Wu Guohua
Lineage & School of Heritage
She was born into a family of opera artists: her father Hao Tongsheng, her mother Wu Wanzhi and her paternal aunt Hao Pinzhi were all celebrated performers of Shangdang Bangzi.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Female, Han ethnicity, born in October 1959 in Gaoping County, Shanxi Province. She is a National First-Class Actor and an expert receiving the special government allowance of the State Council. Raised in an artistic household, she was admitted in 1973 to the Southeast Shanxi Opera School, where she specialised in the qingyi and xiaodan role types. In 1982 she joined the Jincheng Shangdang Bangzi Troupe, where she has worked ever since; her husband Zhang Baoping is likewise a celebrated xusheng performer of Shangdang Bangzi. She has inherited and carried forward the art of Shangdang Bangzi: her singing is tender and melodious yet vigorous, her acting finely detailed, and her characterisations penetrating. Her representative works include Jie Liang (Borrowing Grain), Sha Xi (Killing Xi), Sha Miao (Killing at the Temple), Xun Fu (Searching for Her Husband), Famen Temple, Sanguan Paiyan (The Banquet at Sanguan) and Chu Ding Zhongyuan (First Pacification of the Central Plains).
Honors & Recognition
National representative bearer of Shangdang Bangzi, a third-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. Through long experience on the stage she has come to feel deeply the importance of training successors; several dozen young performers she has coached have mostly become core members of their companies, and in recent years she has taken an active part in programmes that bring intangible cultural heritage into schools.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Shangdangbangzi Ⅳ-21
- Shangdangbangzi Ⅳ-21
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。