Showing posts with label Chen xiaoxu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chen xiaoxu. Show all posts

Monday, October 22, 2007

I am back!LIN Daiyu's Elegy on Flowers.

I live in China, Because of some reasons, I cann't access all of my blogs that hosted on blogspot for few months.
Now I am back. Sorry for the absense for so long a time. even no one notice that.:)
Now I will show you Anothor classic episode in A dream of Read Mansions.



That is LIN Daiyu's Elegy on Flowers.

The Chinese version can be seen in the above video. following is the translation of that poet.

Flowers fade and fly,
and flying fill the sky;
Their bloom departs, their perfume gone,
yet who stands pitying by?
And wandering threads of gossamer
on the summer-house are seen,
And falling catkins lightly dew-steeped
strike the embroidered screen.
A girl within the inner rooms,
I mourn that spring is done,
A veil of sorrow binds my heart,
and solace there is none.
I pass into the garden,
and I turn to use my hoe,
Treading over fallen glories
as I lightly come and go.
There are willow-sprays and flowers of elm,
and these have scent enough.
I care not if the peach and plum,
are stripped from every bough.
The peach-tree and the plum-tree too
next year may bloom again,
But next year, in the inner rooms,
tell me, shall I remain?
By the third moon new fragrant nests
shall see the light of day,
New swallows fly among the beams,
each on its thoughtless way.
Next year once more they'll seek their food
among the painted flowers,
But I may go, and beams may go,
and with them swallow bowers.
Three hundred days and sixty make
a year, and therein lurk
Daggers of wind and swords of frost
to do their cruel work.
How long will last the fair fresh flower
which bright and brighter glows?
One morning its petals float away,
but to where no-one knows.
Gay bloooming buds attract the eye,
faded they're lost to sight;
Oh, let me sadly bury them
beside these steps tonight.
Alone, unseen, I seize my hoe,
with many a bitter tear;
They fall upon the naked stem
and stains of blood appear.
The night-jar now has ceased to mourn,
the dawn comes on apace,
I seize my hoe and close the gates,
leaving the burying-place;
But not until sunbeams dot the wall
does slumber soothe my care,
The cold rain pattering on the pane
as I lie shivering there.
You wonder that with flowing tears
my youthful cheek is wet;
They partly rise from angry thoughts,
and partly from regret.
Regret that spring comes suddenly;
and anger that it cannot last.
No sound to announce its approach,
or warn us when it's passed.
Last night within the garden
sad songs were faintly heard,
Sung, as I knew, by spirits,
spirits of flower and bird.
We cannot keep them here with us,
these much-loved birds and flowers,
They sing but for a season's space,
and bloom a few short hours.
If only I on a feathered wing
might soar aloft and fly,
With flower spirits I would seek
the rooms within the sky.
But high in the air
What grave is there?
No, give me an embroidered bag
within to lay their charms,
And Mother Earth, pure Mother Earth,
shall hide them in her arms.
Thus those sweet forms which spotless came
shall spotless go again,
Nor pass dirty with mud and filth
along some filthy drain.
Farewell, dear flowes, forever now,
thus buried as was best,
I have not yet divined when I
with you shall sink to rest.
I who can bury flowers like this
a laughing-stock shall be;
I cannot say in days to come
what hands shall bury me.
See how when spring begins to fail
each opening flower fades;
So too there is a time of age
and death for beautiful maids;
And when the fleeting spring is gone,
and days of beauty over,
Flowers fall, and lovely maidens die,
and both are known no more.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Report about Chen Xiaoxu(lin mei mei) Play multiple roles in her life

Poet, Actress, Ad Executive
09-19-2004 The New York Times?Sunday business
Chen Xiao Xu
Founding president of ShiPang Advertising, Beijing
Hometown: Anshan, Liaoning Province, China
Most Recent travel: Jiuhuashan (“Nine Flowers Mountain”),
one of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains in Anhui Province
Never seen without: Meditation beads

Both of my parents were performers with the Peking Opera. They expected me to do the same, but I didn’t like opera at all. I liked ballet.

My parents started teaching me classical Chinese poetry at age 3. I always wanted to play alone; I had a very active imagination.
When my mother saw what I was like, she bought me a library card at age 12, and I read so much. One thing I read was “Dream of the Red Mansion,” the famous 17thcentury Chinese novel. By 15, I was being published in a literary magazine, Young Poets.
At the age of 18, without any acting experience, I auditioned for the part of Lin Daiyu, the romantic and tragic ? but spiritually pure ? heroine of that same “Dream of the Red Mansion,” which was being turned into a TV series.
The director was doubtful. But he also thought that the actress playing Lin Daiyu should be a real poet, so I got the part.
The TV version became an extremely popular show, repeated some 700 times over the last 20 years.
My next role turned out to be another character just like Lin Daiyu. I started to wonder if I was Lin Daiyun and could not really act. Apparently, so did directors, because they stopped hiring me. I went through a lost time in my life. I had to struggle to find a new path.
In 1992, my then boyfriend, who was a photographer, and I started a small advertising agency. At the time, there were fewer than 100 agencies in the country; now there are more than 20,000. Clients looking for agencies didn’t know whom to trust. Our first client knew me from my TV role and later told me, “I know Lin Daiyu wouldn’t cheat us.”
Early on, one company manufactured medicines for old people but was almost about to go out of business. We got their account and developed a public relations campaignfor them that included a brochure we designed, showing photos of aging popular dignitaries trying the medicine. We distributed the brochures at trade shows. People thought, if it’s good enough for these well-known people, it must be good. The company revived, soon opened new markets and bought two factories.
In 1999, having realized all my financial dreams, I was still, somehow, unhappy. Then someone introduced me to the life and teaching of Sakyamuni, the Buddha. It changed my attitude about my life and my work.


Now I start each day by reading from a Buddhist scripture called Aparimitayur Sutra. In the evening, I read another sutra. During lunch at work, I take a 30-minute meditation break.
Some people ask me how I reconcile advertising, which feeds people’s desire to acquire material possessions, with Buddhism, which promotes nonattachment to the very same material things. I don’t agree that Buddhism teaches people to lead a life of deprivation. Buddha was really just simply encouraging people to create a happy world for themselves.
If we collect “things” or try to gain personal fortune for ourselves and our family, we may not find fulfillment, but we can use these same things to create greater benefit for others, and that is closer to what Buddhism is about for me.
The Chinese market is not only very large but also very complex. While consumption is strong in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guanzou, it is only just beginning to develop in other provincial capitals. To advertise in such a diverse country, we have to think on many levels at once.
China’s general public still finds it difficult to understand the concept of individualism and personal creativity. So American and European ads that sell the idea that you can gain personal enjoyment or satisfaction from a product wouldn’t work here. We place more importance on generosity and tolerance; even the younger generation does not want to show their selfishness. So we design ads that show the product in light of how it can reinforce these values
As told to Perry Garfinkel

Report about the death of Chen Xiaoxu(lin mei mei)

A death that was destined



BEIJING EXPRESS WITH CELESTE FONG

Classic video about the First glance of Linmeimei.


SHE made her name playing the character of Lin Daiyu in the 1987 CCTV series Dream of the Red Chamber. After acting as Lin for some 20 years, she endeared herself to millions of viewers as “Lin mei mei” (sister Lin).

In February this year, she made headlines when she converted to Buddhism and became a nun with the Buddhist name Mao Zhen Fa Shi. Shortly after, her husband Hao Tong shaved his head bald and also became a Buddhist monk.

Now, Chen Xiaoxu, the famous actress who was typecast as Lin Daiyu – one of the main protagonists in the Chinese classic Hong Lou Meng or The Story of the Stone – is dead.

She died aged 42 of breast cancer last Sunday, Mother's Day, in Shenzhen in South China.

In an interview about her conversion with the New York Times, she was reported as saying: “I don’t agree that Buddhism teaches people to lead a life of deprivation. Buddha was really simply encouraging people to create a happy world for themselves.”

Chen, who hailed from Anshan, Liaoning, said she had finally taken the right path in her life.

As of Friday evening, about 50% of 77,718 Netizens asked by leading web portal Sina.com on their views of her death described it as “hong yan bo ming (a beautiful girl who has (often) an unfortunate life)”.

In Dream of the Red Chamber, the sensitive Lin Daiyu dies of a broken heart after scheming relatives tricked her soulmate Jia Baoyu into marrying the calculative Xue Baochai.

It is said that when auditioning for the role, Chen told the director that she was Lin Daiyu.

A poet herself, she had written a poem on the back of her photograph to convince the director she was the most suitable candidate for the role and that she had also read and knew the novel well.

In life, the role of Lin Daiyu had turned Chen into a household name, but she had remained fixated on that role, too.

Fading from the limelight and her short-lived acting career after playing another similar role in a TV drama Family, Spring, Autumn, Chen teamed up with Hao Tong to set up an advertisement company in the 90s.

Shi Bang Advertisement Co Ltd and Shi Bang Culture Development Co Ltd made millions and the actress-turned-businesswoman was a billionaire.

But she later found that the pursuit of material wealth could not lead to happiness and that was when she turned to Buddhism. She became a student of Master Chin Kung to learn Buddha’s teachings.

The Sina.com poll shows that more than 26% believe her death was “destined” or “fated”.

Destined or not, the former celebrity had made an impact on the Chinese people and society.

Following her memorial service in Shenzhen, her family announced that they would
help fulfil her wish to set up a 50-million yuan (RM112.5mil) charity fund to help the needy.

And a large sum of her fortune has also been donated for the development of Buddhism.

After news of her death spread, many were taken aback either with shock or disbelief. More than one million messages from Netizens flooded the Sina blog of Sina.com in just a few days.

News reports said there was a 10% increase in the number of women going for breast examination in various hospitals in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang province.

One woman told a newspaper that she was scared and concerned about her own health after hearing the news of that Chen who had died of breast cancer.

Chen was diagnosed with end-stage breast cancer last June.

Beijing Television is planning to expand a segment on Chen for a live broadcast of its nationwide talent search pre-production contest for the characters of the Dream of the Red Chamber today.

Many of the semi-finalists, especially those who are competing for the role as Lin Daiyu in the new 50-episode BTV drama series, shed tears as they remembered Chen.

Written by Cao Xueqin (1715–1763), Dream of the Red Chamber is a beautifully crafted fiction about the collapse of the rich and powerful Jia family and centres on the romance between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu.

The novel affords powerful insights into how the characters, more than 400 of them, lived in 18th-century China.


Most Chinese in Beijing know the characters in the story quite well and Chen, to many, was indeed Lin Daiyu. And she will always remain as their “Lin mei mei”.

news video about her funeral: