The Actors

Many of these actors play these characters in several films, making up a kind of “standard” cast as “role model actors” (texing yanyuan 特性演员) who are supposed to resemble the figure they embody in physical appearance and “in spirit”. A notable exception is Hu Huizhong, an actress from Taiwan. She embodies the fictional character (which, of course, has no “standard” actor) of the young GMD journalist who is “converted” to evaluate the CCP with more sympathy in the end (and who probably is murdered by the GMD because of that). For a movie with presumable intentions to promote a closer relationship between Taiwan and Mainland China during the high-time of cross-Taiwan-Straits relations in the early 1990s, this is very befitting.

Gu Yue (古月)
Gu Yue (original name Hu Shixue 胡诗学), has played Mao Zedong since 1981. Born in Hubei around 1939 (his background being somewhat obscure, having grown up in an orphanage), he became an actor very early and was personally chosen by Marshall Ye Jianying (叶剑英) as “role model actor” for Mao in 1978. Gu Yue acted in this role eighty-four times, starting 1981 with the movie “The Xi’an Incident” (Xi’an shibian 西安事变), and for the last time in 2002 with „Uncle Kurban visits Beijing“ (Kuerban dashu shang Beijing 库尔班大叔上北京). During all these years he embodied Mao Zedong in different stages of his life between the years 1921 to 1965.
Other important movies and TV series, in which he acted Mao, include:

He imitated the facial expressions and gestures of Mao and also put great effort in studying the dialect of Hunan, interviewing people who had talked to Mao etc. For this role, Gu Yue won several prizes: twice the “Hundred Flowers Award” for best actor, first in 1990 for the movie Kaiguo dadian and then again in 1993 for “Mao Zedong de gushi.” At the Shandong Film Festival he was awarded once as “best actor” and at the festival convened to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Chinese movies, he received the “Chinese Movie Actors Award” (华影星 Hua ying xing). He died suddenly in 2005.

Sun Feihu (孙飞虎)
Sun Feihu won several prizes for his interpretation of Jiang Jieshi since he made his debut in this role in Xi’an shibian in 1981. Sun Feihu was born in Shanghai in 1941, and studied acting at the Shanghai Theatre Academy (Shanghai xiju xueyuan 上海戏剧学院), where he graduated in 1964. Before he was employed as an actor at the Xi’an Film Studios (Xi’an dianying zhipianchang 西安电影制片厂) in 1985, he was acting in a troupe in Guizhou province. Since embodying Jiang Jieshi for the first time in the movie “The Xi’an Incident” (Xi’an shibian 西安事变) in 1981, he has acted the role of Jiang Jieshi more than 30 times. Nevertheless, he does not consider himself a typical role model actor, having also acted in different roles, e.g. as Zeng Guofan (曾国藩) in “The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom” (Taiping Tianguo 太平天国), or in the role of an old boss in the movie “My lucky stars” (Fuxing gao zhao 福星高照).
The movies in which Sun acted Jiang in different stages of his life include:

• “The Assassination of Wang Jingwei” (Cisha Wang Jingwei 刺杀汪精卫), 1988
• “The Kunlun column“ (Weiwei kun lun 巍巍昆仑), 1988
• “The Birth of New China” (Kaiguo dadian 开国大典), 1989
• “San Mao Joins the Army“ (San Mao congjun ji 三毛从军记, 1993
• “Chongqing Negotiations“ (Chongqing Tanpan 重庆谈判),1993
• “Great War in Ning Hu Hang” (Dazhan Ning-Hu-Hang 大战宁沪杭), 1999
• “The Grave Robbers“ (Dongling dadao 东陵大盗), (in 5 parts), 1986-88

Sun Feihu has won many awards in his career. For his first acting of Jiang in Xi’an shibian he promptly received two awards: The “Golden Rooster Award”, chosen by a jury of cinema experts, for “best supporting actor”, and the “Ten Great Actors Award“ (shi jia yanyuan jiang 十佳演员奖). For the movie “The Kunlun Column” he won the “Hundred Flowers Award”, organised by the journal “Popular Cinema” (Dazhong dianying 大众电影) and based on viewers’ votes, as “best supporting actor”. For the movie Kaiguo dadian he won two awards as “best supporting actor”, i.e. at the “Golden Rooster Award” and at the “Hundred Flowers Award”. In 1993 he again performed the role of Jiang Jieshi in the movie “Chongqing Tanpan“ and was awarded the “Hundred Flowers Award” for “best supporting actor” another time. For the role of Jiang Jieshi in the TV series „Life of the Young Marshal” [i.e. Zhang Xueliang] (Shao shuai chun qiu, 少帅春秋) he was also awarded.

Huang Kai (黄凯)
Huang Kai has embodied former prime minister Zhou Enlai in many movies. Huang was born in 1926 in the city of Weihai in Shandong province. His career as an actor is somewhat unusual since he never attended a professional school or received any special education for being an actor. In May 1949 he joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), where he collected his first acting experiences in different actors’ troupes. In the role of an old teacher in the early TV series “In Search of the Returning World” (Xunzhao huilai de shijie 寻找回来的世界), he made his mark with the Chinese audience for the first time. In 1951 he entered the troupe of the political branch of the PLA (中国人民解放军总政治部话剧团), where he acted in different roles.
During the forty years of his career he acted in more than sixty different roles in theatre plays, movies and TV series, including:

Liu Huaizheng (刘怀正)
Liu Huaizheng,born in 1934 in Sichuan province, was role model actor of one of the most important military leaders within Chinese (Communist) history: Zhu De (朱德). After graduation from the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 1952, Liu started to work as an actor, director and scriptwriter. In 1978 he started to act the role of Zhu De, but only after performing the role of Zhu De in the movie “The crossing of the Dadu River” (Dadu he 大渡河) in 1980 did he achieve the role model position. Other movies in which he embodied Zhu De include: