People have often criticized those who are acting pompous, impetuous, only know how to maintain a bright appearance, in order to heat and traffic at all costs without any sense of propriety and without limits of film and television drama actors.
In contrast, people are more willing to rewatch old classic dramas, and what they like even more are those old and good actors and actresses who interpret the classics.
In 1947, the classic movie "A River Flows East" was released, and people remember Shu Xiowen, the actress who brought to life a vain socialite in the movie.
Shu Xiowen was one of the four most famous actresses on the Chinese theater stage, serving as a deputy to the National People's Congress while she was still alive, and was named one of the "100 Outstanding Actresses of Chinese Cinema" in 2005.
Despite her glittering career, Shu's life was full of tragedy.
Shu was born in 1915 to a poor teacher's family in Anqing, Anhui Province, and in 1921, at the age of 6, she moved to Beijing with her parents. Shu Shuowen was a bold and very lively and outgoing person.
After entering an elementary school in Beijing, Shu Xiuwen was often active in the school's performance team. She loved to perform, and she was also known for her ability to write and direct small scripts, which made her very popular among the teachers and students at the school.
Anyone who has seen Shu Xiowen perform says she will be a big star in the future.
When she was in junior high school, her father contracted an incurable lung disease, which left him out of work and in debt.
Shu Xiuwen accepted the harshness and reality of life early on, and after dropping out of school, she went out to earn a living to relieve her mother's burden, and also became a dancer in a dance hall under the pseudonym "Xu Feiqiong".
In the ballroom, Shu Xiowen, a smart and outgoing dancer, not only made a success of ballroom dancing, but also became the lead singer of the ballroom by virtue of her beautiful appearance and clear voice. Soon, Shu became the "top red card" of the ballroom and became famous in Beijing.
To others, the fact that a young girl of school age was forced to work in a mixed dance hall was a stroke of fate and a misfortune.
But fate likes to go against the grain, and although Shu Xiowen didn't succeed academically, she learned some performance skills such as singing and dancing through social practice.
Because of her exposure to all kinds of people in the society, she has accumulated a wealth of performance materials, which inadvertently added to the success factors and opportunities for her future acting career.
First she entered the Shanghai Drama Club, and later she became an excellent movie actress
In 1931, Shu Shuwen went to Shanghai in search of a new job and a new life. At first, it wasn't easy to find a job that suited her, and she, who was relatively fluent in Mandarin, had to find a job teaching Mandarin pronunciation at a movie company.
The people in the company saw that her pronunciation was pure, and they even asked her to do the post-dubbing work for the movie "Red Peony, the Songstress".
After a year, Shu Shuowen gradually got to know the bosses of many drama clubs through her work, and she recommended herself as a drama actress in the Mayflower Drama Club, Spring and Autumn Drama Club, and Jimei Song and Dance Drama Club.
The theater performances not only multiplied her income, but also laid a very rich foundation for her career in the movies.
In 1933, Shu Shuwen was introduced to the Shanghai Yihua Film Studio, where she starred in her first movie, "Survival of the Nation".
In the same year, Shu Shuowen starred in "The Raging Tide of the China Sea".
The experience of acting in these two films made Shu Shuowen realize how difficult it is to be a movie actress and how far she had to go in terms of her acting skills, but she was also glad that she had finally found a job and a career that she loved with all her heart.
She is willing to put in extraordinary efforts to be a good actress.
She learned to recite, learn to drive a train, learn to milk a cow ...... In short, what the role of the movie needs, she will experience in real life.
In order to figure out the script and lines, she carries the script with her, and sometimes when she walks down the road and bumps into people of different professions and classes, she quietly observes the other person's demeanor and mannerisms, and then memorizes them, and then imitates them when she has time, so as to enrich the material for her own performances.
Shu Shuwen would always let her co-stars inspire and touch her with their real emotions and gestures, even if it meant being slapped in the face by a male actor or having her hair yanked out of her head with an actress, in order to achieve the desired effect in her performances in plays and movies.
Shu Shuwen's dedication and seriousness were notorious, and as a result, her acting skills climbed.
