Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China's Revolution and Reform

            – The Extraordinary Life of Ying Ruocheng

By ZHANG YAN

Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China’s Revolution and Reform

By Ying Ruocheng & Claire Conceison

288 Pages RMB 32

Chinese version published in Beijing by China CITIC Press in 2009

English version published in the U.S.A. by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC.

    For most Chinese of a certain age, Ying Ruocheng should be familiar. Their first connection to him might be his role in Lao She's classic play Teahouse at the Beijing People’s Art Theater. He played Liu Mazi (Pockmarked Face), a bad guy who sold a young girl to the eunuch Pang. His impressive acting stirred up intense hatred for the character he played.

    But Ying’s talent was never confined to acting; he was also a brilliant translator. Born into a well-educated elite, Ying’s mastery of English was unprecedented. He was invited by famous U.S. comedian Bob Hope to be the on-the-spot interpreter for his show in China. There was ceaseless laughter erupting from the audiences and Hope was stunned with admiration because no one had ever achieved such effects while translating his gags. The U.S. playwright Arthur Miller also invited Ying to help with translation while he was directing his play Death of a Salesman in China. Miller was marveled at Ying’s facility, saying, “With him beside me I forgot altogether that I don’t understand Chinese.” Ying not only helped stage the play at the Beijing People’s Art Theater, but also did a laudable portrayal of the salesman Willy Loman. What might be the crowning achievement in translation is when he directed and staged the Kunqu Opera Fifteen Strings of Cash while lecturing at the University of Missouri, an opera considered to be difficult to understand even for Chinese audience.

    Ying took the post of Vice-Minister of Culture for nearly four years during the late 1980s, overseeing all the entities dealing with the performance and fine arts, supervising art colleges and the general development of China’s cultural market. Despite the heavy schedule, he still squeezed in time for guest performances in some films and TV dramas, such as portraying the prison governor in the movie The Last Emperor and Kublai Khan in the TV series Marco Polo, a Chinese-Italian co-production. Ying admits acting gives him a lot of satisfaction though he finds it tiring work.

    Ying’s extraordinary life is recounted in Voices Carry: Behind Bars and Backstage during China’s Revolution and Reform. The autobiography differs greatly from others in the genre in terms of writing and publishing. It is a collaboration between Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison, professor of Theater Studies at the Duke University (US). Claire spent three years (2001-2003) at Ying’s bedside as he was too ill to write himself, and recorded his recollections about his family, career, friends and life. With over 100 hours on 41 tapes, she then spent another seven years in related research and compiled and edited the transcripts into a book. It was first published in the U.S. to favorable reviews. Now the Chinese version, translated by Claire’s good friend Zhang Fang, has been published by China CITIC Press under the title Shui Liu Yun Zai, which imply that although Ying had passed away, he would live as long as his stories were narrated and spirit was conveyed through the book.

    As a collaborative autobiographer, Claire states in the introduction that she is neither an invisible ghostwriter nor full author of the book, although her participation in the collaboration was rigorous and far-reaching. “I was aware from the outset that the cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-generational nature of our partnership made ours an unlikely yet dynamic collaboration. The benefits to Ying of collaborating with me were of course benefits to me as well. Listening to his family’s history and his own personal encounters during China’s turbulent 20th century added a rich dimension to my knowledge of the political events,” quotes Claire’s introduction.