"I remembered it when I was more than two years old, when I heard Yang Chunfu, the director of our orphanage, say that I was their orphan. My surname is Chen, why is my surname Chen, my mother is Chen Guofu's thousand gold, the only thousand gold. ”
This is what youku said when the program team of the documentary "Shengshi Talk Collection" interviewed Chen Meiyue.
Who is Chen Guofu? Friends who are familiar with China's modern history should be very familiar with this name.
In the 20s and 40s of last century, the "four major families" were in power for a while, and the saying of "The Chen Family Party in the World of the Jiang Family" was also well known. Among them, "Chen Family" refers to the "CC Family" Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu brothers.
And Chen Meiyue is the granddaughter of Chen Guofu of the "Four Great Families". Therefore, it is not false to say that she came from a famous family.
Chen Meiyue's life has ups and downs, quite legendary.
As Chen Guofu's only granddaughter, she was born in a Kuomintang prison and grew up in an orphanage; she sang Hongjin gate at the age of fifteen and became a generation of celebrities, but later passed the days of a black black blind stream artist for ten years; she was childless in her life, but became a "super mother" of 23 orphans...
Chen Meiyue
Chen Meiyue's mother was Chen Guofu's Qianjin Chen Zebao (it is said that Chen Zebao was born to Chen Guofu's second sister Chen Jingfu and later passed on to Chen Guofu).
Chen Zebao later married an underground ccp member, Chen Meiyue's father, who was betrayed by traitors in 1945 and then secretly executed by Chiang Kai-shek in Taiyuan Prison;
On a snowy winter night in the same year, Xiao Meiyue was born in a heavily guarded prison in Nanjing.
Her mother hoped that she would be as noble, strong and independent as the plum blossoms of the proud snow in the future. Therefore, she was given the name "Mei yue".
Chen Zebao is also said to have died in prison, and it is said that she went to the United States.
In short, soon after Chen Meiyue was born, she was sent to an orphanage to live until she was 5 years old, and then she was taken back to Kaifeng for adoption by a maid of the Chen family before, and together with her helpless grandmother, she lived a life under the fence.
Juvenile Chen Meiyue
The maid of the Chen family has a son who is half a year younger than Chen Meiyue, and the maid let her son go to school, but on the grounds that Chen Meiyue is a girl, she was not allowed to go to school, and let her go to pick up her "brother" every day, and when she returned home, she was asked to do a lot of housework.
Chen Meiyue, who has a strong nature, is very unwilling and does not want to live such a life in her heart. When she grew up to be 8 years old, the relevant units in Zhengzhou went to Kaifeng to recruit Yu opera students, and Xiao Meiyue resolutely entered the examination room and successfully passed the examination with her cleverness.
It turned out that in her free time to accompany the maid's son to study, she heard the street horn playing Yu opera, and she followed along, and she had already mastered the main singing sections of many famous characters.
Before leaving, she knelt in front of her grandmother: "After I sing and earn money, I will honor you well..." (Chen Meiyue confessed in the program that she could succeed and was very grateful to her grandmother, who had been dependent on each other for more than 20 years, and her grandmother died in 1972).
Since then, Chen Meiyue has begun her dramatic life.
Street horns often play Yu operas
After entering the door of the drama school, Xiao Meiyue was very diligent in both learning drama and doing chores, and when she had time, she secretly practiced her skills in the corner, and practiced hanging her voice in the morning wind.
She thought to herself that she must seize this opportunity well and not be expelled. Gradually, she became fascinated by this industry.
Fast forward 4 years of time, 12-year-old Xiao Meiyue smeared grease and powder, changed into a costume, participated in the graduation report performance of this class of students, and finally won the most applause.
Kung Fu pays off.
At the same time, she was photographed by the Tianjin Xiaobaihuayu Opera Troupe and named her "Twelve Reds", and has since become famous in Jinmen.
She continued to immerse herself in learning the art, studying hard, singing and doing, and the fire was pure. By the age of 15, Chen Meiyue had become the most popular "top card" actor in the troupe.
The audience loves to watch her acting in "Thirteen Sisters Stealing Knives" and "Golden Yunu", etc., as long as she appears on the scene, a mouth, basically get a full house.
Chen Meiyue drama photo
In October 1963, Chen Meiyue accompanied the Xiaobaihuayu Opera Troupe to Beijing to perform "Thirteen Sisters Stealing Knives". During the performance, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and other party and state leaders sat in the audience.
Chen Meiyue performed with all her might, and every cell of her body turned into the heroine she played.
After the performance, the applause was thunderous. Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai walked up to the stage with great interest, and Zhou Enlai even tightly held Chen Meiyue's hand and said excitedly: "You are a living thirteenth sister"...
Since then, the "Twelve Reds" have become more popular, and Chen Meiyue has gone to the peak of her acting career.
However, the studious Chen Meiyue was not satisfied with the status quo, and she also studied calligraphy and painting with famous teachers in her spare time. She worshiped Liu Huanyuan, a master tutor at Nankai University, and she confessed in her later years that her painting style was that of Liu Huanyuan.
