Zhang Aizhen, a peasant girl who grew up drinking the water of the Zhanghe River, brought great spiritual pleasure and artistic enjoyment to the people of the old district who raised her with her crisp, sweet singing voice and lively performance. At the same time, Zhang Aizhen's name also disappeared, spreading all over the foothills of Taihang Mountain, factories and mines, and urban and rural areas. Take a look:
The villagers in Bagong Town, a suburb of Jincheng, heard that Aizhen's play was red and purple, so they had a sneak peek and "wrote" a five-day playMany people soaked in the theater for five days in a row, occupying seats and watching performances, and they were so busy that they didn't sleep a single night for five days and five nights.
A mine in Jincheng Mining Bureau, I wanted to be enthusiastic about "trendy singing and dancing" The young people were immediately overwhelmed by Aizhen's singing. On this day, the four young miners who lived in the same dormitory returned from watching the play, and they didn't feel that they had heard it, so they turned on the tape recorder again, and while enjoying Aizhen's singing, they snorted Lao Baigan "Shenkan". The wine was in the stomach, the song was intoxicating, and the four of them unconsciously "dried" the five bottles of Lao Baigan, but none of them were drunk!Aizhen's singing has such a great charm!
Many people looked at the quiet, delicate, slender and slender mountain girl in front of them, looking at her warm and sincere eyes and slightly shy crimson face, how could they not guess how this young and uneducated daughter who was born in a corner of Taihang created a new tone of the times that can pull the heartstrings of audiences from all walks of life, especially young people are "crazy"?Can relying on what is often said to be "diligent study and hard work" work?
Those who are familiar with Aizhen will tell you: Aizhen is a very scheming girl. Don't look at her low culture, but it can't stop her from loving learning and Xi, willing to study, and now she is full of "new terms of art". She is using her "heart" to act, to portray characters, to create new tones, and to explore the true meaning of art.
It was her father, Zhang Donglin, and her half-brother Feng Laisheng who first guided Aizhen on the path of art. In 1959, when Xiao Aizhen was born in the poor peasant family of Guanzhuang Village, Hexi Town, Gaoping County, she was influenced by her father and brother early. Her father, who lost his wife at an early age and "sat in the martial arts field" in the village troupe, often took her to rehearsals and watch plays. The elder brother who is a ** teacher in the county youth literature and art training class, seeing that the clever little sister loves drama day by day, and is born with a silver bell-like singing voice, which is an actor material, so he is naturally very carefully tutored. At the age of 13, she went to apply for the training class, and before she finished singing, the teachers and students of the training class were shocked: "Tut!".This baby sings really like Guo Lanying!"No, every note in that song is carefully carved and "cut" by the "** teacher".
A year later, this childish and lovely girl appeared at a gala for the reception of Vietnamese foreign guests. In the face of the unfamiliar faces in the audience who had never seen before, Aizhen had no stage fright, and sang a piece of "Battlefield on the Kowloon River" with the authentic Shangdang Bangzi in her hometown. Of course, the "foreigners" would not understand what she was singing, but she could clearly see from the smiles and warm applause on the unfamiliar faces that they at least appreciated her singing and expressions. In that era of "one flower blooming alone", a 14-year-old girl is not ambiguous in front of foreigners, which undoubtedly brings glory and pride to the training class in the small county.
After Xiao Aizhen hit the groundwork, she didn't have to fight or grab, and soon played the "protagonist" Wu Qinghua in the school's new platoon of "Red Women's Army" selection "Evergreen Guidance" and "Complaining about Hardships and Joining the Army". Although they are only two clips in the whole play, they are the well-known "No. 1 person" after all!What made Aizhen even happier was that in 1975, this play actually walked out of the small Gaoping County, making her appear on the big stage of the provincial capital for the first time. A wide stage, dazzling lights. The enthusiastic audience immersed her in a warm and sweet artistic creation. Her beautiful singing and passionate performance have won praise from the literary and artistic circles and audiences in the provincial capital, and the provincial TV station broadcast the performance live, and the provincial radio station recorded it and sent it to the province. For the first time, her voice and image were favored by the majority of opera lovers through modern sound and pictures. For a 16-year-old young actor in a mountain township, the joy and excitement brought to her by this opportunity and luck are intoxicating!
Two. Before the proud little Aizhen had time to carefully taste the comfort of standing out, the ensuing creative problems made her deeply confused. It was 1977, she graduated from the art training class and was officially assigned to the Gaoping County People's Theater Troupe, and the first task she received was to play the heroine Yang Kaihui in the modern drama "Butterfly Love Flower". This is a heroine who shocked China and the world, and a "lady" who has never appeared on the stage. I just read the fourth grade of primary school, and I only heard that the "proud Yang" in the song "Butterfly Loves Flowers" is Yang Kaihui's her, not to mention understanding the "broad mind" of the heroine, reflecting the "special temperament", and shaping the "glorious image", even the philosophical lines in the play are gnawed. At that time, the troupe decided to win the drama "Butterfly" in Half Moon and meet the audience as soon as possible. Little Aizhen is really a little "hairy"!She was taken into the rehearsal hall of the Peking Opera Company of China in Beijing.
