Down a crackly phone line from the confines of his hotel room in the city of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, last Friday, 44-year-old Bollywood actor Romi Jaspal recalls an anecdote that made quite an impression on him after the previous night's performance. Backstage, a Chinese gentleman in his 70s had been playing an old Hindi song from an early-'80s Bollywood film on his mobile phone. With an audible grin, Jaspal says that he and most of the other cast members who witnessed the scene were all "pleasantly shocked [and] really surprised" to see the reach of their beloved movies.

Jaspal is a veteran actor with The Merchants of Bollywood - a theatrical journey into Indian music, dance and cinema - having performed in it over 1,000 times since the show's 2005 debut. Merchants is currently on a 17-city tour of China and is set to play in Beijing from January 22 to 27 at the Poly Theater in Dongcheng district.

Jaspal, who plays multiple roles in the show, including a press officer, a Rajasthani elder in the village and a film director, says that the actors tend to exaggerate their performances for Chinese audiences.

"In 2009 [when Merchants toured China before], we had no idea how the Chinese people would respond," he says. "The language is a problem so we added some actions to make it easier to comprehend if they don't read the subtitles."

Written by Scottish award-winning theater director Toby Gough, the story of Merchants focuses on the relationship between the two central characters, loosely based on the lives of two very real people: Hiralalji Merchant, a choreographer of classic Hindi movies, and his granddaughter Vaibhavi Merchant, a young Bollywood choreographer.

The show, performed in English and Hindi with projected Chinese subtitles, has toured the world several times over - except, ironically, in India, where Bollywood films themselves still dominate Indian popular culture.

With countless colorful costumes and costume changes to boot (around 1,200), the cast will be collectively responsible for wearing over 2,500 pieces of Indian jewelry.

"[It's] traditional and contemporary dancing brought to life [through] the experience of Indian culture," says Company Manager Keith Foote. "[It's] the story of the phenomenon which is the film industry now known as Bollywood."

A quirky fact that could be useful in an upcoming pub quiz: the Bollywood film industry is one of the largest and most prolific film industries in the world. With over 800 films made annually and 15 million tickets sold daily in India, statistics are nothing short of staggering.

In recent years, there have been signs of an emerging international appreciation for all things Bollywood. The tides of Bolly-trends are due in part to the monumental success of Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - a Western-style English-Hindi film set in Mumbai, but slightly lacking in the melodrama and outbursts of singing so synonymous with the genre. 

Perhaps this is why it eventually won eight out of 10 Academy Awards for which it was nominated. It seems that in China, Hollywood production values painted on the skeleton of a Bollywood premise proved a success. The slumdogs became millionaires more than twice over, as the film - released here in March 2009 - grossed more than $2.2 million in its opening weekend.

"Slumdog Millionaire has definitely helped our cause," says Jaspal over the crackly line. "Here, audiences are a bit shy, but they really enjoy it. It's about celebration, about color and good things. It's a celebration of life."