By staff reporter ZHANG XIWEN

    FOR more than two decades the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, a smorgasbord of various art forms running from 8pm to midnight every Chinese New Year’s Eve, has dominated Chinese TV screens. It is routinely followed by national voting on the most popular act each year. This year performer Zhao Benshan garnered the highest number of votes for his comedy skit Money Is Not the Issue.

    In fact, Zhao has been one of the most popular acts for the past 10 years. This time he shared the honor with two of his disciples, Xiao Shen Yang and Mao Mao, who co-starred in the skit. “After more than 20 years on the stage, what pleases me most is seeing two of my disciples performing with me this year,” he said at the award ceremony for the best acts.

A Rural Lad Becomes an Overnight Star

    The CCTV Spring Festival Gala has been staged every year since 1983. For entertainers, an appearance signals prominence or promise, since the national audience of hundreds of millions is one of the best routes to nationwide stardom. This was evident in the ascension of Xiao Shen Yang this year. In the week following the gala, reports on the 27-year-old flooded the entertainment pages of all major print media, and his lines from Money Is Not the Issue were widely quoted. Several local TV stations scrambled to invite him onto their shows, offering as much as RMB 100,000 per appearance, a huge leap from the few hundred he was earning for each appearance prior to Spring Festival.

    Xiao Shen Yang’s overnight success was foreseen by his mentor Zhao Benshan, who had been waiting for this moment for a long time. For four years Zhao had recommended Xiao Shen Yang for every CCTV Spring Festival Gala, but was unable to get him on to the final list of performers. The main obstacle was the producers’ qualms about the transvestite roles the youngster was best known for, as well as the contentious nature of his comic routines.

    Seeing Zhao Benshan’s unfading appeal to the audience, the producers eventually relented, on the condition that the teacher and student compromise on Xiao Shen Yang’s image and their routine’s storyline. The pair agreed, and Xiao Shen Yang appeared in the skit as a straight man, albeit a distinctly feminine one.

   “It was my dream to have Xiao Shen Yang and Mao Mao in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. They perform Errenzhuan (a style of rural folk performance from northeastern China enacted by a duo), and they took a long and hard journey before ascending the CCTV stage. But now they are here, the days ahead will be easier, and so will Errenzhuan,” said Zhao Benshan.

From the Fields to National Television

    “Errenzhuan is neither ballet nor opera – it is a northeastern folk art that is meant to make the audience laugh,” explains Zhao, who is indisputably the godfather of this regional rustic form popular in China’s Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces. An Errenzhuan is a short play involving a young female role and a male jester. The performers talk, sing, dance and do stunts with handkerchiefs or folding fans. The man jeers, gags, and is supposed to come up with improvised quips concerning the audience or recent regional or national events. The dialogue is performed in local dialect, and peppered with slang from the northeast, where the chilly climate and boundless fields forge a people of big heart with an innate sense of humor. For over 300 years they have found in Errenzhuan the best expression of their feelings and their society.

    Zhao Benshan, 52, started his career as an Errenzhuan jester. He began to learn the style from his uncle, a blind folk artist, when he was five, and later joined several village troupes. Thanks to his adeptness at learning from other performers, as well as his finely honed humor, Zhao soon stood out in the field. In the 1980s he set a record of staging 208 shows in a row in a single theater, packing the hall every night and still not managing to meet the demand for tickets. Though he later shifted to comedy skits, he insists his work is still “Errenzhuan without music.”

    Art critic Cui Kai concluded Errenzhuan appeals to audiences in four key ways. First, the performers do all they can to demean and mock themselves; second, they taunt contemporary society and pick up on hot topics in their dialogue; third, the skits are spiced with jocular and flirtatious northeastern idioms; and fourth, performances include dazzling displays of acrobatics. In Money Is Not the Issue, however, all aspects of the folk art except for the jocular interpretation of life and society took a back seat, in order to satisfy highbrow tastes.

    In the Gala skit a farmer, played by Zhao Benshan, and his granddaughter, played by Mao Mao, go to a posh Scottish-style restaurant in the city to meet a distant relative, who hosts a popular CCTV show similar to American Idol. The farmer hopes his relative can help his gifted granddaughter appear on the show and rise to fame. Shocked by the prices on the restaurant menu, the farmer bribes the waiter, played by Xiao Shen Yang, to say in front of his relative that each expensive dish is not available whenever he attempts to order. The farmer and the waiter have several conversations sparkling with worldly wisdom. For instance, at one point the waiter, disdainful of the farmer’s scrimping, says: “Life is brief. It is like taking a sleep in many ways. You close your eyes, and then open them. It is a day. You close your eyes, but never open them. It is a life.” He goes on: “Money will come and go. What do you think is the most distressful thing in life? To die with plenty of money in your pocket.” The old farmer immediately retorts: “What do you think is the most distressful thing in life? To be alive and penniless.”

    In response to critics who use “vulgarity” and “a lack of decorum” to describe Errenzhuan, Cui Kai said: “They have only noticed those superficial elements but failed to see the philosophical wisdom hidden behind colloquial dialogues.” Zhao Benshan adds: “Errenzhuan’s main merit is its truthfulness. Those accustomed to hearing lies deem truth to be profane.”

    It is interesting to note that after the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Xiao Shen Yang resumed his transvestite image in performances around the nation. But he obeys his mentor’s will and stays away from the dirty jokes routinely found in Errenzhuan skits.

From Farmer to Entertainer to Entrepreneur

    Zhao Benshan sees it as his mission to promote Errenzhuan and rustic northeastern culture throughout China. In 2002 he produced and directed the TV drama series Liu Laogen, based on rural life in the northeast and starring many Errenzhuan players. Its intriguing but close-to-life story and witty dialogue were well received. He presented several more TV dramas in the following years, including a sequel to Liu Laogen. All scored decent ratings. They brought Zhao an estimated profit of more than RMB 50 million, and what’s more, catalyzed a northeastern vernacular fad across the country.

    Success on the television screen has enabled Zhao to establish a team of elite Errenzhuan playwrights and performers, for whom he plays the dual role of patron and guru. Many of them have ascended to stardom thanks to Zhao’s TV dramas.

    More recently, Zhao Benshan has also dabbled in other sectors of the entertainment industry. In 2007 he purchased a theater in the heart of Shenyang City, the capital of Liaoning Province, and renamed it Liulaogen Stage. Today the theater has developed into a chain of seven outlets in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces, and in 2008 garnered ticket sales of around RMB 100 million.

    The rise of Xiao Shen Yang has given a strong boost to Zhao’s theater business. During the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, Liulaogen Stage was crammed full everyday. Even a place amongst the extra temporary seating that was installed cost RMB 300, yet there were still plenty of buyers.

    In 2004 Zhao Benshan co-founded the Benshan Art School with Liaoning University, to nurture new Errenzhuan players. He has also set up an advertising company, a TV and film production base, a studio and a theme park. This May, a branch of Liulaogen Stage will open in Qianmen in downtown Beijing, an important step in popularizing live Errenzhuan performances throughout China.