Booming Popularity, Strong Momentum (Part 4)
Section 4: Cinemas and Theaters of Top Scale. Hunan's First Xiang Opera Theater — Yichun Tea Garden. Combining teahouse and theater, it opened in 1908 (34th year of Guangxu, Qing dynasty), built by a merchant surnamed Shen in Fujia Lane, Taiping Street. Modeled on Beijing's "Guangde Lou Theater," it staged Xiang opera and was Hunan's first...
This article has been compiled from historical materials in the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com · City Overview section). Some administrative divisions, population, socioeconomic data, and policy information may be outdated and are for reference only; for the latest situation, please refer to official releases by the local government and scenic areas.
Section Four
Cinema City and Theater of Top-Tier Scale
Hunan's First Xiang Opera Theater — Yichun Tea Garden
Yichun Tea Garden combined a teahouse and a theater in one, opening in the 34th year of the Guangxu era of the Qing dynasty (1908 AD). It was built by a merchant surnamed Shen in Fujia Lane on Taiping Street. The garden was modeled on the style of Beijing's 'Guangde Lou Theater,' no different from an old-style tea garden, and performed Xiang opera. It was Hunan Province's first Xiang opera theater, operated by the leader of the opera troupe. Inside the hall a three-sided stage was built, with tea tables and square stools placed before the stage. Tea was sold but no theater tickets, and this form of entertainment — drinking tea while watching a performance — was called in the late Qing 'the pleasure of sight and sound.' The Xiang opera Renhe Troupe and Chuntai Troupe performed here, with every seat filled night after night. It closed in the second year of Xuantong (1910 AD).
Hunan's Largest Cultural Entity — Hunan Grand Theater
Hunan Grand Theater was founded in November 1998 and is directly under the Hunan Provincial Department of Culture. It is an important performance base in China's performance market, a landmark cultural building of the provincial capital Changsha, and the largest cultural entity in the province integrating film and television, performing arts, entertainment, fine dining, fitness, and leisure. The theater possesses the most modern stage facilities and performance-viewing modes, and has the largest and most fully functional ultra-luxury cinema hall in the province. With an oversized screen 18 meters wide and Oscar award ceremony sound, it ranks eighth nationwide. Its other nine small cinema halls, seating 60–300, all use 2K and 1.3K digital projection. The large and medium halls of the province's first digital cinema hall have introduced the world's most advanced Dolby Digital 5.1-channel surround sound film system, and also possess first-class central air conditioning and fire protection facilities, as well as high-grade escalators and high-speed elevators.
The Oriental 'Moulin Rouge' — Changsha Song Halls
Changsha's song hall culture, under the great attention and vigorous support of the competent government departments, has developed over more than ten years into a vibrant category of the entertainment industry, famous throughout the country. According to statistics, Changsha's large and small song halls, bars, performance bars, and other entertainment venues have grown to several thousand, attracting more than 400,000 people daily and bringing in economic revenue of more than 2 billion yuan each year. Song hall culture has become a calling card for Hunan Province's development of the cultural industry. The cultural charm of Changsha's song halls lies in their most authentic panorama of people's livelihoods, their most open entertainment spirit, and their most vivid marketplace expression, organically integrating Huxiang culture and refined art into Changsha song hall culture, pursuing health, civility, and artistry, and meeting the needs of audiences at different levels. Changsha's song hall culture grew from nothing; from the Qindao Song Hall, the earliest to make the name of 'song hall culture' known nationwide, to the suddenly emerging Tian Han Grand Theater, Great China Song and Dance Theater, Ouyang Pangpang Grand Song Hall, Gangdao Performing Arts Center, and New Qindao Song Hall; from traditional-style song halls and theater-style song halls to mixed-operation song halls integrating song halls, theaters, bars, or KTVs, it still continues the characteristics of Changsha's song halls. A group of local comedians beloved by citizens — Dabing, Qizhi, Yang Zhichun, Zhou Weixing, He Jingjing, Wang Xiangping, and Li Qingde — emerged from Changsha's song halls, letting you unwittingly enjoy the truth, goodness, and beauty belonging to ordinary life. With its uniquely alluring charm, the fiery Changsha song hall culture occupies the nighttime cultural life space of thousands upon thousands of Changsha citizens, while also attracting the footsteps and gazes of guests from all directions. The myth of Changsha's song halls having 'performances every day' has led visitors from north and south to call it the Oriental 'Moulin Rouge.' Changsha's song hall culture is moving across the land with its unique charm.
National Cultural Industry Demonstration Base — Tian Han Grand Theater
Tian Han Grand Theater is a modern theater mainly devoted to professional performances. It is a first-class hall of refined art in Hunan Province and a national cultural industry demonstration base. Tian Han Grand Theater has 1,206 seats, a domestic first-class 16-meter rotating stage, fully digitally controlled impression lighting equipment, and a world-top-class Bernstein piano. To ensure the perfect presentation of artistic masterpieces, Tian Han Grand Theater specially invited a Tsinghua University professor of architectural acoustics to carry out the acoustic design according to the requirements of a high-standard professional performance theater. The concert hall adopts a fully natural-sound design, has 835 seats, and is decorated in a fresh and elegant style. It possesses a German nine-foot Steinway piano and is a professional concert hall for symphony and chamber music performances as well as solo singing, solo instrumental, and ensemble performances.
