Celebrating famous local playwright Lu Jun's works
The Lu Jun Theater Education Center
The old Zhongshan Road W. in the Cangcheng Historic and Cultural Zone used to be strewn with tea houses and shuchang (storytelling halls). It almost became a daily necessity for locals to watch theater performances, or pingshu (a quyi form of oral storytelling). Now, as the historic zone is being gradually restored, locals and tourists in Songjiang have one more free venue to visit – the Lu Jun Theater Education Center at 195 Zhongshan Road W.
The venue showcases the development of local theater and the achievements of Lu Jun, a celebrated Shanghai playwright born in Songjiang.
"I loved writing doggerel when I was young," says Lu, who was born in 1955. "Villagers at that time led a tough rural life. I was a frail boy, too weak to do heavy farm work.
"Then I happened to see an ink-printed sheet of script for singing in the house of my brother, who had been a military art troupe soldier. I found it interesting, imitated it and wrote a script about a folk legend of the Bainiutang Pond of my hometown.
"Luckily, the script was adopted by the art troupe of our village. That would be my first work that contained some theatrical elements.
"The more I wrote, the more popular I became. The village officials hired me as their secretary and the Songjiang County Armed Personnel Division hired me as its publicity officer.
"I passed exams and got enrolled in the Shanghai Theater Academy, and later created my first play 'Ding Xin Wan' (Mind Relief Pill) in 1981. That play proved to be a success and was published in full by Jiefang Daily.
"It was a vivid story of the change of the family status of a rural live-in son-in-law amid an era of the favorable rural economic policies in China since 1978. It won the script award – the top award of the first Shanghai Drama Festival."
So far, Lu has created 36 large plays. He is now a professor with the Shanghai Theater Academy and has tutored more than 100 postgraduate students.
He has also been invited by Columbia University in the US to be a Chinese mentor for postgraduate students majoring in screenwriting.
In December 2018, Lu returned to Songjiang to hold a concurrent post as its literary federation chief.
The center gives tourists and locals a unique experience of the region's dramatic history, the fruits of its research and promotional activities. The center has four parts: a brief history of Songjiang's dramatic arts, the first exhibition hall on Lu's achievements, the second and third halls collecting Lu's works and plays, and the fourth hall displaying treasured works of culture and art in Songjiang since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Photos from performances of plays by Lu Jun
Lu Jun Theater Education Center
Address: 195 Zhongshan Road W., Songjiang District
Opening hours: 9am-3:40pm, Tuesdays-Sundays
Tel: 139-1762-2188 (Reservations are required three days in advance for group visits)
How to get there: Exit 3, Zuibai Pond Park Station, Metro Line 9; then take Songjiang No. 13 bus to the Shanghai No. 4 Social Welfare Institute Station; Cross some lanes to arrive at Zhongshan Road W.
The Shihe River along the Zhongshan Road W.
