Since its birth, Xiangsheng has experienced two critical moments of life and death, and each time a master-level figure has stepped forward to turn the tide and save Xiangsheng from danger.
After liberation, due to its historical limitations, Xiangsheng could no longer adapt to the new social reality and faced the fate of being marginalized or even eliminated.
At the critical moment, Hou Baolin and other cross-talk artists of the older generation, with the help of Writers such as Lao She, carried out a major transformation of traditional cross-talk to remove the false and the true, to extract the essence, and created a number of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal works with educational, propaganda and praise significance. As a result, Xiangsheng was able to survive and was known as the "Light Cavalry of the Literary and Art Circles".
The new cross-talk form created by Hou Baolin, through the inheritance and development of Ma Ji, Jiang Kun and others, not only continued to live for several decades, but also in the 1980s, cross-talk was brought to a new height and became a popular art form in the whole society.
However, after the reform and opening up, the drawbacks of new cross-talk are becoming more and more apparent, and its creation and performance capabilities are increasingly unable to keep up with the appreciation and entertainment needs of the people, and there is a great danger of being eliminated by related art types such as sketches, and gradually fading out of the sight of mainstream consumer groups. Many cross-talk actors cannot adapt to changes in the market, are forced to transform, and even leave the cross-talk industry. Poor economic benefits lead to the continuous loss of talents; and the loss of talents will inevitably lead to the flow of spectators, the economic benefits are getting worse and worse, and crosstalk has entered a dead cycle.
At the critical moment, it was grassroots artist Guo Degang, after more than ten years of groping and rolling, holding high the banner of reviving traditional cross-talk, and gradually pulling young people back to the cross-talk theater to feel the charm of traditional cross-talk.
After Guo Degang became popular, xiangsheng returned to the public eye and became an important option for young people's leisure and entertainment; as a result, xiangsheng regained the support of funds, media, talents and policies, and truly gained a new life.
On the surface, it was Guo Degang who turned the tide, but the three gangs of a good man, in the most difficult period, gave Guo Degang the greatest help, zhang Wenshun.
Zhang Wenshun's help to Guo Degang can be summarized into three aspects:
The first is economic basic support. Guo Degang in the early stage of entrepreneurship, the most lacking is money, has reached the point where his wife Wang Hui sold cars to support, and Zhang Wenshun is a successful businessman, it is rumored that the external decoration of the transformation of Qianmen Street in Beijing is undertaken by Zhang Wenshun, and there is an 800-square-meter restaurant under his name.
Without Zhang Wenshun's financial support, whether Guo Degang can survive to the day of great popularity will have to play a big question mark.
The second is the support of the public opinion environment. In the early days of the Deyun Society, in addition to the economic difficulties, the constraints between peers also made Guo Degang distressed, and every three to five people came to find stubble, and they were all people with heads and faces, which Guo Degang could not afford at that time; at the critical moment, Zhang Wenshun came out of the horse, and between three words and two words, he threw the troublemakers out of the door, and said, "If you have the ability, you will rush me..."
Without Zhang Wenshun's vigorous maintenance, whether Guo Degang could survive to the day of great popularity would also have to play a big question mark.
The third is to lead by example. As the founder of Zhang Wenshun and the financial support provided, he was fully eligible to obtain part of the shares of Deyun Society, but he did not want it. It may be that he is not short of money, it may be that he is highly conscious, it may be that he... Whatever the reason, he didn't want it anyway.
If he wants it, Guo Degang will definitely give it, but correspondingly, will Li Jing want it? Even Xu Deliang, Wang Wenlin, Xing Wenzhao, Li Wenshan... The Nadekyun Society had long since fallen apart.
Before the Beijing Cross-Talk Conference was renamed Deyun Society, Guo Degang's name was Wende Quyi Society, referred to as Wende Society, using Zhang Wenshun's "Wen" and Guo Degang's "De", but Zhang Wenshun refused Guo Degang's kindness and took Guo Degang's "De" and Yunhe Jiuxiao's "Cloud", which was for Deyun Society.
The eight words "Cloud Crane Nine Dragons Soaring All Over the World" were also left by Zhang Wenshun for Guo Degang. Of course, Zhang Wenshun's original intention was that all the disciples of the Deyun Society would type according to these eight characters and give them stage names, so Li Jing's disciples initially used the word "cloud", such as Chongyun Kun. After retiring from the Deyun Society, Li Jing changed the words of her apprentices from "cloud" to "heaven", and Chongyun Kun also became Chongtianming; correspondingly, "Cloud Crane Nine Heavens Dragon Soaring Four Seas" also became the exclusive property of Guo Degang's disciples.
Without Zhang Wenshun's example, the Deyun Society may be the Wende Society, which may be fragmented, and whether it has today's glory will also have to play a big question mark.
On the whole, half of the prestige of the Deyun Society belongs to Zhang Wenshun; and the Deyun Society supports half of the sky of cross-talk.
Guo Degang is the cross-talk hero who turned the tide of the tide, and Zhang Wenshun is Guo Degang's spiritual pillar and the gold lord behind it, and it is not an exaggeration to say that Zhang Wenshun saved the cross-talk cause.
Zhang Wenshun may not be comparable to Hou Baolin, Ma Ji and others in terms of artistic level, but his contribution to the cross-talk industry can definitely be compared with the two, and they are irreplaceable figures in the history of cross-talk.