Time Out Heroes Beijing - Theatre, Classical music & Writers

To celebrate 40 years of Time Out worldwide, we invited 40 of our heroes to a party.We gave our literary and classical music heroes champagne, told them to be themselves and sat back as they did their thing. This is what happened.

We’ve possibly never met anyone more passionate about classical music than classical producer and promoter Su Lihua. Su became hooked when he heard Bach’s ‘Goldenberg Variations’ during the 1970s, and after begging his mother for 37RMB to buy a violin, he taught himself an impressive repertoire, and English, so that he could read violin studies.

Though he became an excellent violinist, he was rejected from the Central Conservatory of Music for failing a political module. He began focusing on other talents and building a music collection which now numbers over 16,000 CDs. He has since brought a number of top talents to the world’s attention, including 15-year-old pianist-composer Peng Peng Gong, who has been dubbed ‘Asia’s Mozart’.

In 2004, he paid his own money to release 12 CDs of undiscovered classical artists including violinist Ning Feng, who has since won the prestigious international Paganini Competition. He’s now working with Polo Arts, the only company releasing classical music in China, and is obsessed with making classical music accessible to normal people.

‘My dream,’ he says, ‘is that one day they’ll have something like the Edinburgh Festival in China.’ 

Su’s hero: Yu Long, director of the Beijing Music Festival.

Experimental director
Meng Jinghui

Director and playwright Meng Jinghui is the enfant terrible of Chinese theatre, having upset the traditional theatrical apple cart with his daringly experimental productions.

Whether putting on productions like ‘Waiting for Godot’ or writing and directing controversial plays such as ‘Si Fan’ and ‘I Love XXX’, Meng’s consistently excellent productions are unforgetable and usually marked by elaborate sets, bright lights and pumping music. 

Meng’s hero: I have no idea.

Viola champion
Su Zhen

Su Zhen is not only a supremely talented viola player, but a passionate promoter of the instrument and young Chinese musicians. After winning an international competition to study at London’s Royal Academy of Music, she came back to Beijing at 22 to become the youngest ever professor at the Central Conservatory of Music.

As well as being involved in too many musical projects to mention, she offers free auditions to young musicians, and has helped over 60 to study abroad. ‘Some of them have done so well that they now have agents,’ she says. ‘I’m so proud of them.’
Su’s hero: Sir Curtis Price, the recently retired principal of the Royal Academy of Music. He’s the kind of multi-faceted hero I most admire.

Quiet man made famous
Lu Jiamin  

Better know by his pseudonym Jiang Rong, Lu Jiamin is the author of Wolf Totem, one of the most successful and talked-about novels ever to come out of China and one that has been read by an estimated eight million people on the Mainland alone.

The phenomenon of the book about Mongolian nomads living among wolves on the steppe was if anything fuelled by Lu being completely anonymous until 2006, two years after the book’s publication; he was only outed when Wolf Totem won the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize, and has largely refused to do any publicity since [hence we feel very privileged].

The book is semi-autobiographical, and Lu first came up with the idea when he was sent to the Inner Mongolian countryside in 1971; he probably never dreamed the idea would spawn 17 translations (Penguin paid US$100,000 for the rights), a film, a manga cartoon and a number of fraudulent sequels.

Lu’s hero: Writers like Tolstoy and Michail Sholokhov 

Sex and socialism
Zhang Lijia 

The up-and-coming Chinese writer on our list, Beijing-based Zhang Lijia reminded us that there’s still life in the China memoir. Socialism Is Great!, about love, student politics and working in a missile factory as a teenager, manages to be one part chick-lit and two parts an excellent exploration of modern China. We like her balls-iness, and we like her writing; a definite one to watch. 

Zhang’s hero: Jane Eyre, the character in Charlotte Bronte’s master piece, because I identify with this plain-looking woman; beneath her unremarkable looks she is courageous and full of spirit.