Xin Fengxia

Xin Fengxia was a Chinese pingju opera performer, known as the "Queen of Pingju". She was also a film actress, writer, and painter. She starred in the highly popular films Liu Qiao'er (1956) and Flowers as Matchmakers (1964), both adapted from her operas. She was born in Suzhou, Jiangsu, in 1927. She was sold by human traffickers to Tianjin when she was a toddler, and was given the name Yang Shumin. She was trained as an opera performer from a young age, and became famous in the 1940s. ¹ After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, she moved to Beijing and became a household name with her performances in Little Erhei's Marriage, Liu Qiao'er, and Flowers as Matchmakers. She created her own style of pingju, which was colorful, lively, and expressive. ¹ She met Xu Beihong, a renowned painter and professor, in 1942, and became his assistant and lover. She married him in 1946, after he divorced his first wife. She learned from him the techniques of Western painting and Fauvism, and applied them to her own paintings. She was also a model of beauty and modernity, and appeared on the cover of the popular magazine Liangyou in 1929. ¹ She followed Xu Beihong to various places, such as Japan, Singapore, India, and France, and exhibited her works in many countries. She also wrote several books and articles on art and culture. She was a member of the Fifth Moon Group, a group of avant-garde artists in Taiwan. ¹ After Xu Beihong's death in 1953, she married Wu Zuguang, a prominent playwright and an outspoken critic of government policies. When Wu was denounced as a "rightist" in Mao Zedong's Anti-Rightist Campaign, Xin refused to divorce him and was herself denounced as a result. She was later severely persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, becoming disabled after a beating and was later paralyzed due to a stroke. No longer able to perform, she dedicated the remainder of her life to teaching, writing, and painting. She studied painting with her godfather Qi Baishi, a master of Chinese painting, and studied writing with her husband. She published a two-million-word memoir, which has been translated into English and Urdu. ¹² She donated over 1200 of Xu Beihong's artworks to the Chinese state, and wrote a memoir of his life, which was published in 1982. ¹ She died of natural causes in Changzhou, Jiangsu, in 1998, at the age of 71. She was regarded as one of the pioneers of modern Chinese opera and a bridge between the East and the West. ¹