1. Hong Shen was a Chinese playwright, film director and screenwriter, film and drama theorist, and educator.
18 Facts About Hong Shen
1. 2.
Hong Shen is considered by drama historians as one of the three founders of the modern Chinese spoken drama, together with Tian Han and Ouyang Yuqian.
3.
Hong Shen wrote the first Chinese film script, Mrs Shentu.
4.
Hong Shen was born in Wujin, Jiangsu Province, Qing Empire on 31 December 1894.
5.
Hong Shen then left for the United States to study ceramic engineering at Ohio State University on a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship.
6.
Hong Shen returned to China in 1922, with the ambition of becoming China's Ibsen.
7.
Hong Shen taught Western Literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, as well as several other universities.
8.
Hong Shen wrote and acted in the play Yama Zhao in 1923, which strongly opposed the brutal warfare that plagued China at the time, which is known as the Warlord Era.
9.
Hong Shen joined the Shanghai Association for Dramatists, and made a number of plays, including The Young Mistress's Fan, which was adapted from Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.
10.
In 1925, Hong Shen published the film script Mrs Shentu in the Shanghai magazine Eastern Miscellany.
11.
Hong Shen directed his first film, Young Master Feng, at Mingxing Film Company in 1925.
12.
Hong Shen then co-directed the films Love and Gold and The Young Mistress's Fan with Mingxing's founder Zhang Shichuan, and wrote the script for the 1931 film Sing-Song Girl Red Peony, the first Chinese sound film.
13.
Hong Shen was appointed director of the China Film School in 1928.
14.
Hong Shen joined the League of Left-Wing Writers in 1930, and participated in political activities.
15.
Hong Shen staged many plays to advocate resistance against Japan.
16.
Hong Shen returned to teach at Fudan University after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, but was forced out because of his pro-Communist sympathy.
17.
Hong Shen taught briefly at Xiamen University in Fujian Province before going to Northeast China in 1948, which was under Communist control.
18.
Hong Shen was a member of the First National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.