Yaoyao Jiang: Chen Peisi Blacklisted CCTV for 20 Years | He Is the Opposite of Zhang Yimou
This episode reviews the career trajectory of actor Chen Peisi, from his rise to fame on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, to facing suppression, winning a lawsuit against CCTV for copyright infringement, and finally returning to the stage through theater after leaving the CCTV system. Unlike Zhang Yimou, who attached himself to the system to become a "state master," Chen Peisi achieved independent creation without relying on power by winning a copyright lawsuit and establishing a commercial model for theater, redefining the relationship between actors and the state television station.
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Hello everyone, I am Yao Yao Jiang, who loves to think and values logic.
Last Friday, we talked about Zhang Yimou. In his early films, his talent was transforming writers' literary works into colors, compositions, and scenes. Later, when capital wanted spectacles, he created spectacles; when the CCP wanted a "prosperous age," he turned obedience, order, and the leader's will into a prosperous age. Using the same set of craftsman skills, he constantly defected to and attached himself to the powerful system, earning the title of "state master."
Chen Peisi took the opposite path. In 1984, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala made him a household name overnight. 15 years later, in 1999, he and Zhu Shimao sued CCTV. They won the lawsuit, but he disappeared from CCTV.
You can say whatever you want to us, and I will say it to them once too.
Many people say that Chen Peisi was banned by CCTV for more than 20 years. However, after reviewing the path Chen Peisi has walked and the things he has done over the past 20 years, we found that it was actually the opposite: it was Chen Peisi who banned the overbearing.
Mom, 20 years, you think you are great, you are happy to rewrite it. Aren't you talking about democracy now? That democracy is what you talk about. One person does it for the people, but it doesn't matter to you, don't forget. You say my son can't even find a person who spends money.
Chen Peisi first recognized the oppression of authoritarianism through the experiences of himself and his father. His father, Chen Qiang, was a famous first-generation film actor in the new China. He played Huang Shiren in "The White-Haired Girl" and Nan Batian in "The Red Detachment of Women." Because his portrayal of villains was so deeply rooted in people's hearts, Chen Qiang became a villain familiar to all the people of China. Later, he was named one of the 22 great film stars of new China.
However, these honors did not protect him. After the Cultural Revolution began, Chen Qiang was quickly overthrown and subjected to criticism and struggle sessions every day. When he returned, there were bloody marks on his white undershirt. That year, Chen Peisi was only thirteen. He later recalled that from then on, father and son saw through how hollow honor was: the state can lift a person onto the stage today, and tomorrow it can use the same method to knock you to the ground and stomp on you a few more times.
This experience did not immediately turn Chen Peisi into a rebel. At fifteen, he went to the Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps. Once there, the top priority was to get enough to eat, right? So entering this art circle was a way to return to the city. A child star's return to the city and having food to eat—he carried sand every day and wanted to eat a steamed bun, but he had to walk dozens of miles and still might not be able to buy one; he was hungry for a long time. Therefore, the person in his later sketch "Eating Noodles" who was wolfing down food in front of an empty bowl was not entirely acting; he had truly been hungry.
In order to return to the city and to have enough to eat, Chen Peisi applied to the Beijing Military Region Art Troupe and the General Political Department Drama Troupe, but was rejected by both. The reason was also very direct: his appearance was too ordinary; you could find a handful of people like him in Hebei or Henan. Finally, it was Chen Qiang who asked his old friend Tian Hua for help, and his son was able to enter the August First Film Studio.
This physical action demonstrates your bookstore's bustling and terribly combative life, and the studio is short of people to play bandits, hooligans, and ruffians. Chen Peisi's face, after all, finally came in handy. After entering the August First Film Studio, he received forty-five jin of food coupons every month and a plate of pickles worth six cents; he could eat five steamed buns in one go. Therefore, Chen Peisi's early choices were not romantic at all. He entered the system through his father's connections, and he also relied on the system to escape hunger. A formal job, a stack of food coupons, and a Beijing household registration meant, first of all, that he could have enough to eat.
