Jimu news reporter Zhan Ju
"Whether it is a post-60s or a post-70s, the mentality must be young."
At 13:00 noon on March 9, in a rural compound in Quyang County, Baoding, Hebei Province, 51-year-old Zhen Shusuo, dressed in a traditional green costume, wielded a knife and gun while interacting with netizens in the live broadcast room. In the comment area, many people praised Zhen Shusuo for being very young, and some people called her the inheritor of opera.
More than twenty years ago, Zhen Shusuo traveled to Wenzhou and became the most well-known Daomadan "Lady" in the local opera industry; now, as the opera market shrinks, she leaves the public eye and returns to the countryside to the online stage, and her career continues in another way.
Young to learn opera
Zhen Shusuo has loved opera since childhood, loves martial arts, and worships those chivalrous warriors who teach bad people and fight uneven postures.
In the 1980s, opera became widely popular, and many families sent their children to the drama school to learn to sing, looking forward to entering the theater troupe after studying and performing to survive.
At the age of 13, her mother, who also liked opera, sent Zhen Shusuo to a drama school in Quyang County, and 188 people studied with her. At that time, the tuition fee of 8 yuan per month was a big expense for the family.
Zhen Shusuo still remembers that the first time she appeared on stage was the performance organized by the drama school, which was the green snake section of the White Snake Legend. "I was still young, I couldn't stand up the costumes, and my sleeves rolled up and rolled up." Since then, she has followed the school team to the countryside to perform.
In school, I practice basic skills, including lower back, leg drain, kicking, top lifting and other movements. After 2 years of trial and error, Zhen Shusuo practiced solid basic skills and successfully entered the county troupe to follow the performance.
At that time, the troupe did not have a clear division of labor, and the performances were all Hebei Zizi and critics, and Zhen Shusuo was not a professional knife and horse. Dao Ma Dan is a complete profession of literature and martial arts, not only to practice Wu Dan's movements, but also to learn the skills of reading white, adjusting the voice and other literary dramas. Until 1994, in the environment of the northern drama downturn, in order to survive, Zhen Shusuo, who had been out of the drama school for many years, went to Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, with her lover, to formally practice the sword and horse dan, and became famous in the local opera circle.
Wenzhou's reddest knife Madan
Even now, when mentioning "lady" in the Wenzhou opera circle, no one does not recognize it.
When she arrived in Wenzhou in 1994, Zhen Shusuo had just given birth to a child, and kung fu had fallen a lot, but after practicing for 7 days, she began to perform on stage. The first one was not smooth, the gun fell to the ground many times due to mistakes, and the audience laughed from time to time.
"After I got off the field, I cried so hard that I didn't want to practice." Fortunately, after the enlightenment of the predecessors, Zhen Shusuo persisted. Unexpectedly, because the previous daily training laid a solid foundation, she insisted on training for half a month, and her skills were restored.
In the 1990s, Wenzhou's opera industry was extremely hot, the local people had money and were willing to spend money to watch dramas, and in the case of the downturn in northern opera, the Wenzhou opera market flourished.
Since going to drama school, Zhen Shusuo's stage name has always been "Lady Girl". Although she is not from a science class, when performing in Wenzhou, "Lady Girl" not only has solid basic skills, hard work, and good popularity. During the performance, she also created some difficult moves. Unconsciously, "Lady" became the first Wudan in Wenzhou.
"At that time, if there was no 'girl', others wouldn't let you play here." At that time, the popular "fighting platform" in the south, two drama classes fighting drama, fighting will be rewarded, and the popularity will also increase. There are 20 fight stages a year, and the "girls" have not lost. The local audience laughed and said, "How many WuDans come, they can't fight a 'youyi'." ”
Because Zhen Shusuo is too hot, when she is most tired, she has to perform three times a day. Sometimes just after getting off the stage, I was dragged away by other troupes on a motorcycle, "At that time, there was no me, they couldn't start the play, and I couldn't refuse." ”
In that era, the daily income of Zhen Shusuo and her lover had reached 360 yuan, and the house price in Wenzhou was only 2,000 yuan per square meter at that time.
Change the stage and continue
In the blink of an eye, Zhen Shusuo has been performing in Wenzhou for more than twenty years, and her son and daughter have grown up.
In 2020, when the new crown epidemic came, many local opera performances in Wenzhou were cancelled, and since then they have resumed performances intermittently, without performing a total of several performances.
In the days when there was no performance, Zhen Shusuo insisted on practicing every day. The son found that his mother was still practicing every day and suggested that she try it out on a live video. Unexpectedly, as soon as her live broadcast was opened during the epidemic, her popularity was particularly strong. On the 5th day of broadcasting, more than 10,000 people watched in the live broadcast room, and Zhen Shusuo was very excited.
After the epidemic passed, the local opera performance market has been much worse than before, and Zhen Shusuo chose to return to her hometown in Hebei with her lover.
Although the place was changed, Zhen Shusuo's live broadcast continued. The difference is that compared with the previous live broadcast room, the number of people in each live broadcast room is only one or two dozen or even a few people, but Zhen Shusuo has been insisting. Hardcore fans also encouraged her in the comments section, "Gold always shines." ”
Two years have passed, and Zhen Shusuo's video account has more than 1 million fans. Today, she broadcasts two livestreams a day, each with more than 10,000 online likes.
In the video taken by Zhen Shusuo, the hottest one reached 1.39 million likes, and the video was filmed of her waving a fire stick, and the background was a cauldron burning in a rural courtyard. Many people in the comment area praised "good kung fu", and many post-zero and post-90s liked the video.
Zhen Shusuo claims to be an introvert and a person with few words, but she does not stop practicing every day. Because she has been looking forward to the opportunity to return to the stage, when the opportunity comes, she will seize it steadily.