The book "Partner" is edited by Mr. Gao Yuchun, a famous music theorist and writer, and Jiang Kun, chairman of the Qu Association, serves as an adviser and personally writes the preface. The book details the artistic experiences and achievements of 23 pairs of famous cross-talk artists. The content is detailed and vivid, with strong information and interest.
Mr. Gao Yuqun was a well-known creator of "Today's Headlines" and published many theories and anecdotes and historical facts in cross-talk and music art. I had the privilege of getting to know Mr. Gao, and I benefited a lot from private messages and WeChat exchanges. Mr. Gao passed away on October 24 last year, and on the anniversary of his death, He has successively reprinted Mr. Gao's last masterpiece, which can also be regarded as a deep remembrance of Mr. Gao.
(Editor-in-Chief Mr. Gao Yuqun)
Articles about cross-talk partners in the book are written by the actors themselves or by industry experts familiar with the actors. This article introducing Gao Yingpei and Fan Zhenyu was written by Mr. Qian Yukun.
A monument in the cross-talk world (1)
Tianjin is a big wharf for opera, but also the hometown of qu art, and is a treasure land where talents are born. The cross-talk community refers to Tianjin as a "cross-talk nest". It can be said that the Tianjin cross-talk industry has supported half of the Chinese cross-talk river. Many cross-talk people and famous artists have inseparable ties with Tianjin, they are either learning art in Tianjin, or making a name for themselves in Tianjin, or becoming popular in Tianjin, or growing old in Tianjin.
Gao Yingpei and Fan Zhenyu, the golden partner of the cross-talk industry, are the Jinmen laughing stars who grew up on the banks of the haihe, and it is not an exaggeration to describe these two as "dazzling". They have collaborated for nearly forty years to perform many popular cross-talk masterpieces, which are well-known in the north and south of the river. In 1985, Gao Yingpei was named one of The Top Ten Comedians in China. This is the pride of Tianjin and the embodiment of Tianjin's cross-talk strength.
(Gao Yingpei Fan Zhenyu performs cross-talk)
Born in 1928, Gao Yingpei is an authentic Tianjin doll. He has loved crosstalk since childhood, and when he was a child, he often sneaked to the juggling garden to listen to crosstalk. He was born poor and forced to make a living, so when he was a teenager, he went to a paper shop outside the front gate of Beijing as an apprentice, dressed all day, and the work he did was dirty and tired, and getting rid of this poor life became his first wish.
It just so happened that a colleague surnamed Geng in the paper shop knew Zhao Peiru, a cross-talk artist. Zhao Peiru is known as the "Master of the Tongtian Sect" in the cross-talk circle, and his cross-talk is very funny, and he has also taught many apprentices. Gao Yingpei asked his colleagues to introduce him to Zhao Peiru and worship him as a teacher.
Although Gao Yingpei is not a "baby leg" who has learned art since childhood, he is intelligent and studious, is a good material for learning cross-talk, and has to be carefully taught by a famous teacher like Zhao Peiru, thus laying a solid foundation for cross-talk performance.
At that time, the rule was three years of apprenticeship, two years of effectiveness: after three years of apprenticeship, you should follow master for two years, which is to repay the master's grace for teaching. But Zhao Peiru was an enlightened person, and did not ask Gao Yingpei in this way, but let him go through some experience on his own, as long as he could show his fame, even if he was worthy of the painstaking cultivation of his teachers.
As a result, Gao Yingpei, who had just debuted, went into the rivers and lakes alone. He has sold art on the street and has also gone to the small bookstore to stand on the "bench head" for others.
(Mr. Gao Yingpei)
At this time, Gao Yingpei was like a lone goose flying in the sky, one foot deep and one foot shallow, walking south and north, and his footprints spread all over Kaifeng, Shenyang, Nanjing, Tangshan and other places. Every time he arrived at the ground, he would start talking at a stop in the simple shed, and when he said that his mouth was dry and dry, his income for a day was still pitiful. Anyone who speaks crosstalk will go through such a "no popular" stage. Actors at this stage are not too old, their art is not mature, their performance style is uncertain, and they do not have any popularity, which makes the children's passages annoying, the works of adults are not credible, they are too vulgar to live without taste, and the in-depth programs cannot be moved. To get out of this embarrassing artistic bottleneck period, young actors need the fermentation of time and their own understanding, so as to achieve a breakthrough from quantitative change to qualitative change.