In 1979, the Cultural Revolution ended. Shortly after, Chen Qiang and his son Chen Peisi starred together in the film Look at This Family, which was the first major role Chen Peisi obtained. To play the character Erzi well in the film, he filled an entire wall with character analysis, even listing speech and actions item by item. After the filming was completed, Chen Qiang said to his son, "You should just do comedy. Ordinary people live too bitterly; they need someone to make them laugh."
Chen Qiang had just survived the Cultural Revolution. In that decade, politics first divided people into enemies and ourselves, and literature and art then told the audience who to hate. Yet father and son chose comedy at this very time. They no longer wanted to teach audiences how to gnash their teeth, but simply wanted to make people laugh for a while.
He was afraid of the classics standing in the open, afraid. I was nervous, right, exactly, he kept taking the positive numbers and hiding there, and then, after watching that, sometimes he really couldn't hold it in anymore, and after the character appeared as a guest, he said how did it become like this? And then he came out.
Chen Peisi thus found his own position. The characters he played were always little people—jobless, without status, lacking any prestige, often trying to be clever, and ultimately messing things up. As the reform had just begun, Chinese people suddenly discovered that ordinary people on the screen did not have to shoulder grand missions; they could also be busy looking for jobs, doing business, falling in love, and even making fools of themselves.
That's fine too, if you dare to do it, don't laugh.
Film made Chen Peisi famous, but his fame had not yet reached the point where audiences nationwide could recognize him. That greater opportunity soon came from CCTV.
Lighting crew, our actor's performance area is watching right here, keep it good. What is good?
The sketch Eating Noodles was not originally written for the Spring Festival Gala. Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao were both at the August First Film Studio. Zhu Shimao had just finished acting in Herdsmen; with thick eyebrows and big eyes, he was the standard image of a positive character at the time. Chen Peisi, however, always played punks and unemployed youth. When the two stood together, there was already a difference between protagonist and supporting actor without them even opening their mouths.
They privately teamed up to go out and perform to make some extra money, and the predecessor of Eating Noodles was polished bit by bit during these performances. Zhu Shimao played a director, and Chen Peisi played an extra coming in for an audition. The director asked him to act out eating noodles; facing an empty bowl, he ate it over and over again while the director kept asking for retakes. As for him, he went from devouring it like a wolf to being so stuffed that he couldn't straighten his back, and finally felt like vomiting at the sight of noodles.
This sketch lacked—not only did it lack noodles, but it also lacked any grand moral lessons; the laughter relied entirely on the relationship between the characters. The director held the power, while the actor, in order to get a role, had no choice but to obey the director. At the phrase "do it again," he had to keep cramming non-existent noodles into his stomach.
CCTV Gala director Huang Yihe heard that this program had a great comedic effect and brought them in to audition, Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao. Halfway through the performance, the audience suddenly went completely quiet, and a large patch of chairs was empty; the two thought they had bombed their performance. Later they found out that the audience had all laughed and squatted down onto the floor.
However, right before the New Year's Eve live broadcast, whether Eating Noodles could make it on was still undecided because some people worried that this program could only make people laugh without any educational significance, and whether it would cause political problems. In the end, Huang Yihe said he would take responsibility for any issues, and the program was finally cleared for release.
Today, looking at such worries, it seems quite absurd. What political mistake could a person possibly commit by eating noodles facing an empty bowl? Yet at that time, laughter itself required approval, and literature and art had to shoulder tasks. Why the audience laughed, and what education they received after laughing, all had to be clearly articulated. Eating Noodles happened to teach nothing at all; it merely let people see how a small actor was tormented to death and back by a director.
On New Year's Eve in 1984, Chen Peisi stepped onto the Spring Festival Gala holding an empty bowl. The next morning, an old neighborhood resident saw him on the road and said yesterday's program was pretty good. That was how audiences nationwide came to know Chen Peisi.
