Hi, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling shares her thoughts,
knowledge and occasional weird ideas
on stories and how they're told.
For my longtime viewer
you probably still remember there was a series
of videos on specific actors or actresses,
and it has been quite a long time since I made my last video in that series,
due to the extreme volatile situation
of chinese entertainment business last year.
It may come back one day,
but right now i'm putting it on hold
in case I jinx people
basically
still today I wanna make a video not on a specific drama,
but on actors and actresses about the really interesting
varieties of backgrounds
before they become actors and actresses.
As i'm recording this video,
I realized it's getting wait too long,
so l may cut it into two and and put into part one and part two.
This is the part one of this video.
We will start with actors and actresses who have background in sports.
Cause right now it's winter olympics
cannot be more fitting
in my specific video about the actor ren jia lun Allen Ren
I did talk about he was a table tennis professional player
before he became an actor
that probably would be the first person comes to your mind.
If you watch mostly young audience oriented dramas,
there are two middle age range actresses both
coming from national level team previously.
One is actress.
Zuo Xiaoqing
If you've watched last years Shang Yang Fu
or an earlier well received drama.
Zhan Chang Sha, The Battle of Chang Sha
where she plays the sister of Yang Zi
She used to belong to the national team of chinese rhythmic gymnastics,
but she didn't come to the top of the team
and decided to go on the acting route.
Then the other actress is Tao Hong
very active in drama, in film,
married to Xu Zheng
Tao Hong used to be a member of the national team
of chinese artistic swimming,
a tough sports and in water.
Isn't that interesting that she got famous
by playing a role in the television series
who is the mythological ocean ruler's daughter
There's an even older and still active today,
rather handsome looking actor Wu Bing who probably for
my audience is the most familiar role for you would be
his iteration of Zhao Liying's father in The Legend of Fei
There was a time that he was super popular in china,
when he was much younger,
he has a very colorful portfolio
before he got into acting.
He was a rowing athlete.
Also, he was a professional model for quite a long time
and it's not hard to see why he's a professional model
with that chisel look at the height and proportion.
Everything is just perfect for being a model
talking about models.
Actually there are many many chinese actress
actors working today who come from modeling.
And this is a huge category
not gonna mention every name I know
some best known people working today.
For example, Hu Yitian
for example, Xu Kai, for example,
Gong Jun
apart from sports and modeling,
there's another category of backgrounds for actors and actresses that probably
consists of the most amount of people
we're gonna mention today plus in reality,
if you look at the successful well known actor actress of all age range,
7/8 out of ten have training in this type of background.
That will be the art of music and dance,
particularly in dance.
First, let's talk about music.
I'm gonna talk about three people that are all very well known to my audiences.
I'm sure of that
starting with the oldest among them.
Huang Xuan,
he probably should be categorized as having
the dance background before going into acting,
but he did graduate from the musical major.
When he was younger,
he learned dancing professionally for many years in his middle school.
He actually went to a professional dance school in Guangdong,
then he got to beijing and got enrolled in Bei Wu 北舞
We're gonna talk about this school later.
It's one of the most prominent dancing school in china
and the major of his in that school is musical,
so he can sing, he can dance,
he can sing and dance.
Although if you look at all the films and televisions he's done
for his roles
he hardly ever needs to do singing and dancing.
The years of physical training still shows through,
particularly when he starts fighting,
we see that very recently in the drama Luo Yang
It is my honest dream and probably for a lot of people
who loves his performance that one day
he will be able to lead a drama or a film that is a musical
that will allow us to enjoy his full range of talent of singing and dancing.
The other person who also graduated from a
musical major from a major university is
"bie ren jia de hai zi " Zhang Xincheng
the type of good students your parents always compare you to
look at him
why can't you be as good as
neighour's kid
he does so well in all kinds of schools he is enrolled in.
That's why people call him Xue Ba or Bie Ren Jia de Hai Zi
graduated from the musical major from Zhong Xi (中戏）
central academy of drama,
which is one of the two most prominent acting academy in beijing.
He is very skilled at piano playing.
He can dance very, very well.
He can perform a level of gymnastics,
literally on stage
when he tried to get enrolled in the universities.
And that year he killed all the exams as number one
for Beijing Film Academy who was number one.
In the exam to get into the acting major
for Central Academy of Drama.
He was number 1 for
Both majors, acting and musical
for Shang Xi
the Shanghai Theater Academy.
He also was number one in the exam of musical major
and he picked Central Academy's musical major,
the kind of too good to be true.
Good student,
his english is also pretty fluent
considering that he never actually got educated overseas
and he has expressed his huge interest and dream of Broadway.
He even said,
if one day he could be a professional Broadway performer,
he would give up everything in acting in china
because that's his real dream
but who knows?
you know He's still very, very young.
Maybe one day he can make his dream come true
oh and he's super good at line delivery, too
One of the best of his age range,
then we have to talk about Bai Jingting
who got really popular recently due to the blow up drama Rest
where he played a blown up character multiple times,
I think also most of my audiences would be very familiar
with this actor.
