After Wang Wenjuan's death, netizens said that "it was 'Sister Lin' who buried flowers, and today it is the flower that buries 'Sister Lin'." Looking back on her life, it is in line with her life motto: Acting is more complicated, and being a person is simpler.
| Author: Liu Xiao
| Editor: Ah Ye
| Editor: Laurenger
At 00:25 a.m. today, Wang Wenjuan, a generation of Yue opera masters, passed away at the age of 95.
Who is Wang Wenjuan? Maybe many young people today are not familiar with her. But in the 1960s, she was a real "top stream" in the acting industry, and after marrying the popular star Sun Daolin, she became a model of "Lang Cai Female Appearance" and "Immortal Couple" in that era.
Wang Wenjuan (left) and her husband Sun Daolin (left).
The reason why Wang Wenjuan can become the "first generation of top streams" is because of her superb deductive ability.
She played Lin Daiyu in the Opera Yue Opera and the 1962 Yue Opera film Dream of the Red Chamber, and became the "eternal Lin Sister" in the hearts of generations. That year, after watching the Yue opera "Dream of the Red Chamber" starring her, Premier Zhou also took the stage to shake hands with her for a group photo.
After hearing the news of her death, many netizens expressed their condolences. A Shanghai opera fan said: "I like to watch Sister Lin played by Wang Wenjuan the most, and I feel that no one has surpassed her at present." The first time I saw her play Sister Lin's shadow was in the "Drama Newspaper" that I used to pack books when I was in junior high school, and the page of "Dai Yu Funeral Flowers" was selected by me as the cover of the book, and I looked forward to seeing the movie "Dream of the Red Chamber" as soon as possible. Originally, it was 'Sister Lin' who buried flowers, and today it is the flower burial of 'Sister Lin'. ”
The first generation of top stream "Lin Sister"
In the autumn of 1960, the Shanghai Yue Theater went to Hong Kong to perform, and Wang Wenjuan's "Dream of the Red Chamber" exploded. After the performance, two film companies in Hong Kong wanted to make this Yue opera into a movie and rushed to invest.
In the end, the Yue opera film "Dream of the Red Chamber" was invested in Hong Kong and filmed in Shanghai, and Wang Wenjuan was still the main actor. Once the film was released, it caused a sensation throughout the country.
Lin Daiyu, who she plays, has a graceful style and rich personality, and famous scenes such as "reading the West Chamber", "burying flowers" and "burning manuscripts", accompanied by the classic melody of "a Lin sister falling from the sky", have become an indelible image memory in the hearts of a generation of film audiences.
At that time, because she played the mournful weakness of "Sister Lin" into three points, there were even fans who sent ginseng to her to supplement her body. Until more than 20 years later, the 87 version of the TV series "Dream of the Red Chamber" began filming, and Chen Xiaoxu, who played Lin Daiyu, specially "learned from her" in order to play a good role.
Lin Daiyu played by Wang Wenjuan.
What is rare is that Wang Wenjuan is not framed by "Sister Lin". She has a wide range of plays, creating different stage images in different periods, spanning a lot.
In the era when there were not too many film special effects, she could not only perform the agility and liveliness of the "carp essence" in the Yue opera mythological movie "Chasing Fish", but also vividly express the pain after its scales were peeled off. To this day, some netizens call it "the most beautiful carp essence".
In 2017, when 91-year-old Wang Wenjuan received the "Magnolia Lifetime Achievement Award", the audience stood up. The most exciting scene of the night was that Wang Wenjuan took the stage and sang "Chasing Fish" with the students.
Wang Wenjuan, who played the carp essence in the Yue opera movie "Chasing Fish".
Wang Wenjuan was able to achieve this achievement because she had experienced a long period of tempering and accumulation.
She was born on December 19, 1926 in Shengxian County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, and her original name was Wang Caijuan. His father was a village teacher. Because her cousin was in Shanghai, when she was 12 years old, she went to Shanghai to look for opportunities, first to learn martial arts from the master of Peking Opera, to practice waist and leg kung fu, and then to set up the "Shaozhuangyue Opera Troupe" with Lu Jinhua.
At that time, Shanghai was the largest "dock" of opera in the country, and there were more than 20 Yue opera troupes alone, and the competition was very fierce. In order to "eat", Wang Wenjuan riveted hard to tap her own advantages. Later, I was able to play the role "alive", which was inseparable from the tempering of the "market competition" period on the beach.
In 1948, Wang Wenjuan joined Xu Yulan's "Yulan Troupe", and the two became lifelong partners. In the Yue opera movie "Dream of the Red Chamber", Wang Wenjuan played Lin Daiyu and Xu Yulan played Jia Baoyu.
·“ Brother Xu Yulan and "Sister Lin" Wang Wenjuan.
