On October 19, 2012, a newly adapted set of "Han Yuniang" was first unveiled as an opera program at the 14th Shanghai Arts Festival in China.
In a round of applause, few people noticed this Peking Opera, and the name of the screenwriter behind it was also very "famous".
In fact, this screenwriter's reputation in the Peking Opera circle is far less famous than his reputation in the political circles, because he is Li Ruihuan, a former member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and former chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
This small-eyed leader has always been very indifferent to gains and losses, and his favorite in life is philosophy and Peking Opera.
After his retirement, Li Ruihuan also published a book called "Philosophy for Philosophy", which contains most of the articles and conversations he has written since 1981, as well as his experience of Marxist philosophy.
What is even more surprising is that Li Ruihuan flexibly applied the philosophical knowledge he learned and began to be fascinated by the road of adaptation of Chinese Peking Opera...
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, from the bottom carpenter to the mayor of Tianjin</h1>
Li Ruihuan, who was born as a carpenter, had a very spirit of studying and exploring and summarizing at a young age.
In his youth, carpenters had to go through a process called "enlargement", that is, the contents of the drawings were transferred to the same proportion of large wood, and then the apprentices processed it.
In the process of "enlarging the sample", if there is a problem, the whole piece of wood is wasted, so the "enlarged sample" can be said to be the "core secret" of the old carpenter's work.
However, while other apprentices were racking their brains to learn from the master how to "enlarge the sample", Li Ruihuan was thinking about how to stop letting the carpenter "enlarge the sample".
In order to solve this problem, Li Ruihuan, who had only been in school for less than six years, gritted his teeth and began to teach himself relevant mathematical knowledge. In 1958, the young Li Ruihuan was successfully admitted to the Beijing Jiangong Yu College majoring in industry and civil architecture, and since then, he has finally fulfilled his wish and begun to swim in the wider ocean of learning.
Also in the summer of 1958, Li Ruihuan relied on his knowledge and a set of "simple carpentry algorithms" summarized in the workmanship, and for the first time, he completed the task without "enlarging the sample".
Because of the saying that "lofting technology is unattainable, do not enlarge the sample unless luban" circulated among carpenters in the past, Li Ruihuan was also called "Young Luban", and with this outstanding breakthrough, he was selected as the "model worker" of the year, and became a "storm figure" on the news for a time.
In addition to "enlarging the sample", Li Ruihuan also invented and innovated more than a hundred technologies. Using the geometric principles of mathematics, he created nine simple calculation tables and "soil formulas", which greatly improved the work efficiency of civil workers at that time; his own set of "mechanical plastering methods" is still used by civil workers.
In addition to having excellent ability to sort out and summarize, Li Ruihuan, who is from the bottom of the people, can also experience the suffering and happiness of the people, so he is also more "grounded".
Due to his excellent performance, Li Ruihuan was gradually promoted from a worker to secretary of the party branch, deputy secretary of the party committee, secretary of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, and later went to Tianjin to serve as the secretary of the municipal party committee and the mayor.
In the years of working in Tianjin, Li Ruihuan liked to "gather people from all walks of life and people's congress deputies to hold meetings", and directly broadcast the content of the meeting on television to collect feedback from the people.
Once, an old lady reflected on the spot that her gas stove could not be lit, a group of experts analyzed from all angles for half a day, Li Ruihuan listened to it, only replied to a question: "You say so much, the old lady only wants the gas stove 'ignition on the fire'." ”
Such a sharp point out of substance was also affectionately called "Li Ruihuan's old lady philosophy" by the people of Tianjin later.
In fact, Li Ruihuan, who advocates practical work, very much advocates a sentence, that is, "go up the mountain and go down to the water to ask the fishing tree, we must know the public opinion and listen to the folk songs", and he often really "goes down to the grass-roots level" to pay attention to the people's feelings and public opinion.
