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Text: Yening Wantang said entertainment
Edit|Yening Wantang said entertainment
Preface
Do you still remember the once popular "Beijing flavor Xiaosheng"? He once amazed countless music fans with his unique voice and style, and was surrounded by the world on the altar.
But when he was in Vanity Fair, he also fell, and was once spurned and fell into a low point in his life.
What kind of legendary and much-criticized life experience did this former "master of popular Peking Opera" experience? Let us step into his story and see what kind of fate this short-lived but hard-to-wither artist is.
Li Yugang: When the dream is stormy - from a poor boy to the third runner-up of the Avenue of Stars
Li Yugang was born into a poor family in Changchun City, Jilin Province.
Despite his poor family, he had a passionate love for the art of singing and dancing since he was a child.
Relying on his persistent pursuit of art, he was finally admitted to the Jilin Provincial Art Institute.
However, the family was too poor to pay for his tuition.
In order not to burden his family, Li Yugang chose to give up the opportunity to go to university, and came to the capital alone with a longing for Beijing, a dream place.
In Beijing, Li Yugang lived a typical "North Drift life".
In order to make ends meet, he worked as a waiter, a car salesman, a clothing store owner, and other jobs, but he was never able to truly display his artistic talents.
Until one day, a chance encounter made him discover his unique "killer feature".
It was when he was singing in a speakeasy, and the female singer who was supposed to work with him temporarily missed the appointment for some reason.
In the face of the imminent performance, Li Yugang resolutely played the roles of male and female, alternating between a hoarse and low male voice and a deliberately suppressed falsetto female voice.
This unique style of fusing the singing elements of Peking Opera with pop music won the applause of the audience.
Since then, Li Yugang has begun to concentrate on the basic skills of Peking Opera, and gradually formed his own signature "male singing female voice" unique skills.
In 2007, Li Yugang participated in the talent show "Avenue of Stars" held by CCTV.
With his innovative interpretation of traditional Peking Opera and pop music elements, he performed a very personal style of "The New Concubine Drunk" on the stage of the show, and finally won the runner-up award of the season, and became a household name overnight.
There are many people who are popular - entangled with grievances with the Beijing faction
With the experience of winning the championship in "Avenue of Stars", Li Yugang has become a popular artist.
In 2009, he held his first overseas concert at the Sydney Opera House.
The following year and the following year, he launched the world tour of "Mirror Flowers and Water Moon" and the large-scale original song and dance poetry drama "Four Beauties" respectively.
With his innovative work that perfectly blends the art of Chinese opera with contemporary pop music, Li Yugang has successfully sparked a strong interest in the traditional quintessence of the country.
However, just when Li Yugang became famous, a "grudge and hatred" broke out between him and the Mei School art family.
Everything has to start from the fact that after Li Yugang became popular, Mei Baojiu (Master Mei Lanfang's son) paid attention to him.
Mei Baojiu hopes to use Li Yugang's popularity to promote the declining art of Peking Opera to the public and regain its former glory.
As a result, the two soon became friends, and Li Yugang often asked Mei Baojiu for all kinds of knowledge about the art of opera.
But who would have thought that with the increasing popularity of fame, Li Yugang also began to be arrogant.
Surrounded by fans, he began to be arrogant, bluntly saying that he was the "real master of Peking Opera", claiming that what he performed was "pure Peking Opera".
What's more, Li Yugang openly compared himself with Mei Lanfang, the ancestor of the Mei faction, and intentionally or unintentionally tied himself to "Mei Lanfang" for marketing hype.
Such unscrupulous words and deeds are undoubtedly desecrating the art of the Mei School and a humiliation to the prestigious Mr. Mei Lanfang.
As the successor of the Mei faction, Mei Baojiu naturally couldn't tolerate it, and he gradually drifted away from Li Yugang from then on, and the friendship between the two broke down.
In a TV interview, when asked what she thought of Li Yugang, Mei Baojiu angrily said that she would never forgive this "wild man who became a monk halfway".
