On July 17, 2000, Ms. Zhao Lirong passed away of lung cancer in Beijing.
On the day of the memorial service, more than 50,000 people spontaneously went to Babaoshan to see her off, and the funeral at that time caused a sensation across the country, and many stars in the entertainment industry also came to mourn.
The "News Network" also reported on Mr. Zhao's funeral, which is also the only people's artist with this honor so far.
But what is sad is that this old man, who has always brought happiness to others, has experienced unimaginable pain in his life.
Zhao Lirong was born in Tianjin, with two older brothers and five older sisters. The youngest, she was born as the family's group pet, so she also got the nickname "Old Love".
A family of 10 people all rely on their father Zhao Bingzhong to comb the actors' hair and cut their hair in the theater for a living.
Therefore, the Zhao family and the people in the theater are getting closer and closer, and Zhao Lirong and her brothers and sisters have also been able to enter the troupe to learn opera, and she has been performing on stage since she was 1 year old.
Once, a newborn child was needed in the play, so everyone hugged Zhao Lirong, who was only one year old.
Unexpectedly, she didn't cry or make trouble, and stretched out her little hand to greet the audience happily, which caused the audience to applaud.
This made the leading actor at that time, Furong Hua, like it very much, and took her as his sister after getting off the stage.
Zhao Lirong, who grew up in the theater since she was a child, gradually fell in love with acting.
When she was 12 years old, "Lao Ai" was renamed Zhao Lirong by her sister Furong Hua, and also helped her worship Ma Jingui as a teacher.
The master is willing to teach, the apprentice is attentive, and over time, Zhao Lirong has gained a lot of fans. At the age of 15, he became the leading role, and at the age of 17, he joined the "Youth Drama Club" in Mentougou.
In the early 50s, with her solid acting skills, she became an actor in the China Ping Theater and met Xin Fengxia.
Since then, the two have formed a stage partner and contributed classic plays such as "Little Erhei's Marriage" to the public.
It was also under the introduction of Xin Fengxia that she met her first husband Sheng Qiang and married him in 1953.
Two years later, the eldest son was born, and just as she was pregnant with her second child, bad luck began to strike.
Sheng Qiang was sent to Tianjin Chadian Farm for labor reform, and died of illness in 1960.
After receiving the news, Zhao Lirong hugged her son and cried. After crying, she began to shoulder the burden of the family alone.
For the next three years, she performed on stage while raising two children on her own. Fortunately, there is also her brother-in-law, Sheng Hong, who has been silently helping her.
From the expenses of the family to the care of the two children, from the physical work to the decision of major matters, it reflects the responsibility of a man.
Seeing this, the eldest sister-in-law persuaded Zhao Lirong to marry Sheng Hong, so that the family would be closer.
But when my sister-in-law and brother-in-law got married, even now they will be poked in the back, let alone in that era, Zhao Lirong resolutely disagreed at first.
Her family is even more resolutely opposed, and the most fierce opposition is her second brother Zhao Lianxi.
But the two children are often ridiculed by other children because they have no father, which makes Zhao Lirong very heartbroken.
So, under the persuasion of her mother-in-law's family, Zhao Lirong and Sheng Hong got married in 1964.
After the second brother Zhao Lianxi learned the news, he was furious, thinking that his sister had ruined the Zhao family.
Since then, he has cut off contact with his sister Zhao Lirong and did not forgive her until his death.
Fortunately, Sheng Hong is a good man with responsibility and responsibility, and after marriage, Zhao Lirong gave birth to her youngest son, Sheng Qian.
In 1970, Zhao Lirong became pregnant again, and this time she finally got her wish and gave birth to a daughter.
This made her very happy, and she specially named her daughter Sheng Jiahuan, which means that the family is happy.
Misfortune befell her again, her daughter was diagnosed with a congenital disability as soon as she was born, and she did not live long at all.
Even though the doctor had made up her mind, Zhao Lirong still did not give up hope, and took her daughter to seek medical treatment everywhere, working hard.
At this time, Zhao Lirong, who was physically and mentally exhausted, ushered in another fatal blow.
Her husband Sheng Hong was delegated, and the burden of raising 4 children fell on her alone, so she could only grit her teeth and move on.
