He Jiping

Playwright

After graduating from the Central Academy of Theatre in Beijing in 1982, He Jiping was assigned to the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, for which she wrote Lucky Highrise (Haoyun daxia) and The World’s Top Restaurant (Tianxia diyi lou, 1987), a popular, award-winning comedy-drama based on a famous Peking Duck restaurant in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Beijing (see Beijing Roast Duck). In 1989 He moved to Hong Kong, where the film artist Tsui Hark (Xu Ke) invited her to work on the scripts for Huang Feihong (1991) and Dragon Inn (Xin longmen kejian, 1992). He worked on these and other films through the 1990s using pseudonyms.

In 1997 she joined Du Guowei (Raymond To) as playwright-in-residence of the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre (www.hkrep.com), writing Princess Deling and the Empress Cixi (Deling yü Cixi, 1998); A Brilliant Beginning (Kai shi da ji, 1999), an adaptation of Lao She’s satire of medical services in 1930s China; and We Are One Family (Mingyue he zeng shi liang xiang, 2001), about the competition between the proprietors, differing in age and background, of a Hong Kong noodle shop and a pizza parlour, respectively. In 2001 He Jiping also received considerable attention for a romantic script staged by celebrity performers, titled A Red Boat in Misty Rain (Yanyu hongchuan).

Further reading

He, Jiping. (2003). The World’s Top Restaurant. In Chen, Xiaomei (ed.), Reading the Right Text: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

EDWARD GUNN