The Mei faction even jointly wrote to the TV station, asking that Li Yugang not be allowed to use Mr. Mei's name to "make money" in the entertainment industry.
What made the two completely break off was that when filming the movie "Mei Lanfang", director Chen Kaige, who intended to let Li Yugang play the role, did not choose him in the end, but invited another master to play the role of Mei Lanfang.
After a long period of publicity and foreshadowing, Li Yugang naturally held a grudge.
But now, he can only admit that he is unlucky, and said sourly on the show, "The entire Beijing circle doesn't want to see me."
Although CCTV tried to rebuild the old friendship between the two and invited Li Yugang and Mei Baojiu at the same time at a program recording site, the nondescript Li Yugang still habitually advertised himself as "the spokesperson of Mei School art".
Mei Baojiu got up and left the table in a fit of rage, causing the recording to break up unhappily.
Since then, the two have completely broken up, and their grievances are difficult to solve.
People do not rise again - deviant and degenerate into sludge
Vanity Fair can certainly give artists the opportunity to become famous and make a fortune, but it is also like a double-edged sword, and if you are not careful, you will fall into it and cannot extricate yourself.
After experiencing a lot of turmoil, Li Yugang seems to have failed to avoid the incursion of this "artist disease".
After his popularity gradually declined, Li Yugang turned to variety shows, trying to regain his influence through exposure.
Vanity Fair can certainly give artists the opportunity to become famous and make a fortune, but it is also like a double-edged sword, and if you are not careful, you will fall into it and cannot extricate yourself.
After experiencing a lot of turmoil, Li Yugang seems to have failed to avoid the incursion of this "artist disease".
After his popularity gradually declined, Li Yugang turned to variety shows, trying to regain his influence through exposure.
But who would have thought that the "live broadcast" effect of the reality show is like a "demon mirror", ruthlessly exposing the dark side of his nature to the public.
There was once a variety show that the crew arranged for Li Yugang and his family to obtain food through their own labor.
Born in poverty, he should have been able to endure hardships and practice makes perfect, but when the crew prepared the tools for them to work, Li Yugang and his family were unwilling to do anything, but generously coaxed the crew to prepare food directly.
Seeing this, the assistant had no choice but to pay out of his own pocket to buy the ingredients for them, but when the assistant handed the ingredients to Li Yugang's parents, Li Yugang directly took away the assistant's wallet and looked through the cash and personal belongings inside unscrupulously.
The assistant stepped forward to dissuade him, but he ignored it and took all the cash from his wallet.
Even his parents stood by and apparently became accustomed to Mr. Li's arrogance.
This scene completely exposed Li Yugang's "wealth and floating clouds" and "shame and humiliation".
A grassroots who used to be famous for his artistic talent has now become so arrogant and lascivious, and he is so arrogant and arrogant, that he has simply degenerated to the point of dishonoring.
Since then, he has completely fallen off the altar in the hearts of the audience who once praised him as an idol.
epilogue
There is no doubt that Li Yugang is a former legend.
He uses his own unique musical style to integrate the Chinese opera art and contemporary pop music to create classics with eternal vitality.
It's a pity that under the temptation of Vanity Fair, he eventually lost himself, betrayed his inner pursuit of artistic innocence, and degenerated into a declining "out-of-fashion star".
Li Yugang's story warns us that if an artist only pursues superficial fame and fortune and neglects his dedication to artistic creation, he is destined to be difficult to last long.
Only with a pious respect for art and a pure heart can we create a classic masterpiece of true Chinese civilization.
Only by maintaining the character of humility and indifference to fame and fortune can we always maintain the pure motivation of creation and not be blinded by floating clouds.
I hope that Li Yugang can come out of the trough of his life, regain his strength, reinvigorate his majesty with music, and defend his pious love for art with his works.
I wish him to one day reach the peak of his life, and let us witness his artistic style again!