The Banner of Hunan's Song Hall Culture — Great China Song and Dance Theater
Hunan Province's Great China Song and Dance Theater is one of Hunan's top 500 private enterprises, filed with the Provincial Department of Culture. This theater is the only song and dance theater in Hunan Province with its own art troupe, and its dancers were the designated troupe for the Fifth Golden Eagle Art Festival. The troupe is composed of a dance team, singing team, folk music band, stage art team, and quyi team, with performances including Peking opera, acrobatics, ethnic dance drama, song and dance, folk music, ballet, spoken drama, crosstalk, quyi, and various local operas. The theater blends the avant-garde, elegant, modern, traditional, unrestrained, and restrained into one, always leading Hunan's song hall culture and becoming a banner of Hunan's song hall culture.
Hunan's Earliest Entertainment Aircraft Carrier — Changsha Gangdao Performing Arts Center
Changsha Gangdao Performing Arts Center is located on Renmin Road in Changsha. It was taken over by Hunan Qingsheng Culture and Entertainment Management Co., Ltd., which invested tens of millions of yuan with a new concept of large scale, high standards, and high taste to seize the Changsha entertainment market, developing entirely new program content for the Gangdao Performing Arts Center and fusing theater, song hall, and bar culture into an entertainment aircraft carrier integrating appreciation, entertainment, and leisure. Its overall design comes from the Vienna Golden Hall, opulent and elegant, with exquisite sculptures and resplendent gold, covering a total area of 3,800 square meters. With three tiers of seating, it can accommodate 2,000 spectators simultaneously enjoying the wonderful stage performances. It is equipped with a lifting boxing ring, a water ballet pool, a violin-style retractable stage, Hunan's only top-grade British Turbosound audio system, and 26 plasma display screens broadcasting live simultaneously, absolutely opening your eyes, making you click your tongue in amazement, and making 'Gangdao Night' unforgettable.
Hunan's First State-Owned Cinema — Yingong Cinema
Yingong Cinema (formerly Xinhua Cinema) is one of the few time-honored cinemas in China with a history of more than seventy years. In 1951 it was purchased by the Provincial Culture Bureau and converted into the first state-owned cinema in Changsha's cultural circles. In the late 1980s it was redesigned and renovated by acoustic experts from the China Film Corporation. It was originally the only cinema in Hunan Province capable of screening 70mm films (including 35mm). The cinema hall has a steep slope, a large screen (18 meters wide and 9 meters high), comfortable viewing, high-backed soft seats, central air conditioning, and digital stereo sound, making it the professional cinema with the best audiovisual effects in Hunan Province. Yingong Cinema once premiered in Changsha the first domestic color film, 'The Great Road' (a 1930s film), and 'Bathing Beauty,' causing a sensation throughout the city and allowing Changsha people to see a color film for the first time.
Hunan's First Cinema Hall with a '3D Giant Screen' — Changsha Wanda International Cinema
Changsha Wanda International Cinema is a five-star luxury multiplex cinema invested in and built by the Dalian Wanda Group. It is located in Wanda Commercial Plaza on Huangxing Road Pedestrian Street in Changsha, and is Hunan's first cinema with an 'IMAX-3D giant screen.' The area of a giant-screen film is three times that of an ordinary screen, and it is currently the world's best imaging system. This technology uses the world's largest film format (10 times taller than ordinary film), capturing and projecting images simultaneously through two separate rolls of film, greatly improving picture clarity. 'IMAX' is therefore hailed abroad as 'the ultimate movie experience.' The cinema has a total of 9 screening halls, and whether in number of halls or seats it is the largest in Changsha, accommodating 2,200 viewers simultaneously. All screening halls use the world's most advanced digital audiovisual equipment, such as Italian projection systems, American OSC amplification systems, German Schneider high-end lenses, and British-imported ultra-wide giant screens.
Hunan's First Movie Supermarket — Hengdian Xiaoxiang Wangfujing Cinema
Hengdian Xiaoxiang Wangfujing Cinema is a luxury multiplex cinema independently invested in by the Hengdian Group and designed and built to five-star cinema standards. The cinema officially opened in February 2005. Covering an area of 6,230 square meters, it has 10 international-standard screening halls with a total of 1,600 seats, and can screen a film every 10 minutes, earning it the reputation of "Hunan Province's No. 1 Movie Supermarket." The cinema adopts internationally popular humanized design, with high-grade, adjustable seats, a row spacing of 1.2 meters, a tiered rise of 30 centimeters, and a width of 56 centimeters between seats. The extra-large spacing ensures the most perfect viewing angle for every audience member. The cinema was the first in Hunan to set up VIP halls to satisfy high-end viewers, and specially equipped a VIP lounge. The VIP screening halls feature high-grade adjustable reclining seats, allowing audiences in a Hunan cinema for the first time to experience the new sensation of "lying down to watch blockbusters."
