The Extraordinary Life of Ying Ruocheng

For most Chinese of a certain age, Ying Ruocheng should be familiar. Their first connection to him might be his role in Lao She’s classic play Teahouse at the Beijing People’s Art Theater. He played Liu Mazi (Pockmarked Face), a bad guy who sold a young girl to the eunuch Pang. His impressive acting stirred up intense hatred for the character he played.

But Ying’s talent was never confined to acting; he was also a brilliant translator. Born into a well-educated elite, Ying’s mastery of English was unprecedented. He was invited by famous U.S. comedian Bob Hope to be the on-the-spot interpreter for his show in China. There was ceaseless laughter erupting from the audiences and Hope was stunned with admiration because no one had ever achieved such effects while translating his gags. The U.S. playwright Arthur Miller also invited Ying to help with translation while he was directing his play Death of a Salesman in China. Miller was marveled at Ying’s facility, saying, “With him beside me I forgot altogether that I don’t understand Chinese.” Ying not only helped stage the play at the Beijing People’s Art Theater, but also did a laudable portrayal of the salesman Willy Loman. What might be the crowning achievement in translation is when he directed and staged the Kunqu Opera Fifteen Strings of Cash while lecturing at the University of Missouri, an opera considered to be difficult to understand even for Chinese audience.

Ying took the post of Vice-Minister of Culture for nearly four years during the late 1980s, overseeing all the entities dealing with the performance and fine arts, supervising art colleges and the general development of China’s cultural market. Despite the heavy schedule, he still squeezed in time for guest performances in some films and TV dramas, such as portraying the prison governor in the movie The Last Emperor and Kublai Khan in the TV series Marco Polo, a Chinese-Italian co-production. Ying admits acting gives him a lot of satisfaction though he finds it tiring work.

Ying’s extraordinary life is recounted in Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China’s Revolution and Reform. The autobiography differs greatly from others in the genre in terms of writing and publishing. It is a collaboration between Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison, professor of Theater Studies at the Duke University (US). Claire spent three years (2001-2003) at Ying’s bedside as he was too ill to write himself, and recorded his recollections about his family, career, friends and life. With over 100 hours on 41 tapes, she then spent another seven years in related research and compiled and edited the transcripts into a book. It was first published in the U.S. to favorable reviews. Now the Chinese version, translated by Claire’s good friend Zhang Fang, has been published by China CITIC Press under the title Shui Liu Yun Zai, which imply that although Ying had passed away, he would live as long as his stories were narrated and spirit was conveyed through the book.

As a collaborative autobiographer, Claire states in the introduction that she is neither an invisible ghostwriter nor full author of the book, although her participation in the collaboration was rigorous and far-reaching. “I was aware from the outset that the cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-generational nature of our partnership made ours an unlikely yet dynamic collaboration. The benefits to Ying of collaborating with me were of course benefits to me as well. Listening to his family’s history and his own personal encounters during China’s turbulent 20th century added a rich dimension to my knowledge of the political events,” quotes Claire’s introduction.

Claire believes that the book is selective and piecemeal rather than comprehensive. It presents Ying’s life story as he chose to tell it, through which people will get to know and understand this compelling person whose life was devoted to his motherland, and the promotion of international dialogue and understanding through the theatrical arts and communities.

Ying chose not to “begin at the beginning,” but rather to start his narrative with what he himself regarded as the most influential moment of his life C his incarceration during the “cultural revolution” (1966-1976). His prison account is anecdotal rather than exhaustive, and unexpectedly witty.Ying was from a family of the privileged class and attended famous Tsinghua University where he was deeply influenced by the patriotic student movements before the founding of the People’s Republic of China. However, during the “cultural revolution” he was falsely accused and sent to prison for three years. His wife Wu Shiliang was also arrested under suspicion of being a spy for foreign powers. They were convicted and imprisoned with no evidence, just because they had many foreign acquaintances, they were Catholics, and Ying’s father had run a school in Taiwan. In terms of his survival, the reader will note that Ying had always been optimistic throughout his prison sentence. To him, the time he spent incarcerated taught him more about China’s true state of affairs than he ever learned during the rest of his life. After being released, Ying recognized what a challenge it would be to rejuvenate China’s stagnant theatrical arts under the depressing social conditions. He decided to throw himself into another field instead C introducing China to the world. In 1975, he joined China Reconstructs (now China Today) magazine which was founded by Soong Ching Ling, and where he, as an articulate and gifted storyteller, published a series of marvelous articles about China and its people. It was not until the “cultural revolution” ended that he resumed his theatrical career.

Claire points out that this unique quality of his C cheerfulness C meant he chided those who despaired and made an example of embracing hope and finding humor and dignity in even the most disgraceful and undignified circumstances C behind bars in a prison, and backstage both literally and figuratively during the most turbulent moments of China’s recent political history.

The preface of the autobiography’s Chinese version was written by Ying Da, son of Ying Ruocheng. He admitted candidly at the start: “It is a very special honor for me to write the preface for my father’s autobiography,” but felt reading it is an even more special experience. “My father who has left me forever seems to come back again. He is telling me his stories, what he lived through and what he witnessed, with that voice that I am so familiar with! The details in the book gave me a real ‘blast from the past’ and also the opportunity to consider the events of the past from my father’s perspective.”

The historian Jonathan Spence commented: “Ying’s autobiography offers us a special glimpse into 20th-century China from a brand new angle.”

The famous Beijing People’s Art Theater’s actor Pu Cunxin, also a colleague of Ying Ruocheng, says he feels that Ying’s soul lives on in his autobiography. “The book represents Ying’s spirit; he is forever alive in the people’s hearts.”

ZHANG YAN is a veteran journalist and former first deputy editor-in-chief of China Today.