In good news for history buffs and culture lovers, the second season of Century Masters, a large-scale docuseries featuring the legacy of 20th-century Chinese artists, is now translated into several foreign languages and will be available online starting Friday.
With a total of five episodes, each about 52 minutes long, the stories of five outstanding figures – including painter Li Kuchan, Peking Opera artist Shang Xiaoyun, and painters Guan Shanyue, Wu Guanzhong and Huang Zhou, are told to a much broader audience outside the Chinese-speaking world.
The content will stream on new media platforms, such as Xuexi.cn, Tencent Video, iQiyi, Sohu TV and so on, accessible in English, French, Russian, Spanish and Arabic.
Li Kuchan was a renowned Chinese painter, calligrapher and art educator who specialized in free-stroke brush paintings. Born into a poor peasant family in East China's Shandong province, Li had to work really hard to pay for art school in Beijing.
In 1923, he began to study under Qi Baishi (1864-1957), one of the most renowned contemporary Chinese painters. Later on, Li created a unique kind of bird-and-flower painting using the free and spontaneous "xieyi" style (freehand brushwork used in traditional Chinese painting).
The early 1900s are widely considered the golden age of Peking Opera. The four artists, Mei Lanfang, Cheng Yanqiu, Shang Xiaoyun and Xun Huisheng, are widely known as the Four Great Dan of Peking Opera.
Shang Xiaoyun's style was known as "bang", the Chinese term for "bravo". Shang started his opera journey as a martial arts character and his performance style was powerful. He was particularly adept at portraying brave and heroic women characters.
