Artist Couple Experiences Bittersweet Life
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Yao Cheng used to be a celebrated actress of Wuxi Opera. She met with the state and party leaders such as Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai. Her marriage with Ye Zhicheng experienced happiness and storms.
Born in 1926 in a small village in Jiangyin, now a city in Jiangsu Province, Yao Cheng grew up as a rural girl. His father sent her to a local opera troupe to learn stage performance. She established wide recognition as a lead actress in her master’s troupe across Jiangsu Province. In order to prevent her from jumping to any other rival troupes, her master mediated a marriage between Yao Cheng and a fellow actor in the troupe. The husband, an actor who failed to make it in his career, resorted to gambling and family violence. The marriage broke up in 1949.
After the founding of New China, Yao Cheng joined another troupe and in 1952, the troupe relocated to Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province. There Yao further established her fame. With the arrangement of a warm-hearted friend, Yao Cheng and Ye Zhicheng met and dated. Ye Zhicheng, an official at a government department of cultural affairs, did not create a favorable first impression. Yao still remembers him at the first date: the buttons of his suit seemed to be in wrong buttonholes and the bottoms of the trousers were folded unevenly. But Ye changed the first impression by writing her a long letter when Yao’s troupe left the provincial capital and began a long road show. Yao consulted her colleagues in the troupe about Ye and everyone said the man was a perfect choice for the lead actress. Yao wrote back. They began to write each other. After her return to Nanjing, the two began to date seriously.
Ye never mentioned to Yao that his father was Ye Shengtao, a celebrated man of letters and then deputy director of the national press and publication administration. Oddly enough, Yao never asked Ye about his family background.
Their wedding was scheduled to take place on September 20, 1953. It was not until then that Yao became aware of her would-be husband’s family. Ye’s mother Hu Molin came all the way from Beijing to make arrangements for the wedding. She brought 600 yuan in cash, a huge fortune back then. The money was adequate for all the furniture and wedding banquet. Somehow, the would-be mother-in-law and the would-be daughter-in-law hit off immediately. They chatted a great deal. Yao got to know the name of her father-in-law, but failed to put the name to the man in literary circles in China.
Yao had not received a proper school education in her formative years as all she learned was how to act. Ye Zhicheng recommended some classics for her to read. After the marriage, she began to take crash courses more seriously in an evening school. While studying an essay one evening, she heard the teacher informing the whole class that the essay was written by Yao’s father-in-law who was now a high-ranking official in Beijing. Yao was astonished by the revelation. That night she told her husband that she had had the slightest idea that her father-in-law was that Ye Shengtao, chiding her husband for not telling her. Her husband replied modestly that he had thought it inappropriate to go out of his way to boast that he was the son of a famous writer.
The son of the famous writer was a playwright in his own right. In November 1953, Yao starred in two plays in Shanghai, but the plays did not bring expected success. However, an unimportant play staged by the troupe received warm reviews, making Yao realize that she needed a good script urgently for a big show scheduled for September 1954. She told her husband about the dilemma. He decided to write a script for his wife, as he had just come back from a field study in a village. After the Spring Festival of 1954, Ye and a colleague revisited the village and soon jointly wrote a script entitled “New Road”.
The play won six first prizes at the East China Opera Gala jointly staged by troupes from Shanghai, Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Anhui. More than 1,000 performers staged 58 plays representing 35 regional operas. Yao Cheng was awarded a first prize for her performance.
In the next few years, Yao’s career shone. In 1957 the couple had a son named Ye Zhaoyan, who was to become a preeminent writer decades later. However, disasters soon hit her. Her mother-in-law died of cancer in March 1957. Her husband went down in the anti-rightist movement and was exiled to a rural county. Some people tried to persuade Yao to divorce her husband as he was in that kind of trouble. She refused and her career continued to shine. In the end of 1959, Ye Zhicheng came back to Nanjing and was assigned to work as a playwright for a Yueju Opera troupe in the city. Half-hearted about the Yueju Opera, Ye wanted to write something for his wife and her Wuxi Opera. Yao lobbied and finally got her husband transferred to her troupe. During the following years, Ye edited three plays for her wife and Wuxi Opera prospered as the plays were successful.
Then the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) overwhelmed the whole nation, destroying everything even remotely associated with culture. A group of red guards came to Ye and Yao’s household and took away all the books and jewelry and certificates of honors. Ye’s so-called mistakes in the late 1950s came under the scrutiny again. The bad luck soon hit Yao as she expressed sympathy for her husband.
Ye Zhicheng became so despaired that he began considering suicide seriously. One evening, he talked with Yao about his suicide proposal. The husband and wife spent the whole night talking and weeping and finally decided to live for their then nine-year-old son and stand up for their honor.
They survived the 10-year national tumult. Their son grew up showing a passion for literature and a promise to be a writer. Ye Zhicheng was extremely worried about the son’s ambition for fear that the junior might run into similar disasters as he had experienced. He forbad his son to read some books and set up a curfew. However, at night, the son frequently sneaked into the father’s study and read novels. One night, the father got up at midnight to check out the curfew. He stealthily came to the window of the study and peeped. He saw his son reading a novel and weeping. He decided there and then to let his son pursue his ambition.
Ye Shengtao now and then came to Nanjing to visit the family. Ye was deputy Education Minister. He encouraged the grandson to write and asked the parents let him try, saying that the Ye family would be lucky to have a third-generation writer. Ye and Yao often sent their son to visit his grandfather in Beijing so that the two could chat and the junior could learn from his grandfather.
After the Cultural Revolution, Ye Zhicheng left the Wuxi Opera Troupe and worked as editor-in-chief for Rain Flowers, a Nanjing-based literary monthly, which enjoyed national influence for years. Ye Zhaoyan became a writer after he acquired a master degree from Nanjing University.
Ye Zhicheng passed away in September 1992. Yao Cheng now enjoys her evening years with her son, daughter-in-law and a grand-daughter. The ambitious young girl says she is going to achieve something greater than her parents and grand parents ever achieved.