CCTV gave him far more than just a single performance. In that era when television programs could be counted on one's fingers, hundreds of millions of people guarded the same channel on New Year's Eve; as long as one stood on the Spring Festival Gala stage for a dozen minutes, someone would recognize them the next day. For many years thereafter, Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao became the most important comedy duo of the Spring Festival Gala. They also pushed the differences in their physical appearances and identities to the absolute limit.
What's there to be arrogant about? To be honest, once you get on stage, it still depends on who has the acting chops.
In the sketch Protagonist and Supporting Actor, Chen Peisi was unconvinced, saying why did he always play traitors, and insisted on swapping roles with Zhu Shimao. Consequently, Chen Peisi put on a military uniform, wore a hat, and tried hard to straighten his back. Yet no matter how he posed, the audience could tell at a glance that he was still that same traitor. Meanwhile, Zhu Shimao, after changing into his clothes, still looked like a positive character.
Why are you akimbo? Little devil, who is it? You believe the little devil?
Chen Peisi shouted in exasperation at the end: "I never expected it, I never expected that you, Zhu Shimao, a guy with thick eyebrows and big eyes, would also betray the revolution." Later, this line was constantly quoted on the internet, and what people were laughing at was not just that face. That set of revolutionary films had long taught the audience: what kind of facial features indicate loyalty, and what kind indicate a traitor? Thick eyebrows and big eyes are naturally righteous; shifty eyes are inherently suspicious. Chen Peisi moved this set of serious political stereotypes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had used for decades into his sketches, allowing the audience to taste a different flavor amidst the laughter.
I am afraid you won't like this part. This is a dream, and even holding me makes me afraid.
In the sketch "The Policeman and the Thief," he went a step further. The thief played by Chen Peisi, in order to keep watch for his accomplice, put on a police uniform to impersonate an officer. As he acted, he actually started to see himself as a policeman and began to lecture others. When he was finally caught, he asked aggrievedly: "I am a thief, how could I be a thief?" A uniform can change how a person views themselves and can also make those around them immediately obey them. Chen Peisi's "little people" are always hovering on the edge of power; they want to use a piece of clothing, a title, or a stage to turn themselves into someone superior, but the result often reveals an even greater absurdity.
But before getting on the live stage, how the program was filmed and what content had to be deleted was still decided by CCTV. CCTV needed Chen Peisi's laughter, but did not treat him as an equal creator.
In 1988, Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao were preparing "Gouwa and Heiniu." They wanted to use film techniques—filming first and then splicing different scenes together—to avoid the limitations of a live stage. This proposal was rejected. Later, when he did "The Policeman and the Thief," they proposed a similar idea again, but it was still not accepted, and the opening scene was deleted.
According to Chen Peisi's recollection, after CCTV's edits, the work shrank by at least half. Every time they argued to the end, the problem always boiled down to the same point: who is in charge of this program? Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao spent a year conceiving, rehearsing, and revising, but once they reached CCTV, they still had no say in how it was finally filmed or what was cut.
By the time of the 1998 sketch "The Prince and the Postman," the disputes had escalated from deleting scenes to embarrassment on stage.
Before going on stage, staff members were attaching a microphone to Zhu Shimao. Because he was wearing a robe, it was troublesome to attach the mic, so the staff, trying to save effort, clipped the microphone to the outside of his clothes. The result? Shortly after the performance began, the microphone fell off. To ensure the audience could hear Zhu Shimao, Chen Peisi had to keep moving close to him, while Zhu Shimao had to finish the performance almost by shouting. The sound effects they had prepared for the plot had already been loaded onto the accompaniment disc during rehearsals, but when it came to the live broadcast, not a single one played. Chen Peisi later recalled that there was no creative atmosphere left in that place; every department had people acting like masters, and no one could tell who was standing behind an ordinary assistant, so actors dared not easily offend anyone. Some people even warned them that backstage was not just about professionalism, but also about knowing how to cultivate relationships. Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao refused; they believed that if they did their work well, they should be treated professionally. The most popular sketch duo in the country stepped onto the largest live stage in the country, yet they couldn't even be guaranteed a microphone or a few sound effects, and they had to bear the responsibility for success or failure in front of hundreds of millions of viewers. Backstage, someone holding a tiny bit of power could cause a year of hard work to go to waste on the spot. Chen Peisi said that the Spring Festival Gala was no longer just a variety show, but a system, an apparatus. He and Zhu Shimao stepped off the stage and decided never to go back up.
