On the evening of December 24, the large original modern drama entitled "Mr.Jiang Longji :From Peking University to Lanzhou University" was performed at the central auditorium of the Students’ Center of the Base Campus of Lanzhou University (the LZU). There are over 1000 people who watched the performance, including party secretary Wang Hansong, deputy party secretary Guo Qi and vice president Cao Hong from departments and sections of the university and members of the middle party and administrative units of the university, Jiang Yiman, Jiang Yanni, Jiang Zhao and Jiang Zhixue, relatives of Comrade Jiang Longji, Wang Ge and Wang Zuoren, authors of The Last Fourteen Years of Jiang Longji and representatives of the students and retired and in-service staff and teachers.
The modern drama was performed to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the birthday of comrade Jiang Longji, an outstanding Communist Party member, renowned educator and former president of the LZU. It contains 11 plays and involves various multimedia elements of music, performance and poetry reading. It demonstrates the last fourteen years of comrade Jiang Longji’s work duration, vividly revealing his transfer from the Peking University to the LZU, his educational ideology and family life.
According to Wang Xiaojun, the screenwriter and general director of that modern drama, a national level screenwriter and director of the Art Committee of the Gansu Provincial Theatre, the significance of the drama in reality is that the party and the people is in need of leading cadres with probity and self-discipline under the context of the national anti-corruption efforts and that the contemporary intellectuals are in pursuit of the national identity of truth and dream to strengthen their mind.
At the end of the modern drama, Jiang Yiman, the daughter of Mr. Jiang Longji, told the journalists that she thought the actors did a great job with the performance and handled the details properly as a group of people who did not experience under that historical era. She said: “It is of great significance in educating the students of the LZU to inherit the LZU spirits.”
Xia Baihe, a student who is in responsible of the choreography of that modern drama, said: “I knew little about President Jiang Longji before. With an in-depth understanding of the script, I became aware of the great contributions made by President Jiang for the LZU and knew that he was a respectable person.”
It is reported that 107 cast and crew were involved in the creation and performance of the drama. The actors were recruited from the university and most of them were from the students’ modern drama troupe and other troupes of the LZU. The recruited students prepared the performance for two months, studying the script and modifying the rehearsals. Teachers and students from the LZU devoted efforts to the creation of the script, recruiting of the actors and rehearsals of the repertoire, paying tribute and respect to President Jiang Longji.
(Translated by Wei Xianchao; proofread by Sissi Xu)