Hunan's first "five-star" cinema — Zhuzhou Qianjin Culture Plaza Cinema
Qianjin Cinema adopts the internationally popular new model of "high tiered rise, low viewpoint, wide row spacing, and large screen." It has a total of seven screening halls, accommodating 855 audience seats, and can simultaneously screen widescreen, masked-frame, and standard-frame multi-format digital stereo films, 3D stereoscopic films, and high-definition digital films. The projection equipment is excellent: it uses Dolby-certified dual red-light projectors, original German lenses, Dolby CP650 decoders, Crown amplifiers, JBL speakers, and SR/D and DTS full-format digital stereo systems. The supporting facilities are complete: two-way escalators lead directly to the cinema, making going up and down quick and convenient; the lobby is spacious and elegant with trendy decoration; the seats in the halls are luxurious and comfortable; waiting time is extremely short; and central air conditioning keeps it cool in summer and warm in winter. The film selection is diverse, and the cinema's blockbusters are all released simultaneously with the rest of the country. It is Hunan Province's first "five-star" cinema.
Hunan's largest workers' cultural activity center — Changsha Workers' Cultural Palace
The Changsha Workers' Cultural Palace was completed in January 1989, located on the southwest side of Dongtang Square. It covers an area of more than 40,000 square meters, of which the building area is 25,000 square meters. It is a multifunctional workers' cultural activity center integrating culture, entertainment, study, and sightseeing, and is the largest of its kind in the province. It includes culture, science and technology, and education book buildings, a workers' gymnasium, a training center, a service building, a swimming pool, ball courts, an amusement park, an artificial lake, and more. The main entertainment facilities include a dance hall, a roller-skating rink, a rehearsal hall, a fitness hall, a café, and more. It is the most influential modern large-scale workers' cultural and sports activity center in the province, integrating study, entertainment, sports, and leisure, and is also Hunan Province's first "National Model Workers' Cultural Palace."
Related Records
Overview of Sports Venues in Hunan Province
According to the statistics in the "Education Overview" section of the Hunan Yearbook of the 56th year of the Republic of China (1947), Hunan Province had only 1 provincial-level public sports ground (namely Youyicun Sports Ground) and 61 county-level public sports grounds. At that time, the province had 77 counties, and 16 counties had no public sports grounds. County-level sports grounds were mostly made by simply adapting the old sites of Confucian temples, martial temples, military drill grounds, and old government offices in county towns; after leveling, basketball hoops, volleyball posts, horizontal and parallel bars, and other equipment were installed.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, while carrying out economic construction, various places in Hunan Province successively built a number of sports venues. By the end of 1989, the province had a total of 26,827 sports venues of various types (not including those of the military stationed in the province and the railway system), including 20 stadiums and 58 gymnasiums. The construction of these sports venues can be roughly divided into three stages: the late 1950s to the early 1960s as the first stage, the 1970s as the second stage, and the 1980s as the third stage. According to statistics for six types of venues — stadiums, gymnasiums, sports grounds, small sports grounds, floodlit courts, and swimming pools — those built in the first stage accounted for 13%, those built in the second stage accounted for 34.8%, and those built in the third stage accounted for 52.2%.
After the reform and opening up, the construction of sports venues in Hunan entered a new period of development, characterized by relatively rapid development and relatively high technical standards. More than half of the province's several main types of sports venues were built between 1980 and 1989. Seventeen stadiums were built, accounting for 85% of the total; 25 gymnasiums were built, accounting for 66% of the total; 77 swimming pools were built, accounting for 69% of the total; and 50 sports grounds were built, accounting for 53% of the total. In the 1980s, in order to meet the needs of elite athletes' centralized training, Hunan also built the Changsha Shumuling Training Base and the Yueyang Water Sports Training Base, and expanded the Chenzhou Sports Training Base.
However, judging from the needs of sports development, Hunan's sports venues are still few in number and poor in quality. Of the province's 26,827 venues in 1989, 24,627 were simple basketball and volleyball courts, accounting for 91.8%, while standard venues listed in the national economic plan indicators — "two grounds, one pool, one hall" (namely a sports ground, a floodlit court with fixed stands, a swimming pool, and a training hall) — numbered only 976, accounting for just 3.6% of the total number of venues. According to the provisions of State Council Document No. 167 of 1983 on striving during the "Sixth Five-Year Plan" period for 10% of counties to have "two grounds, one pool, one hall," by the end of 1989 only 8 counties in Hunan had met this requirement, accounting for only 6% of the province's total number of counties and cities (124). School sports venues were especially insufficient, particularly in primary schools, where sports venues were extremely scarce. In 1988, the province had 49,742 primary schools but only 139 small sports grounds and 8,579 basketball courts, averaging only 1 small sports ground for every 357 primary schools and 1 basketball court for every 5.8 primary schools.