The tempering of this period has indeed played a very good catalytic role in Gao Yingpei's artistic maturity, allowing him to see the customs and customs of various places, understand the appreciation and taste of audiences around the world, familiarize himself with the methods of various types of cross-talk strips, experience cooperation with a number of popular actors, accumulate quite rich performance experience, and wait for pairing with a like-minded partner.
Gao Yingpei has performed with Ren Mingqi and Chang Baolin successively, and even the old artist Zhou Deshan, who is listed in the "Eight Virtues of Crosstalk", and the old artist Ji Pingsan, who is nicknamed "Ancient Three Days", have lived for him.
In 1954, Gao Yingpei joined the Tianjin Heping District Quyi Acrobatic Troupe, where he met the best partner in his artistic life--- Fan Zhenyu.
Fan Zhenyu was originally from Rongcheng, Hebei Province, and was one year older than Gao Yingpei. His origin is very different from Gao Yingpei's, it can be said that he is standing in the house and lying on the ground, and he still opens a business in Tianjin City, so Fan Zhenyu was a rich man with a superior life when he was a child, and he was a young owner of the buyer and seller. But what he and Gao Yingpei have in common is that they love crosstalk. As a teenager, Fan Zhenyu would rather skip school than run to listen to crosstalk. Whether it is the Shengyuan Tea House in Bird City, Hebei Province, or the Lianxing Tea House in Nanshi City, it is a place that makes Fan Zhenyu linger.
(Mr. Fan Zhenyu)
In the cross-talk conference in these tea gardens, the wonderful performances of Ma Sanli, Yang Shaokui, Wang Shichen, Ban Degui and other famous cross-talk actors made this thin teenager's eyes widen and be fascinated.
The cross-talk passage is familiar, and the person who says the cross-talk is also familiar, and just listening to it is already not addictive. In 1941, at the age of fourteen, Fan Zhenyu began to try to perform cross-talk on stage.
According to the social concept at that time, "drama" was a low-ninth-rate business, and it was not a big deal for the children of rich families to listen to cross-talk, but if they wanted to enter the industry and show their faces to say cross-talk, it was a matter of ruining the family. But Fan Zhenyu just likes to say crosstalk. At that time, he said that cross-talk was like engaging in underground activities, and he did not dare to let the family know, for fear that the adults in the family would know the scolding. Every day, he pretended to go to school with his school bag on his back, and when people did not pay attention, he stuffed the school bag into the pile of medicinal materials in his family's warehouse, and then secretly went to learn cross-talk.
In order to prevent Fan Zhenyu from learning crosstalk, the family let him abandon his studies to learn to buy and sell at home, but he did not learn; Let him learn Chinese medicine, he is still not interested. Fan Zhenyu said that in order to learn cross-talk, he was not scolded by his father, but no matter how he beat and scolded, he was "determined that Qingshan would not relax", and he was fascinated by cross-talk. In early 1949, Tianjin was liberated. Fan Zhenyu, the "cross-talk underground worker", also disclosed his identity, and he began to officially say cross-talk that year. But at that time, he had not yet visited the teacher. In the cross-talk industry, actors without teachers have no portal, known as "Haiqing", which is not recognized, and if they participate in regular performances, they will be "traded" by their peers at any time and cannot gain a foothold.
Therefore, in 1950, Fan Zhenyu officially took Ma Sanli's disciple Bande as his teacher and began to systematically learn the basic skills of speaking and singing from his master. Practice tongue twisting every day, practicing through the mouth, starting from "Eight Fan Screen" and "Reporting the Name of dishes". Master did not beat him, but when he made a mistake in practice, he was struck by Master with a dangerous ice chip, and he did not dare to wipe it in front of Master's face, which was quite the style of the ancients who spit on himself.
(To be continued)