Sun Yumin: Let life always maintain a high-spirited posture

【Into the Writers】

Author: Kang Shengli Han Yeting

At the age of 82, she is a disciple of Peking Opera master Xun Huisheng. Seventy years from the art, suffering from the world, in the most difficult time, she also refused to bow to fate, and finally laid out the spring of her life, and won the various honors that opera people can get. Looking back on her life, she proudly said: "I have lived two lifetimes and lived twice as much." ”

A black hair, slightly light makeup, with exquisite earrings and bracelets, in addition to the graceful and elegant temperament, there is also a stubbornness that does not obey the old. This is the first impression given to this author by Sun Yumin, an 82-year-old Peking Opera performance artist.

With the deepening of the conversation, the author gradually understood that that temperament is the indifference that has been precipitated in the years, and the stubbornness is the tenacity after being tempered by life.

Sun Yumin guangming picture

In 1940, Sun Yumin was born in a poor family in a shanghai alley. At the age of seven, her parents divorced, and she and her two younger sisters lived with their mother. The mother, who does not have a fixed job, bravely supports the family's livelihood. As the eldest in the family, Sun Yumin witnessed the hardships of life, and was also influenced by her mother and developed a strong personality. In the decades that followed, whenever she encountered difficulties, she told herself to "be self-reliant like her mother."

"Parents love their children, and they have far-reaching plans." In order to let her daughter have a livelihood in the future, her mother, who loves to listen to opera, asks Sun Yumin to learn to sing Peking Opera with a violinist. Sun Yumin has a good voice and is also smart, and once he learns, he will take the stage at the age of 8 to perform "Female Solution".

One day in 1952, 12-year-old Sun Yumin helped his mother buy salt, and saw an enrollment advertisement for the Beijing Yipei Opera School on the salt-wrapped paper, but the registration time had passed for three months. His love for Peking Opera and his desire to change his destiny made Sun Yumin unwilling to give up. Late at night, she took advantage of her family's sleep, got up and wrote a cover letter to the school, in addition to introducing her experience of studying drama, she also said that "even if you are a transfer student." Seven days later, I received a reply letter with only 21 words in it, "I received the letter, I can give additional consideration, but I must come to Beijing for an interview and be admitted after passing."

After passing the interview, Sun Yumin successfully entered the drama school. In the years of school, she got up at less than five o'clock every day and was always the first to appear in the practice room. Every time she took an exam, she demanded that she score five points. Once, when she scored four points in the basic skills test, she punished herself for not eating for three days. By the third day, she was so hungry that she was weak, but she still said to herself in her heart: "Who made you get four points, you don't deserve to eat!" ”

In 1959, Sun Yumin graduated from the drama school and was assigned to the Xun Huisheng Peking Opera Troupe. Once, Xun Huisheng performed "Xun Guanniang", although he was nearly a flower armour, he still sang softly and his movements were light, which made Sun Yumin very impressed. She and several classmates privately imitated Mr. Xun's performances and singing voices. It was supposed to be a play, but Sun Yumin actually imitated it so well that her classmates almost dropped their jaws. When Xun Huisheng heard about this, he called Sun Yumin to the front and asked him to perform a performance of "Brothers and Sisters Xi Arrow" in "Xun Guanniang". Sun Yumin's performance made Xun Huisheng very satisfied, he said: "You child, you are really smarter than anyone!" Tomorrow come to my place to learn drama, I will perform this play two more times, and then you will perform it. In this way, Sun Yumin officially worshiped Xun Huisheng as a teacher and began his Xun Pai performance career, becoming a famous Xun Pai artist decades later.

When Sun Yumin bloomed artistically on the stage, the storm of the "Cultural Revolution" suddenly struck. She could not stand the persecution of the rebels and jumped off the building in anger to seek death. Although he was saved by a branch, his lumbar spine was broken, his feet were crushed and fractured, and the heart of his right foot was exposed to bones.

There is a sentence in Xia Yan's essay "Wild Grass": "The moment life begins, it brings the grass that comes from the struggle, and it is the tough grass, and only this kind of grass can proudly laugh at the potted flowers raised in the glass shed." "Sun Yumin is like an immortal weed, no matter the wind and rain, always keep his life in a high-spirited posture."

In order to get back on her feet, she endured the sharp pain of the cone, stepped on the floor with her bare bones, and practiced over and over again, moving half a step and half a step. After five years on her sickbed, she was finally able to walk like a normal person, creating a medical miracle. But she was not satisfied and wanted to return to the stage. In a "this is impossible" skepticism, she has five surgeries, and finally drags a high and a low foot back to the stage, starting the second spring of her artistic career.

Sun Yumin, who returned to the stage, soon became a pillar of the troupe, performing 120 to 160 performances a year. Because the spine has been seriously injured, standing on the stage for a long time, the pain of drilling the heart will rush straight up from the heart of the foot. Despite this, she has not taken sick leave for several consecutive years, has not returned to the scene once, and has encountered other actors who cannot appear on stage for some reason, and she often saves the scene. For this reason, colleagues called her "iron throat steel throat".

Many opera actors, because they began to learn drama very early, read little, and their education is not high, Sun Yumin was ridiculed as "uneducated" when he was young. At that moment, her stronger energy came up again. In order to fight for breath, for decades, in addition to practicing and performing, she insisted on reading and writing hard, leaving a large number of essays, comments and academic articles, and even in the five years when she was paralyzed in bed, her pen never stopped, and wrote "Peking Opera Singing Cavity Experience Drops" and "Xun's Water Sleeves, Movements and Gestures Introduction" and other speeches.

According to incomplete statistics, as of now, Sun Yumin has published more than 20 works such as "Tearful Laughter", "Sun Yumin Talks about Art", "My Two Lifetimes", "Sun Yumin's Singing Accompaniment Music Score Collection", "Sun Yumin's Research Anthology", "Pear Garden Manga", "My Life Perception", "Sun Yumin's Miscellaneous Essays", "Sun Yumin's Essay Collection", "How I Act", "Xun Pai Artistic Language Characteristics" and so on. Sun Yumin's dedication has been widely recognized, and she has won many industry awards such as the Chinese Drama Plum Blossom Award, mei lanfang gold award, magnolia award, and China Golden Disc Award.

Sun Yumin, who is now 82 years old, is still not idle, dragging her disabled body, while running for the rescue of the older generation of Peking Opera artists, while personally teaching skills to the young generation, receiving more than 100 apprentices. At present, sun Yumin's initiative to record the "Artist Interview" has launched the album of 25 famous artists such as Li Huifang and Ru Yuanjun, which has become a national treasure archive in the opera industry. In addition, she supported Zhang Xuejin, Liu Xiurong, Li Yufu, Yan Shouping and the old artists to publish ten biographies.

Walking through the childhood chased by poverty, facing the youth ravaged by suffering, Sun Yumin, who has been in the art for seventy years, has suffered a lot of hardships in the world, and has also gained the honor of the industry, looking back on her life, she proudly said: "I have lived two lifetimes and lived a double value." ”

Guangming Daily (2022.05.13. 16th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily