Born to be a Peking Opera performer

"I was not supposed to be a Peking Opera actress, and I would not have been if my mom did not die when I was just nine years old," she said.

She's the only child in a family of highbrow intellectuals. Her father and mother were famous doctors in Beijing. She loved singing when she was in kindergarten, but her parents hoped she would become a doctor as they did.

During the Cultural Revolution, her parents moved to Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. She lived with her grandmother. She seldom visited her mother, but when she was nine-year-old, just three days after visiting her mother, she got a phone call from Ningxia. She was told that her mother had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Her grandmother took her to Ningxia. Some elders told little Sun Ping that she had to be independent from then on. To little Sun Ping, it was all too complicated to understand, but she knew at that time she had to depend on herself. She happened to see a poster of the Peking Opera School at Ningxia's Peking Opera Theater. She hoped she could enter the school.

Her father was against it. Because acting was still a third-rate occupation at the time, he still wanted her to be a doctor. They had a very long conversation. "I can't remember one single sentence of that talk now. I was determined to go and I was just thinking about how I could get my residence booklet to register at the school," Sun Ping recalled with a cunning smile.

She said, "I knew, at least one person's behind me – that was my grandma, because she knew I loved Peking Opera and she knew I had to be independent. But she was deeply worried whether I could adapt to the new circumstances or not, so she decided to accompany me to the school."

Her voice gave a strong impression to the teachers, so she successfully enrolled at the school. "I think everybody should insist on his or her own dream. There wouldn't be the Peking Opera actress Sun Ping before you if I had listened to the advice of my father. Maybe there would be another good doctor among thousands, but I'm sure that I wouldn't be as successful as I am. The difference is I love being a performer more than being a doctor."

Her teacher once described this turning point of her life by saying, "It must be the spirits of the founders of Peking Opera who wish her to enter this field." She was born to be a Peking Opera performer because she had the best qualifications, the interest and the chance.

Ningxia Peking Opera Theater had some of the best actors and actresses at that time. Because of the Cultural Revolution, most of the best performers from the National Peking Opera Theater were sent there. Since Peking Opera has no written text book, the teacher is the most important factor to a student. "You know, I'm lucky – I got the higher 'jumping-off point,' because my first teacher was Su Shengqin, the student of Mei Lanfang, who was the most famous Peking Opera artist in China, " Sun Ping said.

There were dozens of students at the Ningxia Peking Opera Theater. Only a few of them would play leading roles later. There are strict qualifications for leading roles in Peking Opera: they have to be good at not only singing, but also monologue, dance-acting and acrobatics.

Sun Ping decided to be the best upon entering the theater, so there would be a lot of bitter practice waiting for her. She recalled, "Turning somersaults, doing splits and handstands were all only basic skills. We also had to learn a lot of details, like how to use a wipe and coil it several circles around another actor's neck. It's easy to describe, but in practice it's not that easy." She failed thousands of times and even wrapped the wipe around her own hands.

This was not the most difficult part. The most difficult skill would be exactly copying every move the teacher made. Peking Opera performers need to make the exaggerated performance reach even those who sit in the last row. She studied a shy glance from Liu Jirong, a famous Peking Opera artist, for a long time. She wrote down every detail, drew a curve of the eyes' trend and then practiced again and again.

Her hard work made her quickly stand out from her fellow students. When she was 15, she played a leading role in After Camel Race, a nationally-famous modern Peking Opera. She became more and more known in China.

She was never satisfied, ever. In 1978, the Cultural Revolution was finished and college entrance examinations were resumed. She decided to enroll in the Institute of Chinese Traditional Operas. Because of her earlier achievements, she entered the school easily with the highest scores in both the specialized course and the literacy course.

She was a member of the first graduating class, which had only 20 students. At the college, she was mentored by several well-known artists, like Shi Ruoxu, Li Weikang, Ai Meijun, Du Jinfang and Zhang Junqiu. Her performances were backed up by her extensive work in scholarly research and study.

When Sun Ping graduated from the college, she became one of the top three students who got the chance to join the Peking Opera Theater of China, where her talents in both performance and singing were soon recognized. She became a leading actress in several of the troupe's most famous works.

She concluded that the greatest achievement of this time was performing on the same stage with so many famous Peking Opera artists. She said she learned a lot from them. There is supposed to be an interaction between the two performers, so during the performances Sun learned much more than in the classroom. She said, "There is just a thin line between performers and artists, who share the same basic skills. But if you can cross the thin line, you become an artist; otherwise you'll just be a performer your whole life."