Tian Han

Tian Han the Chinese playwright and poet (1898-1968) who was the principal author of the lyrics of the March of the Volunteers, the national anthem of the People's Republic. A prolific dramatist and a founder of the modern Chinese spoken drama, he was one of the central figures of twentieth-century Chinese theatre and film.

Early Life and Study in Japan

Tian Han was born Tian Shouchang on 12 March 1898 in Changsha, in Hunan province, into a poor peasant family. He was a talented boy who attracted the support of relatives, and he studied in Japan from 1916, first in Tokyo, where his interests moved from education to art. He observed the modern Japanese theatre and was inspired to create something similar at home. He returned to China in the early 1920s and became active in the new literary movement, writing plays, poems and criticism.

He was one of the creators of the Chinese spoken drama, a modern form using ordinary speech and raised stages, and he worked to establish it against the older tradition of sung opera. He founded drama societies and journals, translated foreign plays and directed and acted as well as wrote. His energy and range made him the leading figure in the theatrical life of the cities, and he was associated with the left-wing writers who gathered around the revolutionary cause.

The Spoken Drama and His Plays

Tian Han wrote dozens of plays across several decades, and he is remembered for his mastery of the one-act form and for his sympathetic portraits of ordinary and marginal people. His early works deal with the lives of actors, artists and poor women, and they combine sentiment with social criticism. Among his best-known plays are The Night in a Coffee House, Return to the South and The Death of a Famous Actor, all written before the war, works that show his feeling for the stage and his gift for dialogue.

He wrote about love, poverty, art and the conflict between the individual and a repressive society. His stagecraft was sure, and he knew how to build a scene and how to end it, so that his plays continued to be revived long after his death. During the 1930s he worked in the film industry and wrote many screenplays, helping to launch the golden age of Chinese cinema. He was a prolific and generous collaborator, and his scripts, like his plays, won an audience through their warmth and their human truth.

The March of the Volunteers

In 1934 Tian Han wrote the lyrics that would become the national anthem of China. Set to music by his fellow artist Nie Er for the film Children of Troubled Times, released in 1935, the March of the Volunteers calls on the people to rise and defend their land and was soon sung throughout the country as a song of resistance. The circumstances of its creation were difficult. Tian Han was arrested in early 1935 shortly after writing the verses, and the melody was completed and the song performed while he was in prison.

It spread rapidly during the war against Japan and became the rallying anthem of the national struggle. In 1949 it was adopted as the national anthem of the People's Republic. Its words speak of danger and of the determination to resist, and it remains one of the most widely known songs in the world. The achievement has often overshadowed Tian Han's large output of drama, though it belongs properly among his many contributions.

Theatre Administration and Opera Reform

After 1949 Tian Han held senior positions in the cultural administration, including leadership of the theatre and drama organisations, and he worked to reform and modernise Chinese opera. He wrote new libretti for traditional operas and sought to give the classical repertoire a form acceptable to modern audiences. He was deeply involved in the revival and reworking of the Kunqu and other operatic traditions, and he supported the training of a new generation of performers.

His own dramatic writing continued, and he produced historical plays that drew on the past to speak of courage and integrity. He argued that the old operas contained much that was beautiful and worth preserving, and he worked patiently to adapt them rather than to discard them. He was a man of generous and democratic temper, valued by actors and writers for his warmth and his readiness to help. His home was a gathering place for artists, and he used his influence to protect and encourage them as far as he could.

Last Years and Legacy

Tian Han's career ended in tragedy during the Cultural Revolution. He was denounced and imprisoned in 1966, and he died in custody on 10 December 1968, at the age of seventy, a victim of the political campaigns of the time. For years his name was not mentioned, and even the national anthem was performed in silence. He was rehabilitated after 1978, and the lyrics of the March of the Volunteers were restored to the anthem.

His plays were revived and his role in the creation of the national song publicly acknowledged, and memorials and prizes were established in his honour. He is remembered as the father of modern Chinese spoken drama and as the author of the words of the national anthem. Through a huge body of plays, films and songs he helped to create a modern Chinese theatre, and his name remains inseparable from the song that his country sings.

See also

• March of the Volunteers
• Chinese spoken drama
• Children of Troubled Times
• Chinese national anthem