Shu became a household name in China in 1946 when she co-starred with famous actress Bai Yang in the classic movie "A River Flows East".
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Shu Xiuwen became one of the four most famous actresses on the Chinese theater stage, along with Qin Yi, Zhang Ruifang and Bai Yang.
How superb was her acting?
After the founding of the country, Shu Xiowen was working at the Beijing People's Art Center. Once, a senior director from the Soviet Union came to China for a visit, and watched a performance at the People's Art Center after the show was over.
He commented that in the whole play, the typist who had no lines and only silently made a clattering typing sound in the corner was the most colorful one in the whole play.
The playwright praised by the Soviet director was none other than Shu Xiwen.
After losing her marriage, she has an adopted son, but still ends up alone
While her acting career is in full swing, love is also on the horizon. A rich boy from Shanghai named Wu Shaowei began to pursue Shu Xiowen passionately, and Shu Xiowen was also attracted to this meticulous and gentle man, and the two of them fell in love.
When Wu's family learns of their secret love, they are opposed to it.
The Wu family believed that Shu Xiuwen was just an actress with a bad background and a complicated life, and told Wu Shaowei to cut off her relationship with Shu Xiuwen.
But Wu Shaowei was determined to marry Shu Xiowen, and eventually, the two were happily married.
Love is real and so is life.
Married for more than three years, Shu Xiuwen's stomach never moved, after a hospital examination, Shu Xiuwen realized that her body could not give birth successfully.
Wu Shaowei is very tolerant and understanding of his wife, he discussed with Shu Xiowen want to adopt a child they like.
It was not expected that half a year later, they really found a boy whom they both loved, and Shu Xiowen named the child Shu Zhaoyuan. Since then, the three-member family has lived a happy life.
While Shu Shuowen became a popular movie star with the movie "A River Flows East," Wu Shaowei's career began to stagnate and even slipped.
Shu Shuwen decided to go to Beijing to pursue her career, but her husband did not go with her, citing his career in Shanghai.
After arriving in Beijing, Shu Xiuwen's career went smoothly and in full swing, but as a woman, Shu Xiuwen was always relieved to see her husband in Shanghai.
Shu Xiuwen picked a vacation and returned home to Shanghai, trying to convince her husband to come to Beijing to live with her.
Wu Shaowei still carefully prepared a table of his wife's favorite meals, and also bought back a pack of her favorite milk candy.
Without waiting for Shu Xiuwen to say anything, Wu Shaowei said: "This meal is a farewell dinner between us, your career is too good, I can't go to the lifelong admiration. I already have another love, let's separate.
Shu Xiowen divorced her husband, and her son, Shu Zhaoyuan, followed his mother to Beijing.
It was thought that such a blow would be tragic enough, but the frost of fate still fell on Shu Xiowen and her adopted son, Shu Zhaoyuan.
In those turbulent years, Shu Xiowen, an actress, was devastated when people broke into her home for no apparent reason and not only punched and kicked her, but sometimes humiliated and tortured her.
Shu Shuwen suffered from serious liver and heart problems, but those people still refused to give up.
Shu's adopted son, Shu Zhaoyuan, was also implicated in his mother's death, first losing his job and then being sent away to work.
Shu Zhaoyuan came to a foreign land alone and realized that he was always worried about his sick mother Shu Xiowen.
Shu Xiowen was once so sick that she fainted before being hospitalized. She tried to contact Shu Zhaoyuan, but was not allowed to do so.
When Shu Xiowen's death came, Shu Zhaoyuan received a notice to go back to Beijing to visit his mother, but when he ran to the hospital ward, Shu Xiowen had already died, and no one was there to see him off.
Some people told Shu Zhaoyuan that Shu Xiowen had been reciting a sentence before she died: Zhaoyuan ah, why don't you come to see mom ah?
Looking back at Shu Xiowen's life, it can be said that the twists and turns, tasted the bitter, spicy, sour and salty on earth. She never let herself go, but with a strong enterprising spirit that drove her to climb to new heights one after another.
However, it is regrettable that she did not get a love until death, even in his dying days, but also did not see the last side of the adopted son, who is not assured of his own.