Xu Lixian

Also known as Stage name Qian Lixian

Xu Lixian was born in Wu County, Jiangsu, and as a small child was adopted by Qian Jinzhang, head of a troupe in the Puyu Society. She learned tanci from her adoptive mother at nine, sang in teahouses from eleven, and took the stage name Qian Lixian at fifteen. After 1949 she returned to her own surname and joined the Shanghai Pingtan Troupe. Starting from the Yu style and singing the Zhou, Xu, Shen and Xue styles, she fused them in the early 1950s into the soft, deep Li style. Her thirty-odd ballad openings include New Ballad of Mulan, Daiyu Burns Her Poems and Qing Tan. She died on 6 March 1984, aged fifty-six.