Cross-talk fans across China were mourning the loss of legendary xiangsheng actor Hou Yaowen, who passed away on Saturday aged 59. Hou died of heart attack at 6:30 pm at his home in northern Beijing.

The former vice-chairman of the Chinese Ballad Singers Association and the deputy director and arts supervisor of the China Railway Art Troupe was the third son of Hou Baolin (1917-93), one of the best-known exponents of xiangsheng, a comic performance routine featuring two or more players.

Chang Xianglin, art critic and a close friend of Hou, remarked in The Beijing News that Hou was one of four pillars of xiangsheng together with famous performers Jiang Kun, Feng Gong and Li Jindou.

"Hou was the most important driving force in xiangsheng's development," Chang said.

In recent years, Hou had lured many rising xiangsheng stars to his China Railway Art Troupe, where he insisted performers sharpen all four basic skills of xiangsheng: talking (shuo), imitating (xue), cracking jokes (dou) and singing (chang).

"Hou once said many people regarded xiangsheng only as a show, or a handy step towards political gains. But he had always treated xiangsheng as his career, his very own life," Chang said.

Over the past five years, five xiangsheng masters had already passed away: Gao Yingpei, Ma Sanli, Guo Quanbao, Ma Ji and Zhao Shizhong.

A crosstalk fan, nicknamed "Shoelace", wrote that the xiangsheng circle without the masters had become scattered without a "commander".

"At a time when most people pursued immediate economic gains, and the weight of money increased in the xiangsheng circle, Hou remained single-minded in developing the folk art," he remarked.

Beijing-born Hou was one of five children. His elder brother Hou Yaohua has also been a famous comedian on television. Their father Hou Baolin only had three months of schooling and insisted that the children study hard before learning xiangsheng.

Young Hou loved xiangsheng and all the other folk arts and when his father's friends visited, the boy would sit on a stool outside the door and eavesdrop on the guests telling stories and sharing their techniques.

Hou first appeared on stage in 1960 as a 12-year-old boy and over the next 47 years had become a master of the art.

He created new comical mini-dramas, such as A Day of a Hero's Mother (1989, with Zhao Lirong) and Playing Poker (1994, with Huang Hong). These programs were instant hits on China Central Television's gala show on the eve of the Spring Festival.

Wei Yuancheng and Zhao Weiming are the last disciples of Hou. The two actors in Xi'an of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province met Hou in 1998, but didn't go through the traditional ceremonies to become Hou's formal disciples until last July.

They found their teacher very amiable and even "like a big kid", bringing happiness to everyone present.

In 2005, when Hou was 57, he became dissatisfied with the appearance of his eyes and underwent a double-fold eyelid operation. "My father told me, a good actor must let the audience see his eyes on the stage," he said at the time. "An actor expresses himself through his eyes. Sometimes, a look is more powerful than a move."

Hou was to celebrate his 60th birthday on July 17 with a special performance with his friends and more than 20 disciples in Inner Mongolia.

（China Daily） 

（英语点津陈蓓编辑）