However, just as Chen Meiyue was in the middle of the day, the catastrophe came, and she fell from the leader of the troupe to a sinner referred to by a thousand husbands overnight.
Premier Zhou Enlai received Chen Meiyuezhao
Chen Meiyue was saddled with the name of "sinner" and could not stay in the troupe any longer, so she had to live a life of wandering.
This girl in her early twenties also cried out in her heart: Why me? What the hell am I doing wrong?
She even tried to end herself for a while to seek relief, but in the end she survived, she was a plum blossom of pride, how could she be discouraged by a little setback?
Unable to sing opera in the city, she went to the remote countryside to sell art for a living, singing "model plays" in some small theater troupes to earn a few grain money.
She had studied calligraphy and painting with a master artist named Liu in the troupe, and after his death, she left her three young children. Chen Meiyue then took them into custody and took care of their lives personally.
In this life, the most rare thing is to be able to save others when they are most difficult. Chen Meiyue did the best job of this.
Chen Meiyue's calligraphy and painting works
In the turbulent days, she actually adopted 23 orphans and supported 3 widows and the elderly!
She traveled to many provinces to sell art and sing opera, almost a shot to change places, in addition to painting, engraving on the pen... She would do whatever she could, and then use the meager salary she earned to provide for her "children."
Therefore, she did not marry until the age of 34 and was childless in her life, and she gave all her efforts and energy to these orphans.
And these children did not fail to live up to the "mother", under her influence, they have grown into outstanding talents in the future: 23 people have graduated from all universities, including 4 masters, 7 doctors, and the rest have become senior engineers, business leaders and so on.
And these children have always been very grateful and filial to Chen Meiyue, in the interview of the Youku program group, one by one "mother" and "aunt" called. In their eyes, Chen Meiyue is the sky, the earth, and their "super mother".
Chen Meiyue and one of her "sons"
Chen Meiyue did not return to the theater stage later, but was transferred to work at the Zhengzhou Zoo. But in her heart, she is always worried about the cause she loves.
After retiring, Chen Meiyue began to devote herself to the study of drama and the art of calligraphy and painting. She wanted to record the drama face that she had been familiar with for a long time. But there's a question – what materials to use?
The price of velvet molding is too high, the plaster is not strong enough, the clay sculpture is too rough, and it is not easy to color. Later, she suddenly thought: Can I make it with paper?
Just do it! But the process was even more difficult than expected, and after countless failures, she finally succeeded. Became the founder of "Papier-mâché Drama Facebook".
She has made more than 10,000 papier-mâché masks, including Shanghai opera, Peking opera, Yu opera, Sichuan opera and so on. In 1995, Chen Meiyue was also awarded the title of "Master of Folk Arts and Crafts" by UNESCO.
Paper-shaped face mask created by Chen Meiyue
After that, she taught the paper face painting technique to more than 100 laid-off workers in Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Jiaozuo, and Anhui without reservation;
She also built industrial product processing factories in poverty-stricken areas, teaching more than 700 women in 20 villages to embroider sachets, make paper and plastic fans, and make dramatic faces. Later, she used her social connections to help them develop sales channels.
In addition, Chen Meiyue, who is proficient in calligraphy and painting, spent half a month before the 1995 World Women's Conference to draw a "Five Hundred Luohan Diagram" on a long scroll of more than ten meters long, and exhibited it at the World Women's Conference.
Someone wanted to spend a high price of 200,000 yuan to take the painting, but Chen Meiyue refused, and she did not hesitate to give the painting to the China Women's Museum free of charge.
In addition, in 2012, with the support of her husband, Chen Meiyue completed the 520,000-word "Hundred Family Name Culture Totem" that took many years, becoming the most complete surname culture research work so far...
Chen Meiyue painted with her hands
Chen Meiyue's biography has been included in the "Who's Who in China International" and "General Catalogue of Celebrities in Contemporary Chinese Folk Art". Why are her achievements recognized by society and the people? Just because she was after a celebrity? I don't think so; is that because her artistic achievements are high? I don't see it either.
I think it's mainly because of her "love" heart that has not changed for decades.
Ms. Chen Meiyue's life was bumpy and she suffered various hardships. Instead of complaining about the injustice of fate and society, she spread love in suffering, saved people urgently, helped people's loneliness, and selflessly dedicated herself.
Chen Meiyue took a group photo with Chairman Huang Hanliang, Secretary-General of the Philippines and ASEAN, and representatives of the Chaoshan Federation of Sects
At the Mid-Autumn Festival Gala of Zhengzhou Television Station in one year, Chen Meiyue participated in the party as a guest. Chen Meiyue in the film and television materials - a white shirt, a vest, simple and ordinary, no different from ordinary Chinese women.
The host invited her to the stage and asked her to say a few words, she said: "I hope that everyone in the world can have a heart of love and dedicate to the society." Just a few words, but I believe it is a heartfelt word, because for so many years, she has done it.
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