Writers › Writer / Poet
Fan Zidong
Qinqiang playwright from Qian County, Shaanxi, a co-founder of the Yisu Society in 1912 who wrote sixty-eight plays, above all Three Drops of Blood (1918).
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Fan Ningji · Zi Zidong
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Fan Zidong, named Ningji and known by his courtesy name Zidong, was born in Qian County, Shaanxi, in 1879. In 1912 he joined Li Tongxuan, Sun Renyu and others in founding the Yisu Society, a Qinqiang opera company, and thereafter devoted himself to writing for it, serving as its chief editor and head of its review board; he wrote sixty-eight plays in all. His Three Drops of Blood, drawn from Ji Yun's Yuewei Caotang Notes, premiered in 1918 and has stayed in the repertoire ever since; other plays include The Jade Mirror Stand, Su Wu Herding Sheep and The Palace Brocade Robe. He also studied dialects, archaeology and music theory, writing a study of Guanxi dialect words and a general treatise on music. He died in Xi'an on 31 March 1954.
Life and times
Dates 1879–1954