The Extraordinary Life of Ying Ruocheng.docVIP

The Extraordinary Life of Ying Ruocheng 　　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