After the path of the Spring Festival Gala was cut off, Chen Peisi could originally rely on film, but the path of film was also fraught with problems. In 1991, he founded the Hainan Comedy Production Co., Ltd., later renamed Dadao Film. He didn't want to hold a script and beg others everywhere anymore; he planned to invest and film himself, keeping the creative rights in his own hands. This was the era when Chinese cinema was just beginning to marketize; private companies could pay to make films, but it was difficult to independently enter the distribution system. Chen Peisi's films had to be affiliated with state-owned film studios, and after filming, he had to run to cinemas one by one. The films he made didn't necessarily lose money, but it was hard to collect the full revenue from sales. Chen Peisi later gave an example: the film "Empress Dowager Jixiang" had seven screenings a day at the Hongxing Cinema in Shijiazhuang, and every show was sold out. Yet, in the end, the cinema only reported three shows to him. The tickets for the other four shows were sold, and the audience went in, but the production company's accounts didn't show it. To check the box office, he had to send people to monitor the cinemas in various places. A filmmaker ended up spending his energy counting how many shows were actually played each day. Dadao Film made several films in a row, and each one seemed to have box office success, but the company's capital chain was always breaking. At the most stressful times, his child's tuition of a little over a hundred yuan would be delayed for months. The company's car had to be used by the film crew, and he himself couldn't even bear to take a taxi when going out, having to find cheaper minivans.
The Spring Festival Gala and the movie industry seemed like two different matters, yet Chen Peisi encountered the exact same problem in both. The sketches on the Gala were created by him, but how they were revised and broadcast was decided by CCTV. In the movie market, he provided the funding, while the number of screenings and box office reports were decided by state-owned distribution companies and state-owned theaters. The risks fell on him, while the decision-making power and revenue were controlled by others. After 1998, Chen Peisi no longer appeared on the Spring Festival Gala, and his film company was burdened with debt. What national audiences saw was a comedy star slowly disappearing, while he himself faced two paths coming to an end at the same time.
Right at this moment, he saw a set of CD-ROMs on the market. Can they just say whatever they want to us?
And can I say it back to them once?
And the cost was huge.
Any regrets? The CD-ROMs included eight sketches such as Eating Noodles, Making Movies, Policemen and Thieves, and Protagonists and Supporting Actors. The covers were printed with the names of Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao, and the discs contained the works they had created and performed over many years. The CDs were already on sale to the public, but the two men had no prior knowledge and had never agreed to it. The publisher and distributor of these CD-ROMs was none other than China International Television Corporation, a subsidiary of CCTV. This company was wholly invested by CCTV at the time, selling CCTV's Spring Festival Gala programs and using footage recorded by CCTV. In the China of 1999, Chen Peisi suing this company was equivalent to suing CCTV. Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao first went to negotiate, but got no results. Because the programs were performed on CCTV and recorded by CCTV, the other party assumed they had the right to publish them. As to how the two actors created and rehearsed them for how long, that was not taken into consideration. When rehearsing sketches, creators had to obey the director group, and after the program was broadcast, the copyright of the work could be disposed of at will by the CCTV system. Because the actors became famous through CCTV, it was as if both the people and their works belonged to CCTV. Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao decided to sue them, demanding the cessation of infringement, a public apology, and compensation of more than 1.66 million yuan.