Wushu Blossoms in Hunan
After the founding of New China, the state promoted the wushu that had circulated among the people as a sport, discarding its dross and taking its essence, so that wushu developed continuously. In 1950, the "Changsha Mass National Martial Arts Society" was established, becoming a professional guiding institution for wushu. In 1952, Changsha established an amateur wushu sports committee, with Xiang Kairan in charge. In September 1958, the Hunan Provincial Sports Commission selected a group of outstanding folk wushu backbone practitioners from all over the province and, after centralized training, formed the Hunan Provincial Wushu Team, which participated in the wushu performance at the First National Games held in Beijing from September 13 to October 3, 1959. By 1979, the provincial wushu team had 31 athletes. In September of that year, at the Fourth National Games, the Hunan Wushu Team achieved the 4th place in women's two-person sparring and the 6th place in women's traditional weapons. At the 1985 National Wushu Competition, the Hunan Wushu Team won runner-up in women's two-person sparring. At the 1985 National Wushu Competition, it won the championship in women's two-person sparring, and the Hunan Wushu Team also won 6th place in men's cudgel, 5th place in men's taijiquan, and 3rd place in the group event. In 1988, the National Wushu Championships were held in Changsha, and the Hunan team won 4th place in the men's team event and 2nd place in the group event. Male and female athletes of the Hunan Wushu Team and folk boxers made many visits abroad, successively performing in Vietnam, Iraq, North Yemen, Syria, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Singapore, the United States, and various countries of the South Pacific, where they were well received.
In various places in Hunan, folk wushu developed rapidly. The Hunan Provincial Sports Commission proposed: "Rural sports should focus on wushu," encouraging and supporting the development of wushu schools and private boxing societies. Now, most counties and cities in the province have established wushu associations, there are more than 100 wushu schools of initial scale, hundreds of boxing societies teaching boxing seasonally, and more than a thousand boxers throughout the province engaged in spreading wushu in various places. Sports commissions at all levels in the province promptly conducted technical assessments of boxers and, according to their technical levels, awarded them the titles of first-class boxer, second-class boxer, and third-class boxer. A wushu sanda competition is held once a year and has already been held five times; the first had only 7 teams participating, while the fifth in 1990 had 23 teams participating.
The government promptly commended units that achieved results in developing the wushu movement. In October 1984, the Hunan Provincial People's Government awarded Dong'an County and Xinhua County the title of "Home of Wushu." These two counties later also received the title of "National Home of Wushu."
The Hunan Provincial Sports Commission strengthened theoretical research on wushu and established a wushu society. On the basis of large-scale investigation, excavation, and organization of wushu activities throughout the province, it published "History of Hunan Wushu," "Record of Hunan Wushu Boxing and Weapons," and "Directory of Hunan Wushu Personalities." It held provincial wushu thesis report meetings many times and edited collections of wushu papers. A number of specialized wushu books were published one after another, including Liu Qirong's "Space Meridian Cudgel," Tan Zhouwen's "Spiral Fist," Chen Yiqiu's "Meishan Martial Arts," and Wan Tianshi's "Legends of the Martial World," all deeply welcomed by readers.
Eight Fists: Techniques and Origins
Three-Step and Eight Fists are mutually exterior and interior, complementing each other, and mainly use fists to strike the upper, middle, and lower three routes.
Eight Fists is the mother form, practiced on the right side, with rigid power and square-shaped form, a flat body and low stance, seizing the body and advancing swiftly with powerful continuous attacks, completed in one flow. There are two kinds of Eight Fists: one whose starting posture sends out tiger claws is called Tiger-Claw Eight Fists, and one whose starting posture sends out cannon fists is called Flat-Head Eight Fists. The routines are largely the same with minor differences and come from the same source.
Three-Step is the child form, practiced on the left side, with soft power and circular form, turning the body and stepping down, the front hand swinging in circles to seize position, and the rear hand lying in ambush to attack, with a tight and compact movement structure. Three-Step also has two kinds: one with a three-step jump and a turning-back three-step jump is the eagle form, and the other with a turn-back but no jump is the crane form.
This boxing emphasizes that "within hardness there is softness and it is not broken; being fast yet able to remain steady, it is not broken" (words of Wang Runsheng), and it eliminates the complex and takes the simple, being short, few, refined, fast, and decisive — a typical purely offensive type of boxing.
In tactical fighting methods, it uses "using the straight to break the horizontal, using the horizontal to break the straight, without blocking or parrying," sending out same-side hand and foot, stressing footwork, flexible transitions, mobilizing the whole body, and combining hardness and softness.
The starting and closing postures are also distinctive: the starting posture uses a most unceremonious and extremely crisp strike, while the closing posture ends with a cupped-hand salute to show courtesy, giving a feeling of full confidence and certain victory. The entire routine has the style and characteristics of being simple, rugged, vigorous and powerful, with a broad stance and expansive momentum, fierce and strong, swift and unrestrained, with mother and child forms cycling and endless variations.
