Mao Weihui

Mao Weihui

Mao Weihui, a Chinese American pianist and granddaughter of Mao Yisheng, was born in Shanghai. In 1978, he took part in the film from slave to general. He was once the actor of xiaojuanzi in the movie "Bashan night rain" and the winner of the best supporting actress of the first Golden Rooster Award in China. At the age of 16, he went to the United States to study, and eventually received a doctorate from the University of Southern California. The little girl on the screen at that time has become a world-renowned pianist.

Personal resume

Female, famous pianist, former child star, granddaughter of Chinese Bridge expert Mao Yisheng. Influenced by his parents, he was fond of literature and art. He won the prize for Performing Bach and Mozart's piano solos in children's concerts held by Shanghai Music Association.

From kindergarten to the second grade of primary school, she took part in shooting a movie every year, including from slave to general, when the mountain is full of red leaves, Bashan night rain, and peerless concubine. In particular, in Bashan night rain, she played the role of xiaojuanzi, the daughter of poet Qiushi, a pair of smart big eyes and rich inner activities, which made a woman who was suffering a lot Looking for her father's child's soul, she expressed it accurately and vividly. With this exquisite performance, she won the best supporting actress award of the Golden Rooster Award of Chinese film.

Life of the characters

"I am a dandelion seed, no one knows my happiness and sadness..." More than 20 years ago, the movie "Ba Shan Ye Yu" caused countless cinemas to burst, moved countless Chinese people, and made everyone remember the girl "Xiao Juan Zi" - Mao Wei Hui, who has big eyes.

Now, the 6-year-old girl is a famous pianist in the United States and a professor at the University of Southern California. In front of her, Mao Weihui is dressed in black, with a pair of big eyes full of spirituality and the brightness of the artist Years and music make the famous child stars of the 1980s mature, elegant and grand.

Mao Weihui is the granddaughter of Mao Yisheng, the father of Chinese Bridge. Her father is a violinist and her mother is a piano teacher. She learned to play the violin when she was three years old, and then changed to piano.

"When I was five years old, Cao Weiye, the photographer of the movie from slave to general, came to my neighbor's house and saw my picture under the glass plate of my desk. He found that Zhang Jinling and I had the same big eyes, so he proposed to my parents that I should play a role in the movie, and they agreed." Mao Weihui's first role is the child in her parents' arms. As long as she cries, she doesn't have a single line, but many staff members remember the little girl with big eyes.

A year later, director Wu Yigong found Mao Weihui and hoped that she would play a little girl in the new film, which is Bashan Yeyu. Mao Weihui expressed a child who lived a hard life and was looking for her father alone in a rich and touching way. Therefore, she won the best supporting actress award of the first Chinese film "Golden Rooster Award". Over the years, fans still don't forget "xiaojuanzi" of that year: "every time I perform in China, there are always old audiences who come to ask me to sign their names. What they are holding is not my program album or record, but my photos in popular film and the posters and calendar of" Ba Shan Ye Yu "of that year. Once, when I finished my performance, a 6-year-old kid came to sign his name with popular film, saying that his mother had asked him to come. " Mao Weihui was so excited that she didn't know what to say.

"Rain at night on Bashan mountain" has become Mao Weihui's happy memory. CCTV's "golden years" once made a special program of "rain at night on Bashan mountain". Mao Weihui was invited to attend and met Li Zhiyu, Zhang Yu, Ouyang Ruqiu, etc., whom she had not seen for many years. In the film, Mao Weihui and Li Zhiyu play a father and daughter. Because of the special fate of "Ba Shan Ye Yu", she has always been called Li Zhiyu's father, and every time she returns home, she has to contact "father".

Now speaking of her childhood experience, Mao Weihui thinks it's a very interesting episode in her life, laying a solid foundation for her to perform without stage fright in the future.

Piano career

For Mao Weihui, her film career is destined to be just an episode in her life. In 1983, Mao Weihui emerged from more than 100 children enrolled in Shanghai Conservatory of music primary school and became one of the 10 lucky ones. On the day of the school newspaper, the teacher said to her seriously, "you can't make movies in the future, because frequent location shooting will delay your study." In this way, Mao Weihui's childhood movie "little star" experience came to an abrupt end.

