BEIJING, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- Early in the summer of 1940, 12-year-old Liu Tianhua saw a play for the first time on a neighboring village's threshing floor. Captivated, she remembers clapping enthusiastically and singing along when the music played.
She remembers putting on a new purple dress the next day and asking to join the troupe, and she was accepted. She was given a stage name: Tian Hua, which later became a household name in China and has stayed with her throughout her life.
WARTIME ACTRESS
The 1940 play Tian watched depicted how the Chinese people were resisting Japanese aggression to save their nation. It was staged by a revolutionary troupe operating under a military force led by the Communist Party of China (CPC).
She remembers feeling a sense of familiarity as the play's characters -- village cadres, teenaged fighters and despicable traitors -- were just like the people she knew in her own life.
Her newfound fascination with drama motivated Tian to join the troupe and start a career in the field.
She found artistic enlightenment in the troupe, repeating vocalization exercises, practicing the splits, correcting her Mandarin pronunciation, learning to sing, rehearsing dances and later performing in dramas.
With her talent and hard-working spirit, Tian progressed rapidly within the troupe, soon becoming a popular actress.
Together, they traveled to various regions, performing plays and dramas for locals in makeshift tent stages, and sometimes even in enemy-occupied areas.
Their performances were always successful. Once, after a performance that depicted the conspiracies and atrocities of the puppet armies recruited by the Japanese aggressors, several wives of local puppet army soldiers came to Tian and told her that they would talk to their husbands and urge them to abandon their wrongful path.
Life in the troupe also led Tian to build her belief in communism and her revolutionary will. "Art is our weapon, and the stage is our battlefield," she said.
In 1944, at the age of 16, Tian joined the CPC.
PEOPLE'S ARTIST
On the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Northeast Film Studio -- the precursor of the Changchun Film Studio, which is regarded as the cradle of modern Chinese film -- decided to bring the famous revolutionary opera "Bai Mao Nyu," or "The White-haired Girl," to the silver screen.
The opera is an influential adaptation of a northern Chinese folk tale. It revolves around Xi'er, a tenant farmer's beautiful daughter who was waiting to marry the young man she loved but was sold to a heinous landlord in a forced deal as payment for her father's debts.
The girl was raped by the landlord and tortured by his family before she was eventually able to escape. But with no one to turn to, she was forced to hide herself in a mountain, where years of malnutrition turned her hair completely white and transformed her face beyond recognition. As a result, nearby villagers believed she was a ghost when they caught a glimpse of her.
After the CPC-led army arrived in the village, Xi'er was found by her former fiance, who was then a soldier. The two were finally able to marry, and the landlord was brought to justice. The happy life that followed turned Xi'er's hair black again.
Tian was chosen to play the role of Xi'er in the film adaptation, and soprano Wang Kun, who had played the heroine in an earlier version of the opera, was chosen as the voice of Xi'er's songs.
Several of these songs later gained widespread popularity among Chinese audiences, with one of the film's highlights coming when the heroine stands atop the mountain, looking down on the landlord's mansion, and sings: "My grievance goes beyond the sky, and I'm crying a river of tears… I will not die, I must live! I must take revenge! I must live!"
The film was released to roaring success in 1951. Its message -- that China's old society could turn a human into a ghost, but its new society could turn a ghost back into to a human -- resonated strongly with its many viewers, who had just escaped the exploitation and oppression of feudal landlords. Tian won widespread acclaim for her performance, and she is remembered by many as the face of Xi'er. Her portrayal of an Asian woman with a rebellious spirit also gained praise from overseas audiences and critics.
After the film's release, Tian portrayed a variety of iconic Chinese characters on the silver screen, including a communist woman in "The Daughter of the Party" who sacrificed her life for the Party's cause. Many say that her acting has had a lasting impact on the Chinese cinema industry.
Though she has earned huge fame and success, Tian has never lost her close bonds with the Chinese people and soldiers.
Over past years, she used her spare time to visit troops and perform for soldiers. She and several colleagues once traveled to the front line of a war zone to perform over 20 shows. Audiences varied in number, ranging from a handful of soldiers to 2,000 people. At times when the battlefield was heavily restricted, she would hunker down in a foxhole and sing songs to the soldiers over the phone.
"I would dedicate my entire life to serving the people and the soldiers," she once said.
This year, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Tian was awarded the title of People's Artist, an honorary national title given to mark an artist's outstanding contributions to the country.
FORGET-ME-NOT
Tian has a fondness for forget-me-not flowers. "When they bloom, they are handfuls of splendid purple, and when they wilt, they remain that same purple. I love how their color never fades," she said.
Tian keeps a 1942 photo of herself and Lei Ye, a war correspondent for a CPC-led journal, on proud display in her home.
"It was my first photo, and also the last of Lei," she said.
About a year after the photo was taken, Lei was killed when hundreds of Japanese soldiers raided his workplace in the night.
"I will work hard, study hard, and serve the people with my hard work. Only by doing this can we live up to our martyrs' aspirations," Tian said.
Though she has retired from acting, Tian has not ceased working. Whenever she is called on to perform for a major holiday, important event or charity activity, she always responds readily.
She has also founded a school to cultivate talents for the film industry, raised money to build a rural primary school, and visited juvenile delinquents during holiday periods to help them feel less alone.
Even when several of her family members fell ill and she encountered serious financial difficulties due to substantial medical expenses, Tian refused a lucrative offer to advertise a product she didn't know. "I really needed money, but not money coming in that way. I couldn't allow my audience to feel that 'the daughter of the Party' values only money," she said.
Today, at the age of 96, Tian still maintains a busy daily routine, reading newspapers to stay up to date with the latest information about the Party and the state, practicing her performing skills, and writing letters to her late husband Su Fan, who died in 2016. ■