Chen Suzhen

Also known as Born Wang Ruoyu

Chen Suzhen, born Wang Ruoyu in Kaifeng, Henan, in 1918, took the surname of the Henan opera actor Chen Yuting when her mother remarried. She began training at eight and first appeared on stage in Kaifeng at ten. In 1932 she reworked the traditional play Three Times into the Sedan, which Pathe recorded in Shanghai in 1936. From the age of seventeen she worked with Fan Cuiting, performing new plays he wrote for her such as Aspiring to the Clouds and Three Flicks of the Sleeve, and her style became known as the Chen school; her repertoire also included The Cosmic Blade, Spring and Autumn Match and The Brahma Palace. She spent her later years in Tianjin and died in March 1994.