Originally there were no leg techniques in the routine; it stresses close-body sticking and striking, so there are extremely many methods evolved from the routine forms. Single-practice hand techniques (with footwork) include Single Whip Hand, Double Whip Hand, Father-Son Hand, Big Wheel, Small Wheel, Stirring Hand, Hungry Eagle Pouncing on Food, Male Eagle Spreading Wings, Great Spirit Fist, Small Spirit Fist, Linked Three Pillars, Sweeping Elbow Hand, Lifting-Blocking Hand, and Spreading Hand, among others. Thirty-six hands then became one hundred and eight hands. It can be said to be rich in content and endlessly varied. Although there are no leg techniques in the routine, very low leg techniques are also used in free sparring, and at the same time, opportunities for advancing, retreating, changing, seizing, and turning are used, with kneeling, pressing, hooking, blocking, tripping, and stepping combined with hand techniques to form throwing methods, becoming many very short free-hand boxing combinations. Among them are the famous "Stain-the-Clothes Throw," "Three-Step Ling," and "Five-Step Ling," and other sets of movements of very high practical value (ling is a local term, meaning that the opponent is like stepping on ice and will fall within three or five steps).
When learning this boxing, one first practices power and strength, then footwork, and only at the end practices the boxing itself, so the power is abundant, making people vigorous, immensely strong, and fond of fighting injustice. But because this boxing is too fierce and vicious, it has been strictly kept secret by boxers through the generations and regarded as an "exclusive" skill, never easily taught to others, with the rule that practice should not be seen by outsiders. Therefore, its transmission has been very incomplete: some know only Eight Fists, some know only Three-Step, and some do not know the basic power training, possibly out of caution to avoid trouble.
Hu Mei brought this boxing into Hunan, much like the story of Wu Song. Hu had once been a leader of Shanghai water porters and was exiled to Changsha for injuring someone fatally. The prison head Li Daosheng admired his skills and respected him as an elder; later he bailed out Hu and let him live at his home at the mouth of Zhushan in Changsha County. Hu, moved by his sincerity, taught him day and night for several years before leaving.
There are two legends about its origin: one is that it was understood from watching a snake and crane fight, and the other is that someone living deep in the mountains and old forests while cutting wood was taught by a white ape, so some call Eight Fists the mother form of monkey boxing.
The late Elder Gong Shouquan, who taught this boxing and cudgel technique, said that this boxing has no manual and relies on oral instruction and personal example. Teacher Gong studied under Du Rongjie, Wang Meicheng, and Wang Runsheng. His skill was extremely deep, and he was modest and kind, not good at speech, and treasured and respected himself.
Mawangdui Qigong
Mawangdui Qigong was created and compiled by Tong Junjie, a native of Taoyuan. Its principles derive from the "Daoyin Tu" unearthed in 1973 from the Han tomb at Mawangdui in Changsha and from ancient and modern techniques of daoyin and breathing exercises, and it has relatively good medical effects.
Mawangdui Qigong has 22 kinds of exercises. The main ones include "Hypnosis Exercise" for calming and relieving pain and soothing the nerves and inducing sleep, "Fitness Exercise" for increasing intelligence and generating wisdom, "Bodybuilding and Weight-Loss Exercise" for supplementing qi, strengthening the brain, and shaping the body, as well as "Gathering Qi to Support the Upright," "Removing the Turbid and Preserving the Clear," "Drinking Spring and Eating Jujubes," "Growing Strong," "Blood Pressure Reduction Exercise," "Refreshing the Spirit and Clearing the Mind," "Concentrating the Spirit and Stabilizing the Intention," "Thunderbolt Exercise," "Soothing the Heart and Calming Asthma," "Soothing the Meridians and Quickening the Collaterals," "Strengthening the Waist and Consolidating the Kidneys," "Qi Circulation and Breathing Exercise," "Simple Daoyin Exercise," and "Regulating Menstruation and Relieving Pain."
The main features of Mawangdui Qigong are that it is simple and easy to learn, has daoyin words, and is accompanied by simple, ancient-style music; it takes effect quickly and is not prone to deviations. This qigong especially emphasizes the regulation of brain sequences, pays attention to intention-guided daoyin, and stresses the combination of intention, qi, and form, achieving the use of intention to lead qi, the use of form to capture intention, the use of intention to resemble form, and the generation of intention from form.
