1. Sun Weishi was the first female director of modern spoken drama in Chinese history.
46 Facts About Sun Weishi
1. 2.
Sun's father was killed by the Kuomintang in 1927, and Sun was eventually adopted by Zhou Enlai, who later became the first premier of the People's Republic of China.
3.
Lin Biao was in Moscow at the time and proposed to Sun Weishi before returning to China in 1942, but Sun Weishi rejected him.
4.
In 1950, shortly after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Sun Weishi was invited to become the director of the China Youth Art Theater, and married one of the most famous actors then in China the same year.
5.
In 1956, Sun Weishi became the artistic director and vice-president of the Chinese Experimental Theater.
6.
Sun Weishi was sentenced without trial, and was tortured in a secret prison for several months before dying.
7.
Sun Weishi's husband was not informed of Sun Weishi's death until his release, in 1975.
8.
In 1926, Sun Weishi was appointed the General Secretary of the General Political Department of the National Revolutionary Army.
9.
When Sun Bingwen died Sun Weishi was only six years old.
10.
In 1935, when Sun Weishi was only fourteen, Sun Weishi's mother entrusted her to a leftist acting troupe based in Shanghai.
11.
Sun Weishi had three siblings, one sister and two brothers.
12.
Sun Weishi Yang was eventually released, became Zhu De's personal assistant, and became the president of Renmin University after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
13.
In 1937, when she was only sixteen, Sun Weishi traveled to Wuhan to request permission to travel to the CCP revolutionary base area in Yan'an, but was refused due to her youth and lack of political connections.
14.
In Yan'an Sun Weishi enrolled in the Counter-Japanese Military and Political University with her mother, and became active in theater.
15.
Jiang was given a minor role, while Sun Weishi was given the lead.
16.
Sun Weishi accompanied Zhou Enlai to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939, when Zhou flew to Moscow to seek medical treatment for a broken arm.
17.
Sun Weishi accompanied Zhou as his personal assistant, and studied Russian in her spare time.
18.
Sun Weishi remained in the Soviet Union when Zhou returned to China in 1940, studying theater at Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies.
19.
Sun Weishi was not able to accept Lin's proposal, but promised to consider marrying Lin after completing her studies.
20.
Sun Weishi completed her studies and returned to China in September 1946, and participated in the land reform movement in CCP-controlled Shanxi.
21.
Sun Weishi then joined the cast of a traveling theater group, performing in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Hebei.
22.
In 1949, Sun Weishi was the head of the interpreting team that accompanied Mao Zedong on his state visit to the Soviet Union.
23.
Shortly after Sun Weishi returned to China, in the spring of 1950, Liao Chengzhi invited Sun Weishi to become the artistic director of the China Youth Art Theater, which he had founded.
24.
Sun Weishi enthusiastically accepted, and began work on establishing the first professional theater to stage shows in colloquial Mandarin in the PRC.
25.
The first play that Sun Weishi directed was How Steel is Made, a play based on an eponymous Russian novel written by Nikolai Ostrovsky.
26.
In 1952 Sun Weishi produced "the most successful foreign classic ever mounted on the PRC Stage", Gogol's the Inspector-General.
27.
In 1952 Sun Weishi produced a play in celebration of the founding of the Children's Art Theater, Little Rabbit.
28.
In 1954, on the fiftieth anniversary of Anton Chekov's death in 1904, Sun Weishi produced one of Chekov's plays, Uncle Vanya, in collaboration with a Soviet expert.
29.
From 1954 to 1956, Sun Weishi worked as the principal instructor of directors with the China Central Drama College.
30.
Sun Weishi earned significant prestige through directing Soviet dramas for the Beijing stage.
31.
Sun Weishi's wedding gift from Zhou Enlai and Deng Yingchao was a copy of the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China.
32.
Sun Weishi was one of the twin daughters of actress Duan Mulanxin.
33.
In 1956 Sun Weishi became the artistic director and vice-president of the newly created Chinese Experimental Theater.
34.
In June 1956 Sun Weishi produced the play Joys and Sorrows, a drama about a romantic triangle between a CCP official and two women.
35.
In 1957 Sun Weishi produced her second play for the Chinese Experimental Theater, Peach Flower Fan, a period play in which Sun Weishi utilized features of Chinese opera and folk dance.
36.
In 1957 Sun Weishi produced a comedy, Portrait of One Hundred Clowns, in order to defend herself against her political critics by shallowly promoting the Anti-Rightist Movement.
37.
In 1961 Sun Weishi produced a play based on the American novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Hatred of Black Slaves.
38.
In 1963, while directing the play "Azalea Mountain", Jiang Qing approached Sun Weishi and asked if she could be involved in the production of the play.
39.
The plot of The Rising Sun Weishi focused on the contributions that women made in agriculture and the construction of oilfields, and featured a cast made up exclusively of local people.
40.
The Rising Sun Weishi was the first time in the history of Chinese drama that experts and the public collaborated to create art.
41.
Sun Weishi pursued the significance of women and female rights in the context of turbulent social development, a vital element of her creation.
42.
The Rising Sun Weishi has the characteristics of political and gender representation, making the work not only reflect the distinctive features of her time but enriching the public image of women.
43.
The Rising Sun Weishi was the last play that Sun Weishi would ever produce.
44.
Jiang gave orders that Sun Weishi be sentenced without trial, and directed that Sun Weishi be tortured at leisure, but not killed.
45.
Sun Weishi's body was found naked with her arms and legs still shackled.
46.
On 9 June 1977, a statue of Sun Weishi was placed in memory of her at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing by the Art Bureau of the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China.