On December 6, 2000, the No. 1 Intermediate People's Court of Beijing issued a first-instance judgment. The court ruled that CCTV owned the overall copyright of the Spring Festival Gala, but this did not mean that Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao lost the copyright and performance rights to their sketches. China International Television Corporation constituted copyright infringement and must stop distribution, apologize in the newspaper, and compensate the two individuals 333,3293 yuan. The Television Corporation refused to accept the verdict and appealed, but later voluntarily withdrew the appeal. In April 2001, the Beijing Higher People's Court approved the withdrawal of the lawsuit, and the first-instance judgment took effect.
The judgment was about copyright, but at the time, a CCTV director interviewed turned the matter into a favor. He said that many actors became famous because of the Spring Festival Gala, and now, they were turning around to sue CCTV, which was somewhat unreasonable. According to this logic of human favor, as long as CCTV made the whole country recognize you, you owed it an everlasting debt that could never be repaid. Your program could be modified, your work could be sold, and even if you were dissatisfied, you should still remember who made you famous. The state platform framed a normal cooperation as a bestowal of grace, and then used this grace to demand that individuals give up their rights. Many Chinese people are not unfamiliar with this kind of relationship: the work unit gave you a job, the leaders promoted you, and the organization cultivated you, so everything you possessed no longer belonged entirely to you. Once you demanded things to be done according to the rules, someone would immediately ask you why you were so ungrateful. Chen Peisi simply refused to acknowledge this debt. After the judgment came out, he said the other party could easily say No to him, and he would also say No to the other party once. He knew the cost was huge, but he had no regrets. Chen Peisi said he was not a warrior and hated confronting people, but some things could not be glossed over. If everyone defaulted to the idea that might makes right, the ones blamed by future generations would not just be the powerful people in charge, but also everyone who silently accepted it.
The cost came very quickly. In December 2000, Chen Peisi publicly stated that CCTV would not issue a written document officially banning Chen Peisi. The so-called soft ban meant that many CCTV directors would no longer send them invitations. The Television Corporation immediately denied this, claiming the two did not appear on the Spring Festival Gala because there were no suitable programs. When reporters inquired with the CCTV General Editorial Office and the Arts Department, one said they didn't know and the other said no comment. This was precisely the usefulness of a soft ban; it didn't require anyone to issue an order. As long as the phone calls stopped coming and other units took their cues from CCTV, the result happened naturally without anyone needing to take responsibility. When The Prince and the Postman ended, Chen Peisi had already decided not to go back.
After the copyright lawsuit, both sides closed their doors. The Spring Festival Gala was gone, and the film company was burdened with debts of about 2 million yuan. Toughness alone could not repay the debts; he had to find a path to make money and continue creating without relying on CCTV. Later, an inspiring story circulated online: because Chen Peisi offended CCTV and had nowhere to turn, he had to take his wife to rent barren hills in the suburbs of Beijing to grow pomegranates for two years, earning 300,000 yuan, and then use that money to stage plays, finally making a comeback. It sounded like an inspiring story of a celebrity falling on hard times, returning home to farm, and finally turning things around with his own hands. However, Chen Peisi himself said most of the plot was made out of thin air. That mountain was something he had rented in earlier years in response to a greening call, and he had spent nearly a million yuan hiring local villagers to guard the mountain forest, where he often went to hide in peace and write scripts. On a forty-five-degree slope, pomegranates were hard to grow in patches, let alone earn enough money from them to stage plays. In the end, what kept him afloat was not pomegranates, but theater tickets.
Around 2000, Dada Company had to transform. Some suggested he make documentaries, while others wanted to pursue different film and television projects, but Chen Peisi finally decided to return to the theater. At that time, the stage play market was very sluggish; many theaters relied on block bookings by work units and complimentary tickets to survive, and ordinary audiences rarely bought tickets to watch plays themselves. When Chen Peisi went to some provincial theaters to perform, he would walk backstage and first smell the stench of urine; before the performance, they had to clean the toilets before they could set up the stage. However, even facing so many difficulties, he still chose stage plays because the production cost of a play was only between several hundred thousand and over one million yuan, which he could afford himself. He no longer needed to look for investment everywhere, and even less did he need to let investors decide the fate of his work.