The "Hypnosis Exercise" of Mawangdui Qigong produced hypnotic effects on the spot through more than 1,700 performances. In 1987, at two international qigong exchange conferences held in Shenzhen, Tong Junjie's "Hypnosis Exercise" demonstrated group hypnotic effects and attracted the attention of the qigong circles at home and abroad. "Hypnosis Exercise" has six steps: before practice, empty the bowels and bladder, do not roughhouse or play, do not smoke or drink alcohol, do not drink strong tea, be relaxed and happy, and keep the mind as calm as water. The first step is "Heavenly Garment Without Seam," the second step is "Fold Yin and Return Yang," the third step is "Taiji Heavenly Circuit," the fourth step is "Directly Penetrate the Central Palace," the fifth step is "Awakening and Pouring into the Crown," and the sixth step is "Original Spirit Returns to the Cavity." The formula of the Hypnosis Exercise is: "At night when people are quiet and all thoughts vanish, relaxed, peaceful, round, and distant, let the wind blow freely; keep the intention on the niwan and seal the seven orifices, joyful and content, flying to the ninth heaven." The Hypnosis Exercise can be used both for self-hypnosis and for hypnotizing others. Long-term persistence can eliminate illness and strengthen the body, calm the nerves, relieve pain, and resist aging.
Wushu Celebrity Liu Shuqun
Liu Shuqun, born in December 1967, with the dharma name Shi Yanfeng, is a 34th-generation disciple of Songshan Shaolin Temple. His pen name is Suiyuan Jushi. He is a native of Shuangfeng, Hunan, and a member of the Communist Party of China. He is a national first-class sanda referee, first-class martial arts master, member of the International Qigong Research Association, professional art auctioneer, senior editor, and journalist.
He once served as curator of the "China Shaolin Temple Shuangfeng Jingwu Hall" and head coach of the "Shaolin Film and Television Stunt Team," and as a guest professor at many martial arts academies. He is currently a chief reporter for Hunan Daily's News World and art director of the News World Network, editor-in-chief of Huaxia Yiyuan, lifelong honorary chairman of the China Contemporary Art Association, council member of the Hong Kong Calligraphy and Painting Academy, and a national calligraphy and painting observer. He began practicing martial arts at age 8, studying under Shaolin Temple masters Yunhai and Yonghan. He is skilled in Shaolin boxing and weapons and sanda combat, and has won national sanda championships many times. Later he studied at the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University, researching cultural art business and management. He is a diligent, eager-to-learn martial artist of both literary and martial accomplishment and a compassionate figure in the martial world.
His published papers and works include "History of the Development of Shaolin Wushu" and "Shaolin Iron-Head Toad Exercise." He co-published "Elite Records of Chinese Wushu," "Elegant Demeanor of Contemporary Celebrities," and "Civil Servant Interview Handbook," among others. More than 300 reports of his have been published in authoritative newspapers, periodicals, and websites. He is currently preparing to publish the poetry and prose collection "Call of Love" and "Contemporary Art Investment and Collection." Two of his papers won international gold awards. He has successively received titles such as "Advanced Individual in Social Comprehensive Governance and Courageous Action," "Top Ten Shaolin Boxers," "Chinese Wushu Elite," "Compassionate Martial Artist," "Outstanding Communist Party Member," and "National Outstanding Talent," as well as wushu contribution awards. He was received by national leaders at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Zhang Shan, chairman of the Chinese Wushu Association, wrote an inscription for him: "Promote wushu, cultivate elites." Tang Shiyou, the "martial world eccentric genius and finger-calligraphy master," wrote an inscription for him: "With splendid writing in his breast, truly elegant and outstanding; when one reaches desirelessness, character is naturally high." True Kung Fu magazine published a special report titled "Another Branch of Shaolin Stands Alone." His biography has been included in dictionaries such as "Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Martial Artists," "Elite Records of Chinese Wushu," "World Outstanding Talent Database," and "Elegant Demeanor of Chinese Celebrities."
Yan Xizheng's "Odes to China's Gold Medals at Successive Olympic Games"
A man from central Hunan who is both a martial artist and a poet, filled with boundless reverence for the Olympic spirit and heartfelt admiration for Olympic champions, spent more than three years creating a giant calligraphy-and-painting album titled Odes to China's Gold Medalists at Successive Olympic Games. The album stands 2 meters tall and 1.4 meters wide, contains 25 folds and 100 pages, stretches 78 meters long, and weighs 300 kilograms, setting an "Olympic record." In late April 2008, the album began a touring exhibition in several cities across the country.
He is Yan Xizheng, a famous martial artist renowned throughout China's martial arts circles, a contemporary master of both letters and combat once praised by the great scholar of Chinese classics Wen Huaisha as "a talent rarely seen in any age—scholars lack his boldness of spirit, and warriors lack his literary grace."
After composing a poem in praise of Du Li, winner of China's first gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, Yan Xizheng could not stop. He wrote poems of praise for the other 931 Chinese Olympic champions at the Athens Games. Afterward, he devoted himself to composing a poem of praise for every Chinese Olympic champion from Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, and the Winter Olympics as well. A total of 115 poems of praise, elegant in language and lofty in imagery, form the poem cycle Odes to China's Gold Medalists at Successive Olympic Games—arguably China's first epic celebrating its Olympic champions.