In 2017, Xu Yulan passed away. After Wang Wenjuan, who was 91 years old at the time, learned the news, her blood pressure soared, and she did not sleep well for several days, but she still insisted on sending a "baby brother" and choked up several times at the farewell party.
The road to marriage is full of twists and turns
In addition to the praiseworthy artistic level, Wang Wenjuan, as the "first generation of the top stream", also has a moving love story.
Her husband is Sun Daolin — perhaps unfamiliar with the name Sun Daolin — and in the 1950s and 1970s, Sun Daolin was the male god in the hearts of thousands of young girls, and people often waited at the door of the film studio just to see him. He is the "third brother" of the Zhang family in the movie "The Great Reunion", the underground party member "Li Xia" in "The Eternal Radio Wave", the capitalist "Zhang Bohan" in "The City That Never Sleeps", and the "Li Company Commander" in "Reconnaissance of Crossing the River".
Handsome and good acting, even Wang Wenjuan's mother has become a "fan" of Sun Daolin after watching "Reconnaissance of Crossing the River".
Sun Daolin.
The acquaintance of Wang Wenjuan and Sun Daolin is because of "blind date".
At the beginning, Wang Wenjuan went out early to study drama in order to support her family, until her two younger brothers were admitted to college, and the 32-year-old looked back to find that she had performed so many stories of talented women and sea oaths on the stage, but in reality she had become an "unmarried elderly young woman".
At this time, Wang Wenjuan's old colleague Huang Zongjiang gave Wang Wenjuan a matchmaker. In the spring of 1958, at the Shanghai Writers Association Guest House where Huang Zongjiang lived, Huang Zongjiang introduced Sun Daolin to Wang Wenjuan, and there were two other "matchmakers" at the scene as witnesses.
Later, she recalled, that day, Dao Lin was wearing a dark blue Lenin suit and looked bookish. The room was so small that after four stools, we couldn't turn around, so I sat down first, and I stood behind me by the window. Soon several "matchmakers" chatted feverishly, but the protagonist of this "blind date" was silent.
Wang Wenjuan, who is introverted, found that Sun Daolin did not like to talk. Sun Daolin's birthday is December 18, Wang Wenjuan's birthday is December 19, both are Sagittarius, the same constellation, similar personality. More critically, the two are like-minded.
Coming out of the guest house, Sun Daolin took the initiative to send Wang Wenjuan home. The two walked slowly along the Huaihai Road, and he first broke the silence: "I have seen you perform "Liang Zhu" and "The Tale of the West Chamber"..." Wang Wenjuan casually asked: "Oh, what do you think of the play?" Give us an opinion. Unexpectedly, Sun Daolin very sincerely talked about his perception of the play, which was also the first time Wang Wenjuan found that Sun Daolin's artistic views coincided with her own. A sentence that "there are clear foreign visitors in front of you, but your heart is like an old friend", instantly surged into Wang Wenjuan's heart.
At that time, the two were not completely at the right time. Although they are all big stars, but unlike Wang Wenjuan's family situation, Sun Daolin was born into a wealthy intellectual family, his father was an engineer studying in Belgium, he grew up with no worries, and then entered Yenching University, majoring in philosophy, and deeply studied Western culture.
However, this does not affect the sweet relationship between the two.
On the days when both were in Shanghai, the main form of dating was a night walk, because it was easy to be recognized when they met during the day, so they could only take a walk on the secluded road at night until late at night. Sun Daolin sent Wang Wenjuan home, but when he arrived at the door, he was sticky and sticky. So Wang Wenjuan sent Sun Daolin home again, and when he arrived at the door of Sun Daolin's house, he said: Or I will send you.
Sun Daolin (right) and Wang Wenjuan.
However, when it came to the step of marriage, there were twists and turns.
According to the Xinhua Digest, at that time, someone told Wang Wenjuan that there was a problem with Sun Daolin's past history, hoping that she would reconsider her relationship with Sun Daolin, and hinted that if she insisted on marrying Sun Daolin, she might face some punishment. Even so, Wang Wenjuan finally decided to be with Sun Daolin at all costs after several ideological struggles.
On the day she made up her mind to be together, Wang Wenjuan went to Sun Daolin's house, and Sun Daolin panicked and went out to buy a cake - when Wang Wenjuan first came as a guest, Sun Daolin also bought a big cake. After Sun Daolin went out, Wang Wenjuan sat down at the desk and waited for him, and when she saw a stack of letters she had written to him before on the table, some sentences were carefully drawn by him with a red pen. "What a nerd..." She felt angry and funny, but the tears couldn't help but fall.
By the time Wang Wenjuan was 35 years old and Sun Daolin was 40 years old, because the "problems" hanging on Sun Daolin's head still existed, the marriage between the two was still far away.
