Yuan Shihai (11 February 1916 – 11 December 2002), formerly known as Ruilin, was a famous Chinese master of Peking Opera performing arts. He successfully shaped the character image of various personalities, especially the more than ten plays he starred in playing Cao Cao won widespread love from the audience, and was praised by the audience as "Living Cao Cao", creating a precedent for starring large-scale plays with a shelf flower face, forming a style system of Yuan Pai's performing arts. He is a winner of the Second Golden Disc Award, a deputy to the Fourth National People's Congress, a member of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a director of the Chinese Dramatists Association. Representative works: "Stealing Royal Horses", "On Heroes", "General Xianghe", "Li Kui Visiting Mother", "Sitting in the Village and Stealing Horses" and so on.
For the development and prosperity of the Cause of Peking Opera, Mr. Yuan Shihai has performed at the grass-roots level throughout the country, such as industry and mining, rural areas, troops, and county towns, and is deeply loved by the people. He loves drama and dedication, lives rigorously, is diligent in exercising, overcomes diseases, and always maintains a good physical and mental state, even in his old age, he still performs on stage with the ambition of "old Ji Futuo and ambition in a thousand miles", becoming a unique elderly artist on the Peking Opera stage.
Mr. Yuan Shihai has been very concerned about and actively involved in the training of young actors for many years. On stage, offstage teaching; words and deeds, tireless teaching. He went to all parts of the country to teach and give lectures, and successively accepted more than 20 apprentices, dedicated, conscientious, and dutiful, not seeking a false name, and selfless dedication. Fruitful. His students not only have Peking Opera, but also students of local opera such as Commentary, Han Opera, Jin Opera, and Hebei Zizi.
He actively participated in the rescue and inheritance of Peking Opera materials, completed the tasks of "audio and video" and "Sunset Project" with high quality, and as an advisor to the art guidance committee of the academy, he repeatedly called on old artists and actively took the lead in the work of inheriting and teaching art. He enthusiastically went to various colleges and universities to teach peking opera art to college students and foreign students.
Mr. Yuan Shihai's artistic talent is outstanding, and he has comprehensively studied and inherited the performance experience of his predecessors, and the traditional foundation is deep and solid, laying the foundation for his artistic innovation and the establishment of a unique performance style. The character images of various personalities he created on the stage are simple and bold, strong and powerful, conveying emotions and shaking people's hearts. He not only has a thick and loud voice and is full of feelings, but also good at performing, with the unique performance characteristics of "shelf flower face copper hammer singing", greatly improving the performance means of the shelf flower face on the stage, creating a precedent for starring large-scale plays with the rack flower face, and successfully shaping a large number of artistic images that can be called fine works and passed on to the world, such as Cao Cao, Lu Zhishen, Li Kui, Zhang Fei, Zhang Dingbian, Lian Po, Xiang Yu, Niu Gao, and Dou Erdun. Among the masses, there are the reputations of "living Cao Cao", "living Zhang Fei", "living Li Kui" and "living Lu Zhishen".