In 2001, Dada Company spent about 1.2 million to produce the play "Tuor" (The Wedding Agency). Chen Peisi played the owner of a matchmaking agency who hired various "wedding shills" to deceive customers, and in the end, even his own wife got involved. Everyone was lying, and everyone thought they were smarter than others, but in the end, the truth was revealed layer by layer. Before the premiere, Chen Peisi had no confidence; he had not formally performed in a stage play for 27 years. During the first performance, he was so nervous he almost forgot his lines. After the performance, he only gave himself a score of 50, but the audience was very receptive. "Tuor" was first performed for seven shows at the Chang'an Grand Theatre in Beijing, where tickets were hard to come by, and then it was extended at the Poly Theatre. Performance promoters from all over the country began to knock on his door, and the schedule was soon booked until the following year. By the end of the first round of over thirty shows, the investment had already been recouped. Later, after more than one hundred performances on a national tour, the cumulative box office reached about 40 million. After the performance, Chen Peisi cried. Having been away from film and television for so many years, according to the rules of the entertainment industry, he should have been washed up long ago, but the theater was full of audiences who had paid for their own tickets, and these people still remembered him. In the past, he had to face CCTV directors and film distributors; now, sitting in the audience were people who had bought their own tickets. If the audience was willing to buy tickets, he would perform; if the audience was not, he would go back and revise the play. What decided whether he could continue to create was no longer some leader, but these audiences.
Subsequently, Dada Culture explored a set of its own methods: new plays were first performed in Beijing, and after being repeatedly revised and matured, they would go on a national tour. Local promoters would purchase performance rights at a guaranteed price; whether the tickets sold well or not was the responsibility of the local side. Dada Culture did not rely on box office revenue sharing, so there was no need to worry about someone reporting three shows instead of seven. The works could also have their copyrights exported, allowing local actors to stage dialect versions. After "Tuor," there were two more plays, "Relatives and Friends Are Good at Settling Accounts" and "Balcony." By around 2004, the three plays had toured more than forty cities, with a cumulative box office exceeding 60 million. The stable box office allowed Dada Culture to survive, and Chen Peisi no longer had to rely on the CCTV stage to support himself. CCTV's advantage was to send actors to the national audience all at once, but Chen Peisi chose the slowest method: he had to take trains, stay in hotels, and move sets himself, touring from one city to another. In the past, he faced a big client who could decide his fate; now, it was thousands of audiences voting with their tickets. Performance approval was still unavoidable within the system; at that time, it was difficult for private companies to apply for performances independently, so he partnered with state-owned theaters, with the state-owned units applying for approval from cultural management departments. The power of approval was still in the hands of the system, but the system could no longer decide whether Chen Peisi had food to eat. Chen Peisi later summarized his choice: a man must be able to live even after leaving the system. He also said that vines that climb up by clinging to big trees are base. He had personally received the benefits of the system—the August First Film Studio gave him a job, and CCTV gave him fame—but now what he wanted to refuse was people taking these benefits as debts and demanding his lifelong obedience.