"Since I was a child, I thought I should be a pianist. Making movies is just a hobby." Since she was 4 years old, she had to practice piano for 4 hours every day. After she got into Shangyin primary school, her time of practicing piano increased to 8 hours - there are only two days in a year that she can not practice piano, that is her birthday and the first day of the Lunar New Year. Even in the two months of shooting "Ba Shan Ye Yu", Mao Weihui was accompanied by her mother as a piano teacher. She used white cardboard to cut out a "paper piano" with four octaves for her daughter to practice fingering. It was during the Three Gorges period that Mao Weihui developed the habit of reading music scores, which is still the case today.

Mao Weihui said that when she was a child, she just could sit still and didn't hate the piano, but she didn't like it. Until she was 14 years old, a special performance made her really fall in love with piano. In 1988, Mao Weihui, as a popular movie star, gave her first performance with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the famous Japanese conductor Fangyi Jiafu village. Her repertoire is Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. This is very valuable for a 14-year-old girl. "This is a turning point in my career. The band's fit and the audience's resonance made me feel the joy of success for the first time." Mao Weihui said with pride.

Since then, she is not only a famous child star who won the Golden Rooster Award for best supporting actress, but also regarded as a talented young piano player.

In order to pursue the development of piano playing career, 16-year-old Mao Weihui went to the United States to study. Her family deliberately refused to remit money to her and asked her to learn to grow up on her own. She is no longer a popular child star, no longer a beloved Princess. At first, like all foreign students, she went to the restaurant to serve dishes at weekends to earn living expenses. She got a full scholarship every year and eventually got a doctorate from the University of Southern California. Since 2002, she has been teaching in the Piano Department of the University of Southern California.

While constantly winning international awards, Mao Weihui holds nearly 60 concerts in Europe, America and Asia every year and cooperates with many world-class famous orchestras. Based on her nature of loving music, her hard study of skills, her deep understanding of eastern and Western culture and art, and her accumulated experience of drama performance in making movies in her childhood, her dramatic and lyrical performance in piano performance has been widely praised by audiences and music critics all over the world. American critics praised her performance as "rekindling the brilliance of piano skills in the romantic period" and "elevating any work to the peak". In 1999, Mao Weihui was listed among the few Steinway artists in the world. It is a rare honor for a young pianist.

Now, Mao Weihui's first album "romance without words" has also been published, which is the crystallization of her years of hard work, and even has great ingenuity in music selection: it is not known to people, but also easy to accept, showing her unique personality. The inscription on the cover of the album was carefully designed by her father with a brush. Mao Weihui was deeply moved by this.

Related information

Mao Weihui said that she has often returned to China to perform in recent years. With the development of China's economy, China has been in line with the world. Chinese ordinary people's choice of music is diversifying, from not understanding to understanding classical music, from never understanding to being familiar with it. For ordinary people, listening to concerts is no longer a luxury enjoyment.

What shocked Mao Weihui most is that no matter which city she went to in China, there are many parents and children who are keen on piano learning, which is unprecedented in other parts of the world. Mao Weihui said that although not many of these children will be engaged in music work in the future, they will benefit all their lives by learning to play the piano to achieve their understanding and perception of music and being well influenced by art.

"Through the concert, I felt the moving and happiness of the domestic audience when listening to music. I and other foreign pianists believe that classical music has the most market potential in China. " Speaking of the development of Chinese musicians overseas, Mao Weihui, as a professor, is very proud: "in the world-famous music competitions, I find that many contestants have invisible pressure when they see the names of Oriental people. On the one hand, this is due to the achievements of the Oriental people's hard work; on the other hand, the Oriental people's subtle and delicate cultural background is very helpful in understanding music.

Mao Weihui hoped that the Chinese people would make greater progress in composing music and make some progress.

"After all, the number of composers is an important indicator of a country's position in classical music." Mao Weihui said meaningfully.

Chinese PinYin : Mao Wei Hui