He's actually not that young,
but then he appears to be super young.
He started to learn piano very early on and got qualified
for all kinds of level tests that exist in china.
He got enrolled in.
Shou Du Shi Fan Da Xue
which is the Captia Normal University
Normal meaning teaching
that comes from French.
His major was actually
sound recording.
But after he graduated,
we all know what happened.
He went on a very interesting career route,
singing, performing
slightly, idolhood like
but then not really getting down that route
and then go into acting.
He has his own channel on bilibili which he really works
as a real content creator instead of a celebrity just
open an account for no good reason
and he's one of those no bullshit,
very straightforward person,
very unusual actor.
and I'm very happy that he finally got noticed this year
by a much wider public due to the success of Reset.
Wouldn't it be cool?
If ZXC/BJT/HX can end up in the musical together?
would be like
Dream come true.
We've talked about music.
Now let's talk about dance,
which is if you single it out,
the largest categories of actors and actresses
background in china working today.
And it's no wonder
because when you have the good training in dance, first,
you probably have taken a huge part of the course of acting out
the physical things, the movement, the posture
the possibilities of your body.
And I think even if you're new to chinese dramaland
you probably have heard about quite a few,
very famous people these days
who come from a dancing background.
There are two major dancing schools in Beijing that have produced
most of the famous dancing background actors and actresses.
First i'm gonna mention two people who are not from those schools,
but also from dancing background.
Number one is the incredible actress Zhou Xun
one of the most talented actress of her
generation or even among multiple generations.
My personal goddess of acting of chinese drama land slash film,
she never actually got trained in an acting school.
Her middle high school training was actually done in a
Zhe Jiang based dancing school where she is majored in
folk Chinese dance before she got discovered as a genius of
acting and started to show up in films and televisionseries
and dancing is where she started her career.
The other person is the very well known very popular actor today
Luo Yunxi who's from Shang Xi, Shanghai Theatre Academy
he majored in Ballet
There's still videos online that you can find when
he was younger and doing stage performances.
He also was a teacher of dancing before he become
an actor and you can tell dancing is so helpful.
For his stage appearance and his ability to do a lot of fighting on wire.
Probably the highest claimed great at wire work
young actors today in china and he had to thank
his years of training in dancing for that.
Then let's go to Beijing and look at the two major
schools that have produced so many huge names.
The first school is Jun Yi, short version that chinese people like to use
the full title of this school is very, very, very long.
So that is the college of military culture of pla defense university
and often for a big drama.
For example, Hong Lou Meng (2010)
when they were looking for young actors,
they would go to this school and got all all the
suitable age young people out and look at them.
One by one have their name written and their age and hold that
and take a photo and then go select the actress and actors
and it happens very often in Jun Yi and Bei Wu
these two schools,
Beijing Dance Academy, Bei Wu
and military culture, defense university, Jun Yi
Now let me tell you how many familiar names
you're gonna hear from these two schools.
First from Jun Yi, we have Yang Yang
You already know,
I think my audience all know
He comes from a dance background,
and he was one of the best dancers of his Year.
I still clearly remembers the assistant director talking about
how much work they put in to convince him to go and act in Hong Lou Meng
kind of change his career path.
Before that,
he was definitely one of the highest hoped contestant
for the highest level of dance competition in china.
But apart from Yang Yang coming from Jun Yi
there are actually many other people who graduated from Jun Yi
For example,
Dong Jie, also from a dance major
and then from other majors of this school.
So it has multiple majors, you have shy e.
Sha Yi, Yin Tao, Yan Ni, Plus Xu Lu
She also was selected from the school to the Hong Lou Meng drama of 2010.
And there are many many more names
if you really wanna look at the stars graduated from this school,
the list goes on and on and on,
then to Bei Wu, Beijing Dance Academy
the other crazy school that has produced so
many famous dancers and actors and actresses.
For example, Jin Chen major in folk dance.
We also have Song Qian
who also majored in folk dance before she
decided to go on her journey of becoming an idol
and later an actress.
And she's the type of naturally talented,
but also very hard working dancer.
When she first got selected and go to dancing,
she only went because her family discovered she can naturally
just pull her leg up to here and without any effort and pain,
other people struggle and can't get there.
And she's like, it's nothing.
So they were like
since you are so talented,
go and learn dancing.
And then that started her career
also majored in minzu.
Folk dance is the actress Zhang Huiwen
and for the second Nirvana in Fire drama's,
extra feature videos that's still online.
You can see her and Liu Haoran joking about each other's
dancing background and dance off on set.
Also the very pretty actress Wang Peng
that I have a lot of hope for her
to become more and more well known in the future.
She also graduated from thus school
and her major was classic chinese dance
I'm guessing a lot of people didn't know that
well now you know
and these are just a couple of names that i've selected
that I think most of my audiences are familiar with.
There are actually many more many more actors actresses from these two schools.
So dancing definitely makes up the biggest category of actor and
actresses background before they get into acting in dramaland.
This is the end of the part one of this video and there's more coming.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
i'll see you in my next video
meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.