After the lawsuit, Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao never returned to the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. In the first few years, CCTV no longer gave them a stage, and it was from here that the rumor spread that Chen Peisi had been banned by CCTV. But later, invitations from CCTV came again. In 2008, when Zhu Shimao accepted an interview, he said that in the ten years after the lawsuit, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala had invited them several times. He did not go back; on one hand, the copyright lawsuit had hurt their feelings, and on the other hand, the Spring Festival Gala was no longer important to him. In 2012, Chen Peisi also told the media that in July of that year, the Spring Festival Gala production team invited him to attend a preparatory discussion, but he did not go because he was too busy with his stage play work. At this time, the positions of the two sides had been reversed: CCTV sent an invitation, and Chen Peisi first had to check if he had time on his work schedule. In the past, for the ten-plus minutes on the Spring Festival Gala stage, he would start writing scripts, rehearsing, and revising from the second half of the year; family matters had to be put aside, film matters had to give way, and finally, he had to wait for the director's group to review it time and time again. Chen Peisi described those days as very miserable, living for fifteen minutes on New Year's Eve for a whole half year. After doing stage plays, he was still very tired; after a performance, all his clothes and socks would be soaked through. After getting older, he was once sent directly to the emergency room from backstage due to excessive salt loss. But this kind of tiredness was different from the tiredness of the Spring Festival Gala: the play was his own, the audience was found one ticket at a time by himself, and he bore the responsibility for whether the performance was good or bad.
In 2015, the TV series "Such a Great Family", directed by and starring Chen Peisi, was broadcast on CCTV Channel 1. After years away, he stepped back into the old CCTV building. He still had feelings for CCTV and admitted that his TV series being able to air there was thanks to the prestige of the platform. However, this time, he brought a complete work he had directed himself, and CCTV had shifted from being his lifeline to simply a broadcasting platform. In 2020, CCTV announced Chen Peisi as the first mentor for a comedy variety show, which aired in 2021. This was his return to the CCTV variety stage after more than 20 years. Just starting to manifest as
The routine of mocking authority
Is still frequently used today by people like Guo Degang and Ying Da, who sat right next to him on the mentor panel to select contestants and lecture young actors on comedy. When he first went on CCTV, he ate noodles and waited until New Year's Eve to find out if leaders would allow the show to air; upon his return, he was the seasoned expert invited by the show to impart experience. Chen Peisi was not ingratiating at all on the show. While other mentors busied themselves with hyping up the atmosphere, he would frequently break down a performance, explaining why a character made a specific movement and why a punchline failed to grow naturally out of the situation. Once, when giving a lecture to contestants, he spoke continuously for six hours while standing up. The young contestants sat dozing off, and the staff urged him to speed up, yet he still insisted on finishing every word. CCTV was still the same CCTV, but Chen Peisi now had other choices. In the past, CCTV could leave him out in the cold or summon him back with a single phone call; now, CCTV could only negotiate cooperation with him and could no longer use his livelihood to pressure him.
This is completely the opposite of Zhang Yimou, as discussed in the previous episode. Zhang Yimou continuously proves that he can complete tasks for greater power in exchange for a bigger stage and higher position, whereas Chen Peisi proved through play after play that even without the biggest stage, he could still survive and still create. Before he even fully returned to CCTV, he wrote the tastes and life insights he had experienced over the years into a theatrical stage
Would they think he is?
Did Xiongxiong say anything?
Make it clear. Around 2013, Chen Peisi sought out the screenwriter Yu Yue to write a play about Peking Opera. The two of them spent over a year setting the story in the era of the warlord clashes during the Beiyang government. In 2015, the play "The Stage" premiered in Beijing and later toured the country for hundreds of performances. 10 years later, Chen Peisi adapted it into a movie. The story begins with a warlord civil war, where General Hong drove away General Huang and occupied Beijing. General Hong did not understand Peking Opera, yet he explicitly demanded to watch a star performer. The star actor, Jin Xiaotian, was performing "Farewell My Concubine" and waiting to go on stage, when a bun-delivery worker named Dasuan burst in with a booming voice. Dasuan loved singing opera and had a huge voice, but his singing was completely out of tune. General Hong had never seen the real Jin Xiaotian, and ended up mistaking this bun deliveryman, Dasuan, for the star actor. Everyone knew the general had mistaken the person, but no one dared to tell him. A bun deliveryman would naturally not become a Peking Opera master simply due to the general's mistake, but truth and falsehood were no longer determined by facts. General Hong said he was Jin Xiaotian, so he had to be Jin Xiaotian; General Hong said this play was called "Farewell My Concubine", and the entire opera troupe had to perform it this way. The General also found the Chu Overlord's black python robe unappealing and demanded it be replaced with a red robe. The troupe could not find a red robe for the Overlord, so they had to dress the Chu Overlord in the costume of the eunuch Liu Jin from "The Court of Justice". With someone sitting in the audience who could kill people at will, the performance on stage was left with only one rule: make the person in the audience happy.
