On July 7, 1937, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out in full swing, and large areas of the country fell one after another. In the places where the fallen, puppet regimes appeared, and those spineless literati and entertainers all fell to the Japanese, wrote flattering words, and performed flattering dramas.
However, drama everyone Mr. Mei Lanfang, iron bones Zheng Zheng! Qi habitual long rainbow!
Mr. Mei Lanfang, also known as Lan, also known as Heming, breast name skirt sister, character Qihua, alias yuxuan master, stage name Lan Fang, Qing Guangxu twenty years (1894) was born in Beijing, ancestral home of Taizhou, Jiangsu. Master of Chinese Peking Opera performing arts.
Just when Mr. Mei's career was booming, the Japanese came, the country was in danger, the motherland was in flames of war, the anti-Japanese warriors forgot to die and defended the country, "'The big knife cut off the heads of the devils'" "'Our flesh and blood are formed into our new Great Wall, and the Chinese nation has reached the most dangerous time'".
As a very patriotic actor, Mei Lanfang never went out to visit the performance during the war, and refused to take the stage to perform for the Japanese and the Wang puppet regime. In 1931, after the "918" incident, Mr. Mei Lanfang successively rehearsed "Anti-Golden Soldier" and "Life and Death Hate" to promote the spirit of patriotism. In 1937, the Battle of Songhu broke out, and Shanghai fell at the end of November. Unwilling to live in Japanese-controlled areas, Mei Lanfang, who was in Shanghai, moved to Hong Kong in 1938. During her stay in Hong Kong, Mei Lanfang performed songs such as "Liang Hongyu" to inspire the people of the motherland to resist the war. Unfortunately, Hong Kong also fell at the end of 1941, Mei Lanfang sent her two children to chongqing to study, and the couple's life was not good, because the Japanese were constantly monitoring, unable to live freely at will, and eventually forced to move back to Shanghai.
At that time, in order to whitewash Taiping, the Japanese advocated the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Circle", and repeatedly asked Mei Lanfang to perform on stage. Mei Lanfang refused every time on the grounds that he was too old and in poor health, and in order to cut off the idea of Japanese hypocrisy, he simply grew a beard. Everyone knows that Mei Lanfang plays Dan Jiao, Dan Jiao is a woman, and with a beard, she naturally cannot perform. According to Mei Lanfang's youngest son, Mei Baozhen, who once asked his father curiously why he did not shave, Mr. Mei smiled and replied: "I have a small mustache, can the Japanese devils still force me to act?" However, the Japanese did not let Mei Lanfang go, they sent traitors to harass Mei Lanfang repeatedly, sometimes saying that the beard can be shaved off, sometimes saying that age is not a problem, and changing the method to urge Mei Lanfang to appear publicly. Mei Lanfang had no choice but to say that there was a physical problem, that is, she refused to perform publicly. Later, the traitors became more and more pressing, and in order to perfunctory them, Mei Lanfang had to go to the hospital opened by her friends, pretending to see a doctor, and sometimes even having to get injections to disguise.
In 1942, in order to curry favor with the Japanese masters, the Wang puppet regime decided to send Mei Lanfang to Japan to perform. Mei Lanfang received the order from the Wang puppet government to forcibly go to Japan, and was very anxious, so she had to ask a private doctor to give him three consecutive typhoid vaccinations. This injection is very toxic, after the beating, Mei Lanfang really began to have a high fever. The Wang puppet government was still not dead hearted, sent doctors to investigate, and found that Mr. Mei was indeed ill, which was the end.
Of course, the Japanese and traitorous governments were extremely dissatisfied with Mei Lanfang's resistance and wanted to retaliate against Mei Lanfang. Because Mei Lanfang's fame is too big, The Japanese pseudo can't do it directly, but they vulgarly freeze all of Mei Lanfang's deposits in Hong Kong. The Japanese pseudo-personnel felt that Mei Lanfang's family wanted to eat and live, and their deposits were frozen, so they could only come out to act. At that time, due to the predatory economic policies implemented by the Wang puppet regime in Shanghai, the people had difficulties in living, material shortages, and high prices. Ordinary citizens have money and it is not easy to buy grain, so they can only eat some substitutes mixed with rice bran.
Mei Lanfang can not perform, and did not learn other means of livelihood, the life at home is extremely difficult, eat the last meal without the next meal, even if you eat chaff dishes can not fill the stomach. What to do, how to earn money to make a living? Mei Lanfang had studied painting with the painter Wang Mengbai in his early years, and had studied painting art with painters such as Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi, and at this time, under the desperate circumstances, he decided to sell paintings for a living and make a few money to support his family. This news was soon known to the Japanese, and they found some hooligans to make trouble, and pasted a note on Mei Lanfang's painting that so-and-so had ordered and so-and-so had ordered. These so-and-so are all well-known traitor leaders in Shanghai and Nanjing, and as soon as their names appear, other painters avoid them, and where do they dare to buy. After Mei Lanfang knew about it, he was extremely angry, and he rushed to the place where he sold the paintings, tore all the paintings to pieces, preferring that his efforts be wasted rather than sell them to the Japanese.
As a result, Mei Lanfang could no longer make a living selling paintings, so he had to tearfully sell his old house in Beijing, and then sell his beloved collection that he had collected for many years. Unfortunately, this is also a drop in the bucket, and Mei Lanfang is forced to borrow money to survive.
Later, the famous painter Feng Zikai talked about this period of history, and once praised Mei Lanfang and said: "How many people are there in the vast history of Qing, and how many people have broken their rice bowls for the sake of patriotism?" ''