Ying Da, producer of China's first sitcom, on the set of his new series, about a psychiatric clinic. (By Steven Mufson – The Washington Post)

Second of five articles

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 15, 1998; Page A1

BEIJING – "Five, four, three," Ying Da says in Chinese as the actors on the set of his latest television show get into character. "Yubei, kaishi," he bellows. Ready, begin.

Dressed in Dockers slacks and a T-shirt with a picture of cartoon character Betty Boop astride a motorcycle, Ying Da sits behind the set in front of a small television. He whispers into a walkie-talkie to coach the woman upstairs who is controlling the camera angles.

Within moments he jumps up to interrupt the scene. He changes the position of one of the characters. He imitates a jealous, middle-aged woman to show an actress how he wants her to play her part. He moves a plant into the window and wonders if it looks too phony. Then he's ready to begin again. He walks backstage to his chair. "Yubei, kaishi!" he calls.

The filming of the upcoming series about a fictional Beijing psychiatric clinic and the hang-ups of modern Chinese is just the latest episode in the life of actor, director and producer Ying Da, 38. The maker of China's first situation comedy and the owner of China's first independent television production studio, Ying is one of the country's few genuine celebrities. At the restaurant where he has lunch before shooting begins, the owner asks for his autograph. On the street, sidewalk diners poke one another and utter his name in wonder.

His television career shows how culture in China in the 1990s is being transformed from propaganda to entertainment, from mass mobilization to commercialization, from Red Guard to avant-garde. The stiff poses of heroic revolutionary operas of Ying's youth have given way to experimental sculptures, movies, novels and television programs that try to make people laugh, cry and maybe even think.

Archie Bunker as Cadre

Offensive to propaganda department officials who identified with the cadre, "I Love My Family" was kept off Beijing stations but flourished on provincial cable stations. Last year, it was finally broadcast on Beijing television and garnered high ratings.

Communist China's history has already taken place once as tragedy, but are Chinese audiences ready for it to be repeated as farce?

"A lot of people don't take this seriously," said Ying, whose parents were leading players in the Beijing People's Arts Theater. "They even say it's lowbrow. But that's what theater is about. It's not just for the elegant people. In this country, Shakespeare is for the well-educated. But Shakespeare wrote for everybody."

And so while his more famous contemporaries, directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, have been making tortured and serious films applauded in international film festivals, Ying has been trying something equally difficult: making Chinese people laugh at and think about the problems of Chinese society.

Ying directs an actor playing a patient with a cat phobia, instructing him on how to react to a cat's meow. (By Hilary Smith for The Washington Post)

"Ying Da is the best sitcom producer in China. He has blazed a trail for producing actual humor that's not just slapstick but is more cerebral," said Willie Brent, the Shanghai-based editor of a newsletter called China Entertainment Network.

To say that "I Love My Family" is empty is about as accurate as saying that "Seinfeld" was about nothing, or that Archie Bunker was an innocuous caricature.

"The Chinese need some things to laugh about. There have been precious few of those in the past 50 years," Brent added. "But Ying Da is also changing the way people think, really. Rather than hearing TV recount the amount of grain this or that province produced, he is producing shows that not only make you happy but make you think a little bit about families and situations in China today."

Adrift at 8

Nothing in Ying's background would have pointed toward such a wayward existence. His great-grandfather and grandfather were distinguished educators; his great-grandfather founded the renowned Furen University, a Catholic university that later moved to Taiwan. Ying literally grew up in the theater, watching his parents onstage. Foreign plays were often performed.

But the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966 put an end to that. Under the leadership of Mao and his wife, the frustrated actress Jiang Qing, foreign plays were banned and theater groups were ordered to perform productions glorifying the Chinese revolution.

It was inevitable that Ying's father, Ying Ruocheng, would be arrested, though not until 1968. His mother was arrested at the same time. At 8, Ying Da drifted from relative to relative for meals and fell in with a gang of older kids who taught him to steal, fight and survive.

Jiang Wen's movie version of the group differed from most other films about the Cultural Revolution in that it portrayed the kids' life as fun. The parents were gone, school was out, and the kids were in charge.

"For almost four years, I led a Huckleberry Finn life," said Ying. "That was a treasure."

Not all of it was harmless, though. One classmate died in a gang fight. "It wasn't just playing around," Ying's father recalled. "It was serious."

"As a rule in stable societies, children are brought up according to certain precepts, moral codes, aesthetics," said Ying Ruocheng, as he sat in his spacious Beijing apartment surrounded by calligraphy done by the famous playwright Lao She and by leading Chinese educators from his grandfather's generation.

"It is something drilled into them by their parents and elders. I found my son and a lot of his friends missed that. So we have something rather unprecedented in China: a whole generation of people with no taboos."

Ying Da said, "That time really made me understand what life is, and it made me strong. If I can go through that, there is no trouble or pressure that I cannot stand."