Ah, Chen Peisi played the troupe leader Hou Xiting in the film. Dozens of people in the troupe depended on the show for their livelihood, while in the audience sat warlords holding guns. He could only bow, scrape, and force smiles, navigating back and forth between genuine and fake smiles to ensure everyone managed to get through the performance smoothly. What Hou Xiting had to protect first and foremost were livelihoods and lives; he would feel fear, compromise, and lower his head to maneuver, yet he still distinguished between truth and falsehood, refusing to surrender his own judgment. At the end of the film, the real Jin Xiaotian finally put on the Overlord costume, stepped to the front of the stage, and resolutely refused to change the play according to the General's wishes. Thus, two Overlords appeared on stage: one was the real star actor, Jin Xiaotian, and the other was the fake Overlord designated by power. General Hong could not tell the truth from the falsehood, but the gun in his hand could determine who got to keep singing. Feng Xiaotong was a male actor playing female roles (dan) in the troupe, and he eventually drowned himself in a river. Clinging to his faith in the stage, he could not accept this theater being wantonly trampled by power. Chen Dayu later explained that Feng Xiaotong represented an inner resistance—when faced with trampling, whether to resist or not is everyone's own choice. Filming the scene where the General forced the opera troupe to change the play, the backstage was already in chaos. The actors who originally played immortals on stage knelt together in a mass to avoid the gunfire. Chen Peisi sat in front of the monitor, watching these immortals kneeling down to power, and a sudden wave of sorrow overwhelmed him. He said everyone has inviolable faith and dignity, and the opera troupe represents a spiritual home; playing the Overlord requires the spirit of the Overlord, and one should not simply do whatever is demanded just because a general points a gun at them.
Chen Peisi experienced the same pain at CCTV. Commander Hong did not understand theater, yet he could change the script. The director at CCTV had never written his jokes, yet believed it was CCTV that made him famous, and therefore his works should also be at the disposal of CCTV. Those who provide the stage easily mistake the people on it as their own. Chen Peisi knew how to affiliate, how to seek approval, and was willing to cooperate with CCTV again. He was willing to cooperate, but he did not accept turning cooperation into personal dependency. CCTV made him a nationally famous star, and he acknowledged this favor. However, when a single word during rehearsal could overturn a year of an actor's hard work, and the work could be sold off after being broadcast, this crossed his bottom line. The copyright lawsuit started with that set of discs, but in the end, it was about something more fundamental: who does the work belong to, and who does the person belong to?
After CCTV stopped inviting him, if Chen Peisi had not had an independent income, that refusal would have been hard to sustain for twenty years. It was the theater that supported him, and thus CCTV lost the means to control him. Chen Peisi survived through the theater and did not stop creating. When CCTV sent an invitation again, no matter how powerful the national television station was, it could only issue an invitation; no matter how weak the actor was, he had the right to refuse. If he wanted to go, he would go; if he did not want to go, his own stage could still open as usual. Looking back at the play "The Stage," the most ruthless part is not that Commander Hong drove the Overlord off the stage, but that the Overlord continued to sing, only to be dressed in a eunuch's red robe. The famous actor had not changed, the stage had not been dismantled, and the gongs and drums still sounded, but the dignity of the person and the right and wrong within the play had been replaced by power. What Chen Peisi guarded was not wearing this red eunuch's robe; the work belonged to himself, and he belonged to himself. In this relationship between him and CCTV, it was he who closed the door first, and later it was he who decided when to open it. This is what is called Chen Peisi banning CCTV.