Yang Kaihui, played by Peking Opera actor Li Weikang, is awesome!Ai-jin was soon intoxicated by her superb performance. The elegant temperament, the expressive performance, the euphemistic singing, every move, every style, every word and every tone, all made Aizhen admire her to the ground. "Oh!It turns out that Yang Kaihui is like this. People have worked hard to bring the martyrs to life, and we must also learn the drama well according to the gourd!She plunged headlong into the rehearsal room, concentrating on learning the movements and memorizing expressions during the day: locked in the dormitory at night, practicing Xi over and over again, pondering, tossing and turning in the middle of the night. When she returned to the Gaoping Troupe, she borrowed Yang Kaihui's relevant ** and information from everywhere, and buried herself in "gnawing" the book. If you don't move, you ask, the wind demon looks at the ** practice body, and when you meet someone, you ask, "Do you think this looks like this?".With the enthusiastic help of the master and peers, the image of Yang Kaihui in Aizhen's mind gradually became clear and lively. When she played Yang Kaihui, with ear-length hair, a small shirt and short skirt, white socks and cloth shoes, appeared on the Gaoping stage in a sassy and heroic manner, the people in the group were happy"Don't look at it, raise your hands and feet, smile and smile, it's really a bit of a female revolutionary's demeanor!The audience rushed to say, "Hey!."**'s original wife is on the party drama!I heard that we are the second in the country to perform, so why don't you go and take a look!The small county town was a sensation, with more than 20 performances in a row. The Propaganda Department and the Cultural Bureau of the southeast region of Shanxi Province organized a special trip to Gaoping to observe the "two regiments and one school" in the region. Then, the regional drama school copied the performance, and the provincial radio recorded it again to the province....
This time, Aizhen was not too excited, she knew in her heart: "There are not many things in the play, most of them are imitations of others." As an actor, you can't always eat the steamed buns that others have chewed, it's tasteless!”
Three. Just as Aizhen vowed to climb to a higher goal in art, she walked into an artistic predecessor who made her unforgettable for the rest of her life, Wu Wanzhi.
It was after the opening of costume dramas, and "Pi Xiuying Fighting Tiger" starring Aizhen was popular in the party for a while. People say that she sings like Wu Wanzhi, and some people even say that "Wu Wanzhi has already accepted Aizhen as an apprentice!"."Actually, Aizhen hadn't even seen Mr. Wu before. It was on the record that she met this long-admired artistic senior. The records such as "Pi Xiuying Fighting the Tiger" and "Sanguan Banquet" that her brother found for her once fascinated her all night without sleeping, listening and listening, learning and learning, tasting and pondering repeatedly. When Wu Wanzhi heard this clear voice that resembled herself on the radio, the old man burst into tears with excitement: "This ghost Nizi, true spirit!."In the 1981 Provincial Outstanding Young Actor Good Singing Section Award, the daughter Wu Guohua, who had already sung popular, did not vote, and voted for Zhang Aizhen, a "bosom friend" who had never known him, in public. Aizhen burst into tears when she heard this, a kind of double gratitude for her mother's love and teacher's kindness, so that she dispelled the concern of "not daring to make a mistake", accompanied by her brother, went to the hall, and worshiped under the master's door reverently.
In the past two years, Ai Zhenrong has been transferred to the City Youth League, and the master and apprentice live in the same building, and they are more like a family. Of course, the master and apprentice never forget to talk about "drama" when they meet. Every time Aizhen rehearses a new play, every time she thinks of a new sentence, she has to ask the master for guidance and polishing. The master is the strong backing for her singing reform: "Child, let go of bold changes, as long as the audience likes it, and does not lose the taste of our big play, how can I sing." Didn't the master come over like this back then!”
Four. With the teachings of her teacher and the help of her colleagues, Aizhen has grown by leaps and bounds, and has taken several big steps in a few years
In 1980, as the first play after the "Cultural Revolution", she sang "Pi Xiuying Fights the Tiger", which was made into a record by the China Record Society
In the same year, he won the first prize of the regional performance with the play "Hu Yuefeng".In 1981, he won the Provincial Outstanding Young Actor Good Singing Award;
In 1982, with a discount of "Noisy Kiln", he won the first-class actor award for outstanding young and middle-aged actors in the province
In 1984, he won the special performance award of the whole region with the play "Pear Blossom Valley".
