Zhao Dan

Biography

Zhao Dan (1915-1980), originally named Zhao Feng'ao, was a pioneering Chinese film actor and director. Born in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province in 1915, his father was a battalion commander in the Beiyang warlord army and his mother was a renowned beauty in Yangzhou. His family moved to Nantong when he was two, where his father opened a cinema. He studied Chinese painting at the Shanghai College of Fine Arts in 1931. He began his acting career in 1932 in theater and film, joining the Mingxing Film Company and quickly becoming a star. He married Ye Luxi in 1936 and had two children with her. During the War of Resistance against Japan, he joined the National Salvation Acting Troupe and later traveled to Xinjiang, where he founded an experimental theater troupe. He was arrested in 1939 in the Du Zhongyuan case and spent years in prison, while his first wife presumed him dead. After his release in 1944 and return to Shanghai, he married actress Huang Zongying in 1947. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he was elected as a representative to the National People's Congress and joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1957. He was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, arrested in 1967, and subjected to severe physical and psychological torture in prison. He served as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 1978. He died in 1980 in Beijing from pancreatic cancer, leaving behind a famous testament about artistic freedom.