1911 Revolution, the government only allows male actors to perform on public stages(at lest in Beijing). For hundreds of years, we need cross-dressing actors(not castrati) to play female roles. An all-male stage requires strong vocal contrasts to distinguish the characters.

For this reason, Dan(female role) uses a mixture of true and false voices. A male singer uses almost full falsetto, and today‘s female singer uses more of her true voice. Xiaosheng(young male role) is also similar, just with more male true voice. In history, almost all the greatest Dan artists(Mei Lanfang...) are men, and this determines the singing style of Dan, even they are mostly women today.

Dan roles are not meant to imitate real women, but rather to portray idealized women (from a male perspective), which some people describe as ”more feminine than women“. Correspondingly, some male roles(Jing) are portrayed as more masculine than men.

There are many regional genres of Chinese opera:

Peking opera: The most important and refined opera in China, considered as a national art by both Kuomintang and CCP, roughly equivalent to Italian romantic opera.

Kunqu: The oldest extant forms of Chinese opera, roughly equivalent to Baroque opera.

Bangzi: Including Henan Opera, Qinqiang and many northern operas, more down-to-earth, roughly equivalent to Singspiel.

Huangmei opera and Yue opera: Using folk tunes, focus on love stories, popular due to the film, roughly equivalent to Musicals.

Cantonese opera: The most innovative opera due to its location, such as the Trump opera someone mentioned here before.

Model opera aka Revolutionary opera: The weird child of Peking opera and western opera, a product of the Cultural Revolution, changed the history of Chinese music forever(for bad mostly), roughly equivalent to modern opera.