Many young people may not be particularly familiar with the name Wang Yu Zhen, but I believe many people are still familiar with her classic song Honghu Lake, Waves Beat the Waves, which was sung by her mother's generation when she was a child.
The song has a beautiful melody, and when I was a child, I often listened to my mother's generation sing about it.
The song is actually a theme song sung by Wang Yuzhen in a movie "Honghu Red Guard", which was sung all over the country.
Wang Yu Zhen, who played the lead role of Han Ying in the movie, also became one of the favorite songs of the Chinese people in the past few decades, and the movie became a hit throughout the country.
Wang Yu Zhen was later named a famous opera performer and a national actor. 59 years after the movie was released, what is the recent situation of Wang Yu Zhen?
Wang Yuzhen was born in 1935 in Shahu Township, Xiantao City, Hubei Province, into a poor family, and as a child, her deepest impression was the poverty and hunger inside her family.
She remembers a week when the family had no food to eat, and every day it was rice mixed with bean paste, which was not a bad situation, but worse, when it was impossible to cook.
So her wish then was to be able to eat and feed herself, and so later she never dreamed of becoming an artist who made her living on stage.
Then Wang Yuzhen went from Hankou to Wuchang to take the examination, in the singing class with the examination of the four people, only she was admitted, her singing road thus officially began.
Once she entered the troupe, Wang described her feeling as "like a fish out of water", and the time for her artistic talent to shine had come.
This year, in order to pay tribute to the tenth anniversary of the birth of the Chinese People's Republic of China, the Hubei Provincial Opera House, where Wang Yuzhen is a member, created an opera, "The Red Guards of Honghu Lake".
Wang Yuzhen recalled that in order to better represent the opera, the troupe's leaders, scriptwriters and actors went to the Honghu area to collect materials and experience life.
There, they heard many stories of singable heroes. At the beginning, Wang Yuzhen claimed that she didn't like the play, thinking that the plot was too simple and had no ups and downs.
But when Wang Yuzhen re-read the script after going deeper into the life and listening to the old Red Army's stories and experiences of the revolution at that time, she felt differently:
"After hearing the stories of these martyrs, I felt that every line, every phrase, was not a slogan or a kind of line, but even congealed with the blood of their struggle. "
So in the process of playing "Han Ying", her own thinking has undergone a transformation.
The first performance of the opera "Honghu Red Guards" was arranged in the Honghu area, and it turned out to be a great success.
The success of the opera and the movie "Honghu Red Guard" also made Wang Yuzhen gradually famous, bringing her singing career to a peak state.
In fact, talented people, no matter what kind of family they are in, what era they were born in, it doesn't matter, the important thing is that they can be in the latter day through their own efforts, when the opportunity to seize, and study hard, study, and give full play to their own talent to get the best.
Wang Yuzhen is such a person.
Wang Yuzhen's husband, Shen Chonggang, was transferred to Beijing in 1981 as a water conservancy and hydropower engineering expert, and Wang Yuzhen went with him to become a professor at the China Conservatory of Music.
About their marriage, Wang Yuzhen describes it as a combination of earth and sea. She always thinks of adding to the opera business and bringing more excellent works to the audience.
For an opera singer, 46-year-old Wang Yuzhen at this age, in fact, is able to continue to sing on the opera stage and show talent. But in 1991, she was hospitalized after suffering from nephrotic syndrome.
During her hospitalization, Wang encouraged herself, "I'm a hero, and I'm going to use my hero's will to overcome my illness."
The illness was sustained entirely by her tenacity, and she had refused to take hormone medicines and insisted on taking traditional Chinese medicine for more than a year in order to maintain her body shape and voice, but the medical treatment was ineffective.
Back then her condition worsened and she had to take hormone drugs, which made her body blossom, and there was no bigger blow than having her voice damaged.
She said her biggest regret was that she had only one work in her life, "Honghu Red Guard".
"I could have performed more plays for the people."
Wang Yuzhen, now 85, is still in good health. Her partner, Shen Chonggang, has passed away, and after her retirement she lives with her only son and is now leading a calm and fulfilling life in her old age.
Don't know if you remember the movie "Honghu Red Guard" and can sing the song "Honghu Water Waves Beat Waves"?