Li Yuru

(neé Li Shuzhen)

b. 1923, Beijing

Xiqu (sung-drama/opera) actress

Jingju (Peking opera) actress Li Yuru is one of the few living masters of the dan role, or female character type. Her best known repertoire includes The Red Plum-Blossom Pavilion (Hongmei ge, 1959), Marriage Associated with the Chest (Gui zhong yuan, 1958), Princes Baihua (Baihua gongzhu, 1960) and The Royal Concubine Mei (Mei Fei, 1961). She started writing in the 1980s, and has published: Hatred and Raven Hair (Qingsi hen 1983), a full-length Jingju play; A Little Woman (Xiao nüren 1996), a novel; and many columns in the Xinmin Evening News (Xinmin wanbao) and the Wenhui Daily (Wenhui bao).

In Jingju, women’s roles were traditionally played by female impersonators. Li Yuru and her generation played an important part in the development of the genre as they transformed the dan into a role also played by females. When Li Yuru was nine, her family, which was descended from Manchu nobility, was living in dire poverty and sent her to study Jingju at the Chinese Theatre School (Zhonghua xiqu zhuanke xuexiao). She became a star at fourteen, and since that time a seventy-year stage career has continued through wars, political campaigns, the Cultural Revolution and the current radical economic reforms. On the basis of the solid and strict training she received as a child, and as a disciple of the greatest female impersonators (Mei Lanfang, Xun Huisheng, Cheng Yanqiu, Furongcao and Xiao Cuihua), Li has profound knowledge of different acting and singing schools. She specializes in both singing and acting, and has also formed her own repertoire and style. In 1979, she married Cao Yu, the most important playwright in twentieth-century Chinese spoken drama, and this brought new directions to her Jingju career.

LI RURU