Theatrical legend

Chinese actor and director Lan Tianye, whose career spanned more than seven decades, died at his home in Beijing on Wednesday at age 95, according to the Beijing People's Art Theater.

A household name in China, Lan was known for his many roles in movies, TV dramas and the theater.

Born in Raoyang county, Hengshui, Hebei province, on May 4, 1927, Lan, whose real name was Wang Runsen, moved to Beijing in the same year with his family.

He was a child with many interests. He owed his love of literature to his grandfather Wang Shengzhong, who was a fan of pingshu, a traditional Chinese form of oral storytelling dating back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Thanks to his mother, a die-hard fan of Peking Opera, Lan became interested in theater. In an interview, he recalled that he often imitated Peking Opera performances at home and for his childhood friends.

At just 10 years old, Lan lost his father and his grandparents within just two months. The remaining family lived a difficult life, but this didn't stop the young boy's pursuit of the arts.

As a middle school student, Lan studied traditional ink painting. He also joined the student theater organization. It was there that Lan saw Peking Man, a play by the renowned Chinese playwright Cao Yu.

As an amateur theater lover, Lan avidly watched plays, and in 1944 he made his stage debut at the Chang'an Grand Theater in Beijing in the role of Huang Xingsan in the play Sunrise by Cao Yu.

Lan joined the CPC on Sept 23,1945, following in the footsteps of his elder sister, who was working secretly for the Party.

In 1949, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, modern Chinese drama received a boost and in 1952, the Beijing People's Art Theater was established. Lan was among the first group of actors to join the theater, which remains the preeminent home of Chinese drama.

Lan played roles in many classic Chinese plays, including Lao She's Teahouse, renowned historian and playwright Guo Moruo's Cai Wenji and He Jiping's Jiazi Garden.

In 1963, Lan made his debut as a director when the Beijing People's Art Theater staged the play Guan Hanqing. After that, Lan directed more than 10 plays, including Before Marriage, which centers on people living in Beijing's villages during the 1960s, and The Visit, a Chinese adaptation of the play by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Duerrenmatt.

Since retiring in 1987, Lan had focused on educating the younger generation of theater actors.

In 2011, to celebrate the CPC's 90th anniversary, the Beijing People's Art Theater restaged Cao Yu's adaptation of Ba Jin's 1933 novel, Jia (The Family). Then age 84, Lan returned to the stage as an actor.

In 2020, when the play Jia was again staged by the theater to mark the 110th anniversary of Cao Yu's birth, Lan, at age 93, returned to play the role of Feng Leshan, the villain in the legendary story about the sins and decadence of an extended family in Chengdu in the 1920s.

On June 29, 2021, in recognition of his achievements and contributions to China's performing arts scene, Lan was among those awarded the July 1 Medal for outstanding Party members, the highest honor awarded by the CPC Central Committee.

"He is a great artist, with passion and vision. He is the great pride of our theater," Ren Ming, the current president of Beijing People's Art Theater, said in an interview in June 2021.

"Modern Chinese theater has been around for more than a century, and Lan Tianye has witnessed its development. He has performed in more than 100 plays, which makes him a legend of the Chinese theater scene."