A Glorious Career of Drama Artist

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After a rain in a summer morning, we visited Shi Xing at Zhejiang Hospital. The 95-year-old man is “a national drama artist with outstanding contributions”. Seeing us, he is all smiles. Though dressed in a hospital pajama, he looks well and his voice is energetic. After a short small talk, the master begins to recall his life of art.

Influenced by his family, Shi Xing had some progressive ideas about the society. He successfully escaped from a crackdown of the KMT government in his middle school days. The prefect of discipline at the middle school had learned the government was about to crack down on students. He came to inform Shi Xing and carried the young student on his bike and escaped. Before that escape, Shi Xing had the slightest idea that the prefect was a Communist party member.

The young man’s penchant for stage performance was kindled in his college days in Suzhou, a key city of history and culture near Shanghai. The drama teacher at the college was a celebrated artist. It was here that the young dramatist learned the basics. Shi Xing was an actor at Wuhan Film Studio for a while during the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

In 1938 Shi Xing came to Yan’an and attended the Lu Xun Art Academy there. He joined the military forces led by the Communists. He tells us some stories of the hard life in the army at that time. The army he joined moved in mountain areas frequently. The troops often walked 15 kilometers a day. Battles could occur anywhere. More often than not, the soldiers did not have a vessel to cook rice. So they first wrapped rice in a towel and wrapped the towel with a wet layer of soil and cooked it in the fire. After the meal, they washed the towels and got them ready for the next cooking. Sometimes they even heated a large flat stone and then made cakes on the heated stone. His first son grew up in the army. Without toys, the kids in the army once played with grenades under the watch of their parents. He joined the Communist Party in 1946.

After the 1949, many experts of the Soviet Union came to help China build socialism. Shi Xing had a teacher from the Soviet Union. The teacher was unusually strict with his Chinese students. He never hesitated to scold his students if they were unable to satisfy his requirements. But he was a very unconventional tutor. His teaching approach was totally different ordinary teaching methods seen in China at that time. He gave students home assignments and instructed them to come up with an original show the next day. Recalling the learning during that time, the master says that the days were really challenging, that the teacher never hesitated to let everybody know his dissatisfaction, and that the teacher was unusually strict. Shi Xing says that under the pressure, he found his hair turn gray though he was at that time in his early 30s. What he learned was the precious essentials of acting and directing. He learned how to communicate with actors and how to enable actors to respond creatively to a director’s requirements. What he learned from the teacher helped his career to a great deal.

These years are now indelible memories of the 95-year-old.

After relating his own stories in war years and in his youth, Shi Xing turns his attention to his family. His wife is from a family of revolutionaries. They met in Yan’an, the headquarters of the Communists in the 1930s and 1940s. Influenced by the parents, their three sons are art workers. Their eldest son Shi Jianfan is a director. The first and third sons got college education in art. The second son Shi Jindu studied at a night school and worked at a film studio. He is now the first-class state photographer.

Shi Jindu tells us on another occasion that in his early years he was deeply influenced by his father. His father at that time had a one-room private library full of books. The first day the son got formerly started in the film industry and the second day he went to a bookstore and bought all the books on cinematography.

Shi Lanya, a granddaughter of Shi Xing, is a performing artist. She appeared in “The Besieged City”, a 1990 television blockbuster based on a classic novel by Qian Zhongshu. She also appeared in “Lu Xun and Xu Guangping,” a television drama directed by his father Shi Jianfan. Shi Xing’s youngest grandson is a pianist. He was the youngest member of the province’s pianists association years ago. Now he is studying in America and piano is still his penchant.

In the interview with us, the master mentions frequently his motto for himself and his family: “Have decent income, travel the right road and make no efforts to make a fortune.” He emphasizes that young members of his family must have a career so that they can lead a decent life on the proceeds of their careers. He has donated his ancestral house in Yixing, Jiangsu Province to the local government. The house is now under the government protection as a historical heritage.

We chat for about three hours. When we say good-bye, the 95-year-old insists on walking us to the door of the ward. He kindly asks us to stay for lunch, saying he is rich enough to treat us to a dinner. Walking toward the elevator and looking back, we see him standing in the corridor and seeing us off.