Under the leadership of Li Ruihuan, from 1982 to 1988, the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government built more than twice as many new housing, completed the project of luan into Tianjin, and also built the Central Ring Road in the bustling urban area, and set up and built cultural and tourism facilities such as Nanshi Food Street, Hotel Street, and Ancient Culture Street.
He has done more than 100 real "practical things" for the people and won the unanimous praise of the people of Tianjin.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > two, after retirement, full-time Peking Opera adaptation of life</h1>
In 2003, Li Ruihuan officially stepped down from his post at the central government, and from then on began his retirement life of immersion in Peking Opera and books.
After the founding of New China, the stage of Peking Opera, the national essence of China, has always faced the problem of monotony and lack.
The reason is that, first, due to the large number of "water injections" in the traditional Peking Opera in order to "rhyme" and kill time, the plot is protracted and inconsistent; the second is due to social development and open-mindedness, and some plots in the past are no longer accepted by modern people. Therefore, the re-adaptation of Peking Opera lyrics has also become a key issue in the opera industry after the founding of New China.
As early as the 1980s, this problem was seen by Li Ruihuan, who loved Peking Opera.
In 1985, during a research trip, Li Ruihuan listened to the Peking Opera tapes in the car and suddenly had a thought: If a group of outstanding Peking Opera actors were organized to match the contents of these Peking Opera tapes with pictures, could it be more intuitive to save the lost content in Peking Opera?
When all is said and done, Li Ruihuan quickly proposed and promoted the "Essence of Peking Opera Audio and Video" project.
This project basically includes the representative works of most of the famous artists in modern Peking Opera, and its purpose is to hope that through the function of audio and video, a number of outstanding Peking Opera repertoire that are on the verge of being lost will be saved, and the stage image of the older generation of famous artists will be restored and reproduced.
This project took 17 years of hard work, with more than 20,000 people participating in it, and finally finished and premiered at the end of 2003, showing and preserving China's excellent Peking Opera culture for future generations.
Li Ruihuan's contribution to Peking Opera is far more than that.
In order to save the old scripts buried in the long river of history, Li Ruihuan "personally went to battle" and began to revise, sort out and adapt the old Peking Opera scripts, which was more than twenty years.
Especially after retirement, Li Ruihuan focused on the adaptation of Peking Opera scripts. Those well-known legends and famous genre plays, the original framework of which Li Ruihuan has been preserved as much as possible, at the same time, he also combines the audience aesthetics of the new era and the ideas of the times, and makes different adaptations in a targeted manner.
Some plots are inconsistent, Li Ruihuan will smooth out the character story relationship and rearrange the plot; some plays are redundant, Li Ruihuan will carefully craft the text, remove repetitive and useless nonsense, refine the whole play, and strengthen the core.
The "Han Yuniang" mentioned in the opening paragraph is an excerpt adapted by Li Ruihuan from Mei Pai's Peking Opera "Life and Death Hate".
Under the pen of Li Ruihuan's "Ten Easy Drafts", the entire script is no longer limited to a general display of the harsh environment at that time, but also highlights Han Yuniang's indomitable steadfastness.
The repertoire has also been praised by the Peking opera community as "a very successful example for the adaptation of traditional Peking opera".
In addition, Li Ruihuan has also revised many scripts. Under his pen, most of the Peking Opera was "cut from complicated and simplified", from the original four hours to two hours, which highlighted the structure of the script.
For example, in his adaptation of the West Chamber, the original reunion ending was abandoned, and the plot ended abruptly after the farewell of the long pavilion, and the large film in the back was left blank for the fans to experience for themselves.
Such an adaptation was praised by many opera fans, and was even evaluated by the son of the famous Peking Opera actor Ma Lianliang as "the most wonderful part of the adaptation".
Li Ruihuan's contribution to Peking Opera has been unanimously recognized by people from all walks of life in the Chinese Peking Opera circle.