A friend reported the situation of the "elderly youth" to Premier Zhou and Sister Deng. Sister Deng specially called Wang Wenjuan to invite her to the West Flower Hall. In the West Flower Hall, after learning more about the situation, she said to Wang Wenjuan: "After you go back, tell Dao Lin, don't worry, continue to work well for the people." "Dao Lin is a good comrade, and Enlai and I think you two are quite suitable."
The two people who have not managed to enter the marriage have raised eyebrows for many years. Wang Wenjuan's vocal cords have been knifed, so when singing, her voice is particularly easy to mute, and Sun Daolin has specially studied vocal music, and taught Wang Wenjuan a little bit of scientific vocal methods, which benefited Wang Wenjuan a lot. When Sun Daolin planned a new film script, Wang Wenjuan always actively participated, not only as the first reader, but also put forward her own views to provide inspiration for Sun Daolin's artistic creation.
No matter what difficulties the couple encountered, they were always in the same boat through thick and thin, never abandoned, until they grew old and loved endlessly. In 1996, because Wang Wenjuan liked Meng Lijun very much, the 75-year-old Sun Daolin personally shot a 10-episode Yue opera TV film "Meng Lijun" for Wang Wenjuan, fulfilling his wife's dream.
In 2007, Sun Daolin died. Wang Wenjuan once wrote in her autobiography: "I have seen many landscapes along the way, but the most important and irreplaceable is always the person who can walk side by side and share sorrows and joys." ”
"Acting is more complicated, being a person is simpler"
Wang Wenjuan has been intensively cultivating Yue opera all her life, and she has said that "acting on stage should be more complicated, and being a person offstage should be simpler." "She has always adhered to the concept of such a person's life. In her later years, she reiterated several times: I am not only an ordinary literary and art worker, but also a loyal old party member.
In 2018, on the occasion of the 97th anniversary of the founding of the party, Wang Wenjuan, who has 61 years of party experience, gave a party lesson to the younger generation of Shanghai Yue Theatre. At the end of the course, she used her own life motto to encourage every party member: "Acting on stage is not afraid of complexity, we must strive for excellence; offstage people only seek simplicity and dedication."
Someone asked her, what is the most important thing as an actress? She replied, "I think it's sincere. An actor should start from offstage, always have a childlike heart for people and things, sincerely face art, and sincerely face life. ”
Wang Wenjuan in her later years.
Wang Wenjuan said so, and even more so.
In April 1953, she performed with the troupe in the Andong area of the Yalu River in the northeast, just across the river from North Korea, and the troupe's actors asked to go to the front line of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea to comfort the volunteers. With the approval of the organization, the troupe entered North Korea.
As soon as you cross the Yalu River, the murderous atmosphere of war comes to your face. But the news of the arrival of Wang Wenjuan's troupe was like a warm and colorful wind between the gray world and the earth. When the performance began, the warriors who came to see the play continued to pour in. Looking at the faces that were born into death and blackened by gun smoke and dust, wang Wenjuan and her colleagues could not stop the tears. Infected by the spirit of the soldiers, she performed day and night on the battlefield and in the ward, for eight months. One night the performance, it was freezing cold, and Wang Wenjuan's mouth froze after singing "Brother Liang".
At the beginning of 1954, Wang Wenjuan was awarded the National Flag Medal of the Third Class of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and changed the famous Korean drama "Chunxiang Biography" into Yue opera, and the 28-year-old Wang Chunjuan interpreted the pure and lovely, beautiful green and astringent spring fragrance very well. In this play, "Love Song", "Other Song", "Prison Song", etc., are still the famous sections often performed on the Stage of Yue Opera.
Xu Yulan (left) and Chunxiang (right) played by Wang Wenjuan.
In her later years, Wang Wenjuan continued to practice that life motto.
In terms of art, she strives for excellence, until she is more than 90 years old, she still insists on teaching her disciples orally, from a singing voice, a recitation, to a group of figures, even if it is a small action, they are analyzed in detail, personally demonstrated, carefully taught, without reservation.
She uses painting to feel life, but also emphasizes the importance of reading. She recalled that before playing "Sister Lin", she repeatedly watched "Dream of the Red Chamber" several times, focusing on writing notes and her own feelings. In the end, she has her own new understanding of "Sister Lin". Everyone says that "Sister Lin" has a temper, but she thinks that it is because "Sister Lin" has high requirements for love, and is very strict with herself and Jia Baoyu, so she is often "angry". She has never forgotten to tell young people to continue to learn, the classics are not achieved overnight, but through continuous polishing, modification, and continuous accumulation and perfection.
Looking back at the life of "Lin Sister" Wang Wenjuan, it is in response to her sentence "Acting is more complicated, and it is simpler to be a person."
Today to the Immortal Realm, may "Sister Lin" go all the way.