Zhou Xinfang's Posthumous 120th Birthday Opening
Gala Performance
纪念周信芳诞辰
120周年
Speech by Zhou Yi
(aka Zhou Tsaiwen, 周采薀)
CCTV
January 10, 2015
© 2015 Beijing Leihe Cultural Broadcasting Ltd.
Opening Gala Speech by Zhou Yi
(translated from the original Chinese)
It is our great pleasure to have you here with us to commemorating our father’s 120th posthumous birthday. This is indeed a happy occasion.
Our father always said: “the audience has been good to me.”
Allow me, along with my brother and sisters, and our younger generation, and their younger ones, to take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of thousands of audience members—the audience of today, of the past and of the future—for the adoration you have bestowed on our father. We thank you.
We also wish to thank “Zhou Xinfang Performing Arts Study Association” for the publication of the Zhou Xinfang Anthology in 32 volumes. Over the past 35 years, many Zhou Xinfang devotees contributed their valuable time and energy under the most difficult conditions, continuously labored over research and the study of Zhou Xinfang’s Qi School, analyzed his work, and recorded his life’s achievements. Your accomplishment is outstanding; we salute each of you.
We mark this time for Zhou Xinfang and for Shanghai Jingju Yuan (Shanghai Beijing Opera Academy), a time to promote and develop the dramatic art of Jingju. But Jingju is not merely a dramatic art; it is a glorious symbol of China’s thousands of years of rich culture, a national pride, and an artistic genre that can never die out or fade away.
Our father understood this well. He was far sighted. He assimilated art forms from throughout China and abroad, and integrated their essences to create something new. While endlessly elevating his own art, he not only discarded Jingju’s deeply rooted and dated elements, but nurtured the best of Jingju. By doing so, he both revitalized and advanced Jingju for a new generation.
Throughout his life, our father had kept up with the times, never standing still. The stage was his boundless universe, the theatre his roaring and mighty sea. He was an outstanding performing artist, an innovator of the 20th century, and above all, a true heroic Chinese.
Father, we love you; you are always in our hearts.
纪念周信芳诞辰120周年周易开幕致词
十分高兴今天能在这里和你们大家相聚, 一起来纪念我们父親誕辰一百二十周年。这是一个十分可喜的日子。
記得我父親常常說 “觀众对我是好的”。
让我乘這個時刻， 在這裡代表我的姐姐， 弟弟， 和妹妹們；也代表我們这一代的下一代，和他們的下一代向所有的觀众 — 過去的，今天的， 和明天的千千万万的觀众 — 為你们对我们父親的爱戴，向你們致謝。
這是一個周信芳的時刻，也是上海京劇院的時刻; 更是發揚京劇這個劇種的時刻。但京劇不僅僅是一個劇種，它更是千年積累的我國民族文化光彩的一面旗幟。它是永不能抹灭的中华民族的驕傲。我们的父親他深深地明白這一點。他有遠見; 他廣泛地吸收并融合了中外藝術的精粹；不斷地提高自己在藝術上的精神世界; 同时滋養並提炼了京劇本有的內在精华，解脱了它固有的封闭的保守面貌；是在这个基础上，他擴大了京劇的藝術境界，使它更上一層樓。
我们的父亲他一生向前迈步；不停滞。 舞台是他的海闊天空； 戲园子是他的澎湃汪洋。他是一個傑出的表演藝術家; 一個二十世纪的創新者；更是一个地地道道的中华好汉。
父親， 我們愛着你； 你永远深藏在我们的心底里。