Yan Xizheng's Olympic complex dates back many years. He believes that Olympic culture is rich in meaning, that martial arts and other sports alike determine superiority through physical and technical competition, and that both must rely on a strong competitive spirit to sustain and drive them forward. Moreover, martial arts have absorbed the essence of traditional Chinese culture, and the two can be perfectly combined. Yan Xizheng also believes that sport's contribution to world peace is no less than its contribution to human health. To express his respect for the active organizers, participants, and supporters of sport, Yan Xizheng has been striving to fulfill his dream of erecting monuments and writing biographies for China's Olympic champions. He has also long labored in the martial arts world, training martial arts talent, and has traveled abroad many times to promote traditional Chinese martial arts, contributing his strength to the effort to see martial arts enter the Olympic Games as soon as possible.
After completing his poems of praise for China's Olympic champions, Yan Xizheng began visiting cultural celebrities throughout the country and gained the support of more than a hundred renowned calligraphers and painters. Through calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting, they gave the poems of praise a beautiful and substantial form of expression, integrating poetry, calligraphy, painting, and seal carving into a single whole that embodies the essence of traditional Chinese culture. Yan Xizheng then conceived a great innovation: to compile the calligraphy-and-painting works of the Olympic champion poems of praise into a giant album and exhibit it on tour in cities across the country, promoting the spread of Olympic culture and traditional Chinese culture throughout the land.
Yan Xizheng believes there is no limit to an "Olympic record." He now has another dream: to build, in a suitable location, a stele corridor for Olympic champions, with each stele inscribed with a brief biography and a poem of praise for an Olympic champion. After the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he publicly solicited poems of praise for Olympic champions nationwide, calling for poems for Chinese athletes who won gold at the Beijing Olympics and beyond, to be continually added to the Olympic champions' stele corridor and sustained forever.
Hunan's Song-Hall Culture
Hunan's song-hall culture, dating from the founding of Changsha's first song hall—the "Aviation Song Hall"—in 1988, has weathered 15 years of trials and triumphs. Over these 15 years, it went from a sudden rush of imitators springing up everywhere, to a period of silence and several years of slump in the mid-1990s, to the mixed-format operation that burst onto the scene in 1999 with the "Red Sun Performing Arts Center." Today it is stepping onto a more rational path of development. Its influence has spread to all major cities across the province and is radiating beyond provincial borders, becoming a brand of Hunan's cultural and entertainment industry. Today's Hunan song-hall culture has indeed played a positive and irreplaceable role in guiding the public's spiritual consumption, improving and enhancing their quality of life, satisfying the public's healthy and uplifting entertainment needs, resisting the tendencies toward "vulgarization" and "Westernization" in the entertainment industry, promoting national arts, building an advanced culture, and advancing socialist spiritual civilization. At the same time, after more than a decade of arduous exploration and deliberate management, it has gradually formed its own unique characteristics and taken a remarkable step forward on the road of industrialization, striving to explore coordinated development with cultural undertakings and promote comprehensive social progress.
In 1988, when Hunan's first song hall—the "Aviation Song Hall"—was born at the Aviation Hotel in Changsha, it was a earth-shaking event that drew everyone's attention. Within a very short time, dozens of song halls of all sizes, some lavishly decorated and some simply furnished, sprang up across the length and breadth of the province. As competition grew increasingly fierce, some song halls, catering to the vulgar tastes of certain audience members, briefly popularized crude and off-color jokes and other vulgar fare, which triggered widespread public dissatisfaction and drew great attention from the regulatory authorities. Subsequently, a series of measures to strengthen management were put forward, and the song-hall fever began to plummet. After a period of relative silence, some clever operators finally found a better meeting point between the regulatory authorities and the general audience. During this time, Changsha's "Qindao Song Hall" blazed a new trail, operating in a standardized manner and pursuing distinctive features, gradually forming a song-hall development model represented by itself. Several key song halls in the provincial capital saw their business flourish day by day, and Hunan's song halls entered their second stage of development. For much of the 1990s, when many song halls were struggling to survive and at a loss as to what to do, the operating model represented by Changsha's "Qindao Song Hall" became a major bright spot in Hunan's song-hall scene during this period. In 1999, "Red Sun Entertainment Co., Ltd.," a joint venture between Hong Kong's China Group and Hunan Province, seized a beachhead in Changsha's entertainment industry. After in-depth investigation and repeated feasibility studies, it spent huge sums to take over the idle former Hunan Gymnasium site and converted it into a large-scale entertainment venue—the Red Sun Entertainment Center—with full stage functions, luxurious and comfortable seating, and a capacity of over 1,000 people. It downplayed the role of the emcee, emphasized novel and fashionable song-and-dance performances interspersed with a large number of ethnic and folk acrobatic feats, and added audience-favorite comic dialogues and skits, transforming a single-format song-hall operation into a mixed-format stage production. This made entertainment-goers in the provincial capital sit up and take notice, and they flocked to it, making it an instant giant in Changsha's entertainment scene, with crowds every day and tickets hard to come by. Red Sun Entertainment Co., Ltd.'s pioneering move ignited the restructuring and rebirth of Changsha's song halls. For a time, Qindao, Great China, JJ, and other song halls rushed to follow suit, and mixed-format operation became the dominant business model in Changsha and indeed throughout the province's song halls, continuing to this day.