Unfortunately, her daughter passed away at the age of 7, but she didn't even have time to grieve.
In order to treat her daughter's illness, the family owed a lot of foreign debts, and Zhao Lirong had to quickly go out to work to earn money to pay off the debts.
In 1984, while performing in an out-of-town environment, her husband died of a heart attack at home. When her two husbands died, she didn't get the last look, which became her lifelong regret.
But for the sake of her three sons, she could only wipe away her tears and continue to move forward, creating one classic role after another on the stage.
Perhaps fate finally tortured enough Zhao Lirong, in 1986, at the age of 58, she took over the filming of her first TV series "Journey to the West", in which she played the role of the queen of Che Chiguo.
Her rich experience in drama performance makes her handy in filming, and her acting skills are not inferior to those of many professionals.
In the following two years, she made many more works, which also made many people pay attention to her, including the famous screenwriter Shi Lin.
At that time, Shi Lin was creating a sketch for the 1989 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and he specially invited Zhao Lirong to be the protagonist and starred in the sketch "A Day of a Heroic Mother".
This lovely old lady with a Tangshan accent has penetrated into the hearts of audiences across the country because of the sentence "Sima Cylinder smashes the cylinder".
In 1991, 63-year-old Zhao Lirong won the Best Actress Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival with the movie "Chinese New Year", becoming China's first "international actress".
After 1992, Zhao Lirong became a frequent visitor to the Spring Festival Gala, and in that era of lack of entertainment, she was simply the pistachio in the hearts of the people of the whole country.
But what is heart-wrenching is that Mr. Zhao, who has experienced many hardships and has been working, has already collapsed.
Because of the torture of illness, in the 1995 Spring Festival Gala sketch "So Packaged", Mr. Zhao had the only mistake in his life.
Mr. Zhao, who was supposed to kneel directly on the ground and go up with one hand, almost fell down after kneeling because of the pain, so he subconsciously supported the ground with his hands.
At that time, many viewers thought that this was a deliberately designed action. In fact, it was because of the pain that she couldn't hold on, so she made a mistake.
The entire program team felt sorry for her, but she insisted on holding on until the end of the performance, and she didn't let the audience see that something was wrong.
After the performance, the program team hurriedly invited her down, and her knee was swollen to the extent that she had to have surgery.
She just sat silently in her chair and wept, partly because she blamed herself for her mistakes, and on the other hand, because it hurt too much. Mr. Zhao's dedication doesn't stop there.
In the 1996 sketch "Part-time Job Adventure", teacher Zhao Lirong wrote the four big characters "genuine" with a brush on the stage.
Everyone was amazed at her profound calligraphy skills, but they didn't know that in fact, Teacher Zhao was illiterate at all.
For the stage effect, she studied hard for a month, invited a calligraphy teacher to write the mold characters, and practiced these four words repeatedly every day.
Sometimes I couldn't sleep after going to the toilet in the middle of the night, so I ran directly to the study to continue Xi, and it took seventy or eighty pounds of rice paper to have such freedom on the stage.
and the Spring Festival Gala in 1999, which was also the last time Mr. Zhao went to the Spring Festival Gala. In fact, during the rehearsal of "The Veteran", Gong Hanlin found that she often coughed non-stop, and once even coughed up blood.
Because the family couldn't worry about her physical condition, they took her to the hospital for an examination, and the results showed that lung cancer was in an advanced stage.
In order to allow the elderly to complete the Spring Festival Gala performance with peace of mind, the family hid the news.
Because they all know that even if they tell Teacher Zhao about her illness, she will never give up this performance. In the end, "The Veteran Comes Out" was perfectly presented on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala.
Two months later, when she learned of her condition, she chose to accept it very freely, and comforted those who cared about her.
For the matter of illness, she looked very open, and also looked through the photo album at home and personally selected a ** as a posthumous photo.
In the last moments of her illness, in order not to upset her loved ones, she refused to see everyone, and sewed a shroud for herself with her own hands, and personally directed the prologue of her funeral.
Such an artist, who is not afraid of life and death and has created countless spiritual wealth for us, deserves the respect of all of us.