【Approaching the artist】
Guangming Daily reporter Han Yeting
Zheng Xiaoying’s bright picture
At the age of 93, she is the first female conductor in China. She is called “Karajan in a skirt” by her colleagues in the industry. She has successively won the Special Contribution Award for the Chinese Opera Industry, the Wenhua Conductor Award, and the Golden Bell Award for Lifetime Achievement Award. Today, she is still active on the stage, she said: “If one day falls on the podium, that is the most romantic thing.”
What can a 93-year-old do? Treating grandchildren with food, raising flowers and walking birds, basking in the sun, practicing Tai Chi, or lying on a hospital bed, waiting for the end of life. For Zheng Xiaoying, those seem to be far away, and she is still rushing on the road of music. In the past July, she conducted several concerts and held music lectures in Xiamen, Beijing, Hangzhou and other cities.
Every performance, from a distance from the auditorium, the baton is flying smartly in Zheng Xiaoying’s hands, not only controlling the rhythm of the music, but also arousing the emotions of the audience. At the end of the performance, Zheng Xiaoying, full of silver hair, turned around to greet the audience, and there was always thunderous applause at the scene. The applause was not only to applaud the wonderful performance, but also to praise the strong voice of a 93-year-old man’s life.
In September 1929, Zheng Xiaoying was born in Shanghai. Her mother, Wen Siying, received a new type of education since she was a child. After graduating from middle school, despite her family’s threat to “sever ties”, she went to Shanghai from her hometown of Chongqing alone to learn a new type of women’s sports, and later became China’s first generation of women’s physical education teachers.
Zheng Xiaoying inherited the stubbornness and strength in her mother’s bones. When she was a teenager, seeing the country’s mountains and rivers shattered, she wanted to be a fighter pilot to protect her family and the country, but she gave up because the military academy only recruited boys. By the time of high school graduation, the war of liberation was in full swing. Zheng Xiaoying, who had already been admitted to Peking Union Medical College, resolutely “escaped” to the liberated area despite the strong opposition of her family and became a member of the art troupe. After the founding of New China, she was recommended to study at the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music. In early 1960, she was selected to study opera and symphony conducting at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music. In the fall of 33 years old, Zheng Xiaoying conducted a very difficult Italian opera “Tosca” at the Moscow State Musical Theater of the Soviet Union, becoming the first Chinese conductor to appear on the podium of a foreign opera.
After the “Cultural Revolution”, Zheng Xiaoying returned to the podium and served as the chief conductor of the Central Opera House. Once, when she directed the opera La Traviata, there was a lot of noise in the theater. Some of the audience were eating melon seeds, some chatting, and some lying on the edge of the orchestra to ask questions. Obviously, the opera theater was regarded as a theater. At the end of the performance, Zheng Xiaoying sat in the audience and thought for a long time, “It’s not that the quality of our audience is low, but that music education has been missing for too long.”
Since then, whether it is an opera or a symphony, before the performance, Zheng Xiaoying, the conductor, always gives a 20-minute explanation. At the beginning, there were very few people willing to listen to the lecture. Zheng Xiaoying stood at the entrance of the theatre with a loudspeaker and shouted, asking the audience to enter the venue in advance to listen to the lecture. At first there were only 20 or 30 listeners, but later there were more and more people. Some people even bought tickets many times just to listen to Zheng Xiaoying’s lectures. This is the famous “Zheng Xiaoying Model”. For more than 40 years, Zheng Xiaoying has performed and talked about, and the direct audience has reached tens of millions. “Music comes from the people, and the public needs music.” Zheng Xiaoying said, “Performers can’t put on bad airs. You’re nothing if you leave the audience. If you pay a little more and help everyone pierce that layer of window paper, you can exchange them for them. Understanding and respecting the value of your labor.”
Zheng Xiaoying on the stage has an elegant temperament and high spirits; during the interview, her voice was loud and full of energy. You can’t imagine that such an old man has been fighting cancer for more than 20 years.
In the second half of 1997, after retirement, Zheng Xiaoying planned to go to Xiamen to build an orchestra. During that time, she lost weight so much that she went to the hospital for a check-up and had rectal cancer. “I was very nervous at first, because I still had a lot of things to do, and I was not reconciled.” Zheng Xiaoying recalled, “After calming down, I decided to take a good treatment and said to myself, ‘Nothing can stop me from standing on the podium again. After the operation, in order to recover quickly, Zheng Xiaoying endured the severe pain and insisted on walking and exercising in the corridor of the hospital every day, one step, two steps… all the way to a thousand steps. A few months later, Zheng Xiaoying was discharged from the hospital, and her hair was lost due to chemotherapy. She resolutely put on a wig and flew to Estonia to conduct the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. When she conducted the orchestra to play the concerto adapted from the famous Chinese classical song “The Overlord Unleashes Armor”, the agitated melody was not only a rendition of the scenes of golden arms and iron horses on the ancient battlefield, but also a vivid portrayal of her struggle with the disease.
In 2014, Zheng Xiaoying was diagnosed with cancer in the lower half of her lungs. She didn’t tell anyone, she went to the hospital alone for targeted therapy, and returned to the rehearsal room more than half a month later. In 2015, Zheng Xiaoying was diagnosed with cancer for the third time, this time in the upper lobe of the lung. “As soon as the doctor told me about targeted radiotherapy, I immediately agreed. It’s very convenient and doesn’t require hospitalization. It takes half an hour a day for five consecutive days.” Zheng Xiaoying said calmly, as if telling someone else’s story. When it comes to life, she is always so unrestrained: “If one day falls on the podium, that is the most romantic thing.”
With her stubbornness, Zheng Xiaoying has made several “firsts” in the male-dominated music conducting industry: becoming China’s first female conductor, creating China’s first women’s chamber orchestra with her friends, and participating in the creation of China’s first female conductor. The Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, a public and private professional symphony orchestra, has won the Special Contribution Award for Chinese Opera, the Wenhua Conductor Award, the Golden Bell Award for Lifetime Achievement and other honors. Note: Karajan is a famous Austrian conductor, known as the “conducting emperor”).
Now, although the age of mackerel has passed, Zheng Xiaoying still has no plans to rest. As long as the melody is played, her body and mind will devote herself to the score. When there is a performance, she will rehearse with young people, and she can not drink a sip of water during a rehearsal for several hours. During the noon break, she just lay on the sofa for a while. After waking up, she had a cup of coffee, had some snacks, and continued on stage. She especially likes sweets, such as cakes and chocolates, and joked that it was her “secret to longevity”. In addition to the performance, Zheng Xiaoying also played with new media, registered accounts on major online platforms, and often used the Internet to popularize art. Zheng Xiaoying is always asked: “Why don’t you stop working?” “Why don’t you work? Work is my life.” She said, “As long as I can ‘flop’, I will always stand on the stage.”
“Guangming Daily” (12th edition on August 14, 2022)
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责编：李宜蒙 ]