Yang Li-hua

Yang Li-hua is a Taiwanese opera performer.

During her career, she performed in nearly 170 productions on TTV.

Unusually for Chinese opera, she played a wide variety of male roles.

Yang was born in Yuanshan, Yilan County, into a family with a theatrical background; her grandfather was the organiser of an amateur "peikuan" orchestra group, and her mother, Hsiao Chang-sou, was a male role-player with a Taiwanese opera group in Yilan County.

During her childhood, Yang often accompanied her mother on tour, exposing her to Taiwanese opera from an early age.

Yang began to play walk-on roles when she was four years old.

At the age of seven, she played the lead in a play called An-An Chases Chickens《安安趕雞》.

After starting school, Yang visited her parents on tour regularly.

Eventually, after visiting her parents during a vacation, she refused to return to school, and despite opposition from her parents, she stayed to study Taiwanese opera under a strict regimen from her mother, practising proper ways of walking across the stage, conditioning by stretching muscles in her legs, basic martial arts movements, and singing.

She began performing in the 1950s, when Taiwanese opera was being performed in theaters rather than outdoors as traditional.

Later, with the rising popularity of Taiwanese-language movies, many opera theaters were converted into movie theaters; the family fell on hard times and it was left to Yang as the eldest daughter to support her family.

Yang made her starring debut at age 16 in the opera Lu Wen-long《陸文龍》.

Her performances received public acclaim, and she was recruited by the Sai Chin Pao opera troupe, later being promoted alongside Hsiao Ming-ming (小明明), Hsiao Feng-hsien (小鳳仙), and other popular opera singers as the troupe's "Seven Immortals" (七仙女).

The group was invited by the Chinese expatriate community in the Philippines to perform in Manila, and they went on a six-month tour of the Philippines.

Yang earned enough money to buy a house for her parents, the first they had ever owned, and developed a southeast Asian fan base.

By 1962, the development of the domestic TV and movie industries had reduced the number of theatrical groups in Taiwan from around 200 down to 30.

Yang's group disbanded in 1964, and she spent a year in her home village unemployed, before joining the Tien Ma Group in 1965, which became the watershed of Yang's career.

In an attempt to revive the genre, some radio shows again began highlighting Taiwanese opera, and performances by the Tien Ma Group were broadcast live throughout the island.

Yang became a popular radio performer, with hits such as Xue Dingshan《薛丁山》.

The lack of audience gave Yang experience of performing multiple characters at the same time, as radio stations attempted to economise.

However, performing in falsetto was hard on Yang, who had previously always pushed her voice low to play male characters.

In 1966, when black-and-white television arrived in Taiwan, the only television station at the time, TTV, sought to add Taiwanese opera to its programming.

Yang's troupe, Tienma, was selected for a weekly spot on the channel on the basis of its performance of Loyal Yue Fei《岳飛》with Yang in the lead role.

Her performances during this period helped to popularise Taiwanese opera for new audiences, and Yang became a household name.

During tours of Taiwan or abroad every few years, Yang was idolised by fans, who would often place gold pendants around her neck or thrown money onto the stage in red envelopes.

In 1969, when Yang was 25, TTV's general manager appointed her the leader of the Taiwan Television Opera Troupe, and also the show's producer.

Three years later, she integrated all the Taiwanese opera troupes in Taiwan to form the TTV United Taiwanese Opera Troupe.

The 1979 production A Hero's Shadow in the Autumn Frost《俠影秋霜》used cinematic special effects to heighten the excitement of sword fighting scenes.

In 1980, Yang stated her three objectives for the future of Taiwanese opera: 1) to raise the standards of production and performance; 2) to reinforce basic research and development work in opera, specifically to record the original songs and compile new material; and 3) to support training for actors interested in performing Taiwanese opera. Yang and TTV organized a Taiwanese opera training class in 1981.

As a producer, Yang pushed for more lifelike productions, with more attention paid to props and costumes.

In addition to developing script outlines, she also hired Ti Shan to write new pieces and Chen Tsung-ming to direct.

She created stronger parts for actors playing male roles.

She also had people search for lost Taiwanese Opera plays, write new melodies, and develop new singing styles.

Due to political restrictions at the time, Taiwanese Opera could only be on the air for 30 minutes.

With commercials and credits, there were only about 23 minutes for the opera itself.

Responding to the tighter time schedule, Yang cut out long, slow weeping scenes and emphasized faster-paced material.

She added detailed dialogue and choreography.

These performances attracted larger audiences and brought Taiwanese Opera into the age of television.

The TTV Yang Li-hua Opera show came to an end in the 1990s, amid a deterioration in Yang's working relationship with the channel.

Yang's hits over her decades-long career included: Seven Heroes and Five Gallants 七俠五義》, The Legend of the Yang Clan《楊家將》, Xue Rengui Conquers the East 薛仁貴》, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai 《梁山伯與祝英台》and A Civet for a Prince 《狸貓換太子》.