Changsha's song halls gradually got on track. The veteran establishments—"Qindao," "Great China," "JJ," "Huatian," "Tongcheng," "Shenlong," and "Jiacheng"—and the newer ones—"Red Sun Performing Arts Center," "Great China Song and Dance Grand Theater," and especially the famous "Tian Han Grand Theater"—each displayed their own prowess and brilliance, forming a formidable force in the provincial capital's cultural and entertainment industry. The most popular among them are the Tian Han Grand Theater, Qindao Song Hall, Red Sun Performing Arts Center, Great China Song Hall, and Great China Song and Dance Grand Theater. These venues generally begin performances at 9:15 p.m., and by around 8:50 p.m. they are usually packed to capacity. On Western holidays that young people regard as fashionable—such as Valentine's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas—as well as on traditional Chinese festivals like the Lantern Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and Dragon Boat Festival, tickets are often as scarce as "Luoyang paper," with not a single seat to be had.
Hunan Provincial Xiang Opera Theater
The Hunan Provincial Xiang Opera Theater was established in October 1949. Since its founding, the theater has staged a large number of outstanding productions. When Pipa on the Road and Five Platforms Meeting My Brother were performed at the First National Opera Observation and Performance, Xu Shaoqing, Peng Linong, Yang Fupeng, and Luo Yuande won first, second, and third prizes for performers and an honorary award respectively. Princess Baihua and Li Bai Mocks the Powerful toured Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, and Henan, steadily expanding Xiang Opera's influence. In 1986, the theater traveled to Hong Kong to participate in the First Chinese Local Opera Exhibition and Performance, where the productions it brought, including The Story of Worshipping the Moon and The Tablet of Life and Death, received high praise and acclaim from people of all walks of life in Hong Kong. In 1987, the newly created productions The Mountain Spirit and Grievance of the Phoenix Flute won awards respectively at Hunan Province's First "Autumn of Dongting" Arts Festival. In 1988, the theater took The Mountain Spirit, Grievance of the Phoenix Flute, Broken Bridge, and Presenting the Sword to Beijing for performances. Xiang Opera artist Zuo Dabin won the Sixth Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Drama, and The Mountain Spirit won the Outstanding Performance Award at China's First Drama Festival. In 1990, an adapted version of the classic Xiang Opera The Story of the Pipa, along with excerpts such as Pan Ge Misses His Wife, He Yibao Writes a Complaint, and Meeting at the Ancient City, were performed in Beijing to critical acclaim. Wang Yongguang won the Eighth Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Drama and the First Wenhua Performance Award from the Ministry of Culture. The Story of the Pipa won the First Wenhua New Repertoire Award and later the Hunan Provincial Outstanding Literature and Art Award. In 1992, the theater's newly created historical drama Emperor Taizong of Tang and Wei Zheng won the Outstanding Performance Award at the Hunan Provincial Theatrical Festival. In November of the same year, the theater took the classic productions The Story of the White Rabbit, Two Descend the Mountain, and Worshipping the Moon and other excerpts to Beijing, where the Plum Blossom bloomed for the third time: He Xiaohan won the Tenth Plum Blossom Award for Chinese Drama. In 1994, the newly created historical drama Dream of Sin won first prize at the Hunan Provincial New Repertoire Festival. In 1997, the newly created historical dramas The Road of Maling, The Blood of Zi, and The Story of the White Rabbit all won the Tian Han Grand Prize simultaneously, and The Blood of Zi won the Ministry of Culture's Wenhua New Repertoire Award, Wenhua Performance Award, Wenhua Music Composition Award, and Wenhua Stage Design Award.
The theater's current leading artists include: Liu Chunquan (first-class actor, representative works The Tablet of Life and Death and Beating the Drum to Censure Cao), Dong Wuyan (first-class actor, representative works Visiting the White Robe and Sending Off the White Robe), Zuo Dabin (first-class actress, representative works The Blood of Zi and Grievance of the Phoenix Flute), Wang Yongguang (first-class actor, representative works The Story of the Pipa and The Mountain Spirit), He Xiaohan (first-class actress, representative works The Story of the White Rabbit and The Blood of Zi), Zhi Heyu (first-class playwright, representative works The Mountain Spirit and Yellow Thorn Tree), Wang Xiangqiang (first-class instrumentalist, representative works The Mountain Spirit and The Blood of Zi), Chen Aizhu (first-class actress, representative works The Story of the Pipa and Li Sanniang), Tang Bohua (first-class actor, representative works The Story of Xu Jiujing's Promotion and The Road of Maling), Chen Feihong (first-class composer, representative works The Story of the White Rabbit and The Road of Maling), Yan Yanyu (first-class actress, representative works Crying Blood of the Cuckoo and The Mute Girl's Complaint), and others.