Performers › Dramatists and Directors
Qi Rushan
Peking opera playwright and theatre scholar who wrote or adapted more than twenty plays for Mei Lanfang, among them Chang'e Flies to the Moon and Farewell My Concubine, and later wrote a survey of the art of Peking opera.
Mural of the event “Four Great Dan”, which this person took part in.
In the late Qing and early Republic Peking opera flourished in Beijing, Shanghai and beyond, and actors of the dan, the female roles, moved to the centre of the stage. In the 1920s a theatre column in the Beijing newspaper Shuntian Shibao proposed Mei Lanfang, Shang Xiaoyun, Cheng Yanqiu and Xun Huisheng as the Four Great Dan, and the title then caught on. Each of the four created new plays and refined singing and movement, founding the Mei, Cheng, Shang and Xun schools of dan acting. Mei led the tours abroad, with Qi Rushan and others writing plays and helping to plan the journeys: in 1930 he took his company to the United States, and from 21 February to 21 April 1935 he led it to the Soviet Union at its invitation and performed in Moscow and Leningrad.
Also known as Personal name Qi Zongkang
Qi Rushan, personal name Zongkang, went by his courtesy name Rushan. A native of Gaoyang in Zhili (now Hebei), he was born in 1877 (some sources say 1875) and studied foreign languages at the Tongwen Guan in his youth. In 1913, after seeing Mei Lanfang in Fenhe Bay, he wrote to him with suggestions; they met the next year, and he went on to write or adapt more than twenty plays for Mei, among them Chang'e Flies to the Moon and Farewell My Concubine. He accompanied Mei on his 1930 American tour, and in 1931 founded the Peking Opera Society in Beiping with Mei and Yu Shuyan. He left Beiping in 1948 and settled in Taipei in 1949, where he wrote his survey of the art of Peking opera, Guoju yishu huikao. He died in Taipei in March 1962.
Life and times
Dates 1877 (some sources 1875)–1962
- 1927Four Great DanTook partage 50
- 1930Mei Lanfang Tours the United Statesage 53