In April 2009, Li Ruihuan personally revised and adapted the five major plays "Han Yuniang", "Xi Xiang Ji", "Liu Lanzhi", "Chu Gong Hate" and "Jinshan Temple, Broken Bridge, Leifeng Pagoda" and opened the first performance at the Tianjin China Theatre, which won unanimous praise from fans.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > three, "what helps me the most is philosophy."</h1>
While tirelessly adapting Peking Opera, Li Ruihuan also spent a lot of time reading and writing after retirement. He once mentioned with emotion that his childhood education career was "too bitter and too tired", and in Li Ruihuan's memory, in order to study, he was not less beaten by his mother.
One year, his mother took him to sell a batch of "stubble" for burning fires and prepared to buy some fritters for the New Year, but when passing by the book stall, the young Li Ruihuan secretly used the money to buy a set of books called "Coincidence".
After the mother learned of this, she was so angry that she chased him all the way with a broom, and Li Ruihuan did not dare to go home after being knocked out of the house, and stood barefoot in the waxing moon for a long time. Later, his mother found him and cried while saying: "It is good to love reading, but where is the money in the family to buy you books?" ”
This incident deeply impressed Li Ruihuan. Therefore, after retirement, Li Ruihuan's wish is: "I want to easily read a little book that I want to read." ”
While studying, Li Ruihuan also quietly began to sponsor poor college students under the name of "an old party member", which was enough to fund hundreds of college students to successfully complete their studies and go to society.
Because Li Ruihuan was indifferent to fame and fortune, those college students who were sponsored by him spent many years without knowing that the money was actually funded by the national leader Li Ruihuan...
When talking about the source of money for funding college students, Li Ruihuan also gave an explanation: part of the money he used to fund students came from the fees earned from publishing books, partly from the bonuses obtained for adapting Peking Opera, and the rest was his salary and pension for many years.
In Li Ruihuan's plan, it seems natural to take a part of his salary to support poor college students: "Just when I had never been an official, I had never made this money." ”
Among the many books, Li Ruihuan is most interested in philosophical books. He not only reads often, but also constantly writes his own impressions into his own experiences.
Since 2005, Li Ruihuan has successively published many works such as "Dialectics with Talk", "Philosophy for Studying Philosophy", "Opinions and Sayings", and "Pragmatic Reasoning".
Among the many books published, Li Ruihuan attaches the most importance to "Learning Philosophy and Using Philosophy", which covers a wide range of branches that Li Ruihuan has been responsible for or that he is interested in.
Therefore, the book includes ethnicity, religion, philosophy, engineering, design, etc., and there is no lack of thoughts and perceptions on the development of new China - and in this book, Li Ruihuan also concluded: "After learning philosophy, no matter when and what work you do, he will give you ideas, give you directions, and give you methods." ”
In fact, the influence of philosophy on Li Ruihuan is very large, and Li Ruihuan has mentioned more than once, "The philosophy that has helped me the most is philosophy."
Whether it is to understand and solve problems from the perspective of ordinary people at work, or to adapt Peking Opera from a macro perspective and from a lofty height after retirement, Li Ruihuan can control it well and get the best results from it, which is the superb wisdom that Li Ruihuan has learned from years of studying philosophy.
As a former leader of the party and the state, After retirement, Li Ruihuan is still relying on his own strength and influence to contribute to the development and prosperity of new China.
Although he has stepped down from his leadership position, Li Ruihuan still occasionally inspects the development of Tianjin enterprises and understands the current situation of people's livelihood.
As a leader who has made great contributions to new China, Li Ruihuan's "spirit of not being afraid of hardship and not accepting defeat" in his youth to his "spirit of hard work" and "spirit of research and sorting" in the later period are worth learning.
As the new generation of New China, we must not only look up to the leaders of the older generation of revolutionaries in our work and study, but also strive to surpass them, make new contributions in the new era, add luster to China's new future, and make unremitting efforts for the great "Chinese Dream"!