In 1986, in the rehearsal of the revitalization of the Shanxi Opera Youth Troupe, he co-starred with Zhang Baoping in "Killing Wife" and won the gold medal for leading role.
The successful performance of "Killing My Wife" finally made Aizhen taste the sweetness of "chewing her own steamed bun" for the first time.
In 1985, in order to participate in the provincial youth troupe, the Jincheng Youth Troupe "borrowed" Aizhen to the troupe. When she went, excerpts such as "Searching for Books" and "Returning the Print" had already been put into rehearsal, but she couldn't even decide what plays to perform. Seeing that other people's dramas were in full swing, she was so anxious that she was sick for several days. Thanks to screenwriter Grab's "grinding guns" for her, she wrote the drama "Killing My Wife" for her, and she rushed into battle with the encouragement of the leader. There is no singing design, and her brother who is far away in Gaoping composes the music in a surprise attack, writes a few paragraphs and sends it to her personally by train;There was no conductor, and Wu Baoming, deputy director of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, took the baton. "Killing Wife" is such a "hurry" and rushed out at the speed of "modernization" 360. It's funny, relying on the director's cleverness, concentricity, love Zhen and literacy, this "gong play" that first appeared at the opening ceremony of the rehearsal has caused a strong response inside and outside the meeting!
The performance on stage is in full swing, when Wang Yulian, who is virtuous and kind and understands righteousness played by Aizhen, decoction and medicine, and is considerate to her husband in every way, but when her husband who came on the order of her mother was forced to kill her as the "daughter of a traitor", the poignant performance of soft intestines and bitter drinking "three glasses of wine";In the face of the blade, the "three kills and three requests" shape and her lying on her back "Oh my God!".A heart-rending cry;The determination to "sacrifice one's life and ambition", tears flowed, and the heart-pounding grief and indignation chants all made the audience deeply infected and wept. In particular, her bright and tactful, vocal and emotional, compatible with folk songs, Pingju, Huangmei and other vocal cavities and soft and breathy singing, but also give people the beautiful enjoyment of "three days around the beam, endlessly". No wonder it impresses peers: "Yo!."Shangdang Bangzi has changed, it used to be straight, stiff, and hard, but now it is light, soft, and beautiful, and it has changed well!The Beijing experts who came from afar to observe were full of praise: "Zhang Aizhen's singing is not only affectionate, but also very beautiful, and the singing method is worth studying." ”
Five. If Aizhen's "Killing Wife" is "crooked", it is an inevitable "leap" in art produced by her years of hard practice and accumulation;Then, after two years, she won the first place in the provincial revitalization of the party Bangzi rehearsal, which reflects her breakthrough in artistic creation at a higher level. In the play, she surpassed herself and created an image of Zhuo Wenjun, an ancient talented woman with depth and personality, which is very different from any previous role. "The director of the Shanghai Peking Opera Company, Mr. He Mengli, who was invited this time, has a more clever technique!Zhang Aizhen, who once came up with "**" at the National Symposium on Chinese Opera Vocal Cavity, is now full of "artistic terms": "Director He is not in a hurry to bring us into the rehearsal room. He first told us the story of Zhuo Wenjun and Sima Xiangru to help us understand the plot and understand the charactersAccording to the plot, he instructed us to do various sketches, and then let us 'sit and rehearse' with words and singing in sections, inspiring us to find feelings through communication, so that the characters gradually 'lived' in the 'natural flow' within the characters. Finally stood up in a row, and it was done!When we were arranging the last scene, the teacher deliberately asked us to try it out with the old 'pulling the scene' method, but we had countless hearts, and we couldn't get into the play because of the empty space, so we had to ask the director to do it again. The director's unique rehearsal method gave Aizhen a taste of sweetness, and she finally created a unique "this one" in "A Letter from Two Places".
In the play, Aizhen's portrayal of Zhuo Wenjun's feelings, personality, psychology, and temperament is indeed very deep and delicate. Aizhen convincingly won the first gold medal of this competition, and won the first place in the "Apricot Blossom Award" radio competition of Shangdang Bangzi.
Six. Aizhen realized the value of her life with her creative artistic labor, which was recognized by society. Over the years, provincial, prefectural, and municipal "people's representatives", "CPPCC members", "model workers", "vice chairman of the drama association" and other laurels have fallen on her head one by one. However, she still modestly said that she would "learn from scratch, go through the grinding, and go one step at a time!".”
Writing this, I can't help but sigh, leisurely looking up to see the gorgeous mountain flowers swaying in the wind on the top of Taihang Peak outside the window, and voila!How much it looks like our Zhang Aizhen!
Originally published in Shanxi Drama, 1990).