Shi Xiaoying

Also known as Born surname Pan

Shi Xiaoying, born into a family named Pan in the Nanshi district of Shanghai in 1918, was adopted at nine by a couple of shenqu performers, took their surname Shi and trained under them. Early on she was known for tragic heroines, leading in modern-dress plays such as The Rebellious Woman, The Storm and Yang Naiwu and Little Cabbage, and was called 'the dan of a hundred faces'. In 1952 she won a first-class acting award at the first national opera festival as Fifth Aunt in The Arhat Coin, and thereafter turned to older and comic women, among them the shrewish mother-in-law in Abida, Lu Ma in Thunderstorm and Old Mother Sha in Sparks Amid the Reeds. Her soft, clear singing became the Shi school of Huju. She died in 1989.