Lian Kuoru

Also known as Born Bi Lianshou · Pen name Yunyouke

Lian Kuoru, born Bi Lianshou into an impoverished Banner family in Beijing, worked as an apprentice in his youth. In 1927 he became a pupil of the storyteller Li Jie'en, learning the Western Han romance, and then studied the Eastern Han cycle with several masters; his radio broadcasts of Donghan in late-1930s Beiping made him famous, and he also told the Three Kingdoms and Eastern Zhou cycles. Under the pen name Yunyouke he serialised Jianghu Congtan in the Beiping Shiyan Bao, an inside account of itinerant trades from the late Qing to the 1930s, later issued as a book and still a key source on folk performance. He retired through illness in 1963 and died in Beijing in 1971; his daughter Lian Liru carried on his art.