Forever Enthralled

Last night, I watched a TV show "鲁豫有约", this time it was about the great master of Peking Opera Mei Lanfang("梅兰芳"). I payed for this TV show and I'm not regret at all after finished watching it.
Mei(Mei Lanfang, 1894-1961) takes roll of Hua Dan('花旦', which means a subdebutante of naivety). He learned Peking Opera at 8 and performed on the stage at 10. He became a big star after he gave a performance at Shanghai in 1913. A saying spread among Shanghai can describe how famous he is, that is 'You should marry a girl like Mei and have a son like Zhou'. 1914, he was invited to perform in Tokyo. 1930, Mei was invited to go to America. He performed Peking Opera at several cities, such as New York, Chicago, San fransisco, Los Ageles and won big success. Local newspaper wrote, Chinese opera is not realistic trueness, but artistic trueness, a established way of performace which is more real than realistic trueness. He is described as " more feminine than woman on the stage, more masculine than man in real life". When Anti-Japanese war occured, the Japanese want to invited Mei to give performance in order to make a gloss of peace among the Chinese. Mei kept beard to show his protest. The Japanese froze Mei's money in the bank. He had to sell paintings to raise his family. The Japanese bought all his paintings, when Mei knew it, he immediately destroyed all his paintings.

" Forever Enthralled" is a film directed by Chen Kaige. Chen is a famous director in China, he also directed" Farewell My Concubine" '霸王別姬'. " Forever Enthralled" is very worthy watching. Mei's youngest son commented that his family won't have to make a film about his father for several decades.

Hope you like it.