Ch'eng T'ien-fang (22 February 1899-) served the National Government in such capacities as ambassador to Germany (1936-38), delegate to the sessions of UNESCO (after 1945), and minister of education (1950-54). He was dean (1934-35) and vice chancellor (1943-44) of the Central Political Institute and chancellor of National Chekiang (1932-33) and National Szechwan (1938-42) universities.

A native of Hsinchien, Kiangsi, Ch'eng T'ien-fang was born at Hangchow, Chekiang, where his father was serving as a government official. At the age often sui, he returned to his ancestral home and entered a private school there. In 1912 Ch'eng went to Nanchang, the provincial capital of Kiangsi, and entered the Hung-tu Middle School. In the autumn of 1913 he transferred to the private Hsin-yuan Middle School; he was graduated in the summer of 1916.

Ch'eng then moved to Shanghai, where he enrolled at Futan University. He was active in student affairs after the patriotic May Fourth Movement in 1919 and became head of the student union formed at Shanghai and chief editor ofits daily publication. He was graduated from Futan University in 1 920, and he succeeded in passing the national examinations for government scholarships to study abroad. In November 1920 Ch'eng left Shanghai for the United States, where he enrolled at the University of Chicago to study philosophy. In the autumn of 1921 he transferred to the University of Illinois to study political science. There he became friendly with two Chinese students, Lai Lien and Liu Lu-yin. Liu Lu-yin was already active in promoting Kuomintang affairs in the United States. Through his introduction, Ch'eng joined that party in 1921. Ch'eng obtained his B.A. degree at Illinois in June 1922 and his M.A. the following year. In August 1923 he left the United States for Canada; Liu Lu-yin had preceded him there. Ch'eng enrolled at the University of Toronto for further graduate study. At the same time he served as head of the Toronto branch of the Kuomintang and as chief editor of the pro- Kuomintang newspaper for the Chinese community in Toronto, the Hsing-hua jih-pao [the Hsing-hua daily]. He chose as his dissertation topic "The Oriental Immigration in Canada" and traveled extensively in Canada to gather data. While a graduate student, he lived for one year in Vancouver, British Columbia, which had the largest colonies of Chinese and Japanese in Canada. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree in April 1926.

Ch'eng arrived in Shanghai in August, after six years abroad. When the forces of the National Revolutionary Army occupied his native province of Kiangsi late in 1926, Ch'eng went to Nanchang. His first political post was that of director of the youth department of the Kiangsi provincial headquarters of the Kuomintang. In December, he was elected to membership in the Kuomintang executive committee for Kiangsi and was made chief of its propaganda bureau. In February 1927 a new provincial government was established at Nanchang under the chairmanship of Li Lieh-chün (q.v.), and Ch'eng was named to head its education commission. Early in 1927 a rift appeared within the Kuomintang between Chiang Kai-shek's group, which wanted the National Government's seat of authority to be based at Nanchang, and another group, composed largely of Communist and left-wing Kuomintang leaders, which favored having the government and party apparatus at Wuhan. Ch'eng T'ien-fang, who was allied with Ch'en Kuo-fu and others in the right wing of the Kuomintang, was a natural target for criticism by the leftists. The split in the party widened, and the National Government at Wuhan dismissed Li Lieh-chün as chairman of the Kiangsi provincial government on 1 April 1927 and ordered the reorganization of his government. In the ensuing confusion, Li Lieh-chün fled to Fukien, and Ch'eng T'ien-fang and other rightists were seized by the Communist and left-wing elements at Nanchang. On 5 April 1927, Chu P'ei-te (q.v.) assumed the chairmanship of the Kiangsi provincial government and attempted for a time to maintain a political position midway between the forces represented by Wuhan and those at Nanking, where Chiang Kai-shek and his supporters, including Ch'en Kuo-fu, established a rival National Government on 18 April. At Nanchang, Ch'eng T'ien-fang and others were tried by a people's court at the beginning of May, and Ch'eng was among those sentenced to death as counterrevolutionaries. Chu P'ei-te was then at Kiukiang. After he received a report of the proceedings, he returned at once to Nanchang, where he ordered a temporary stay of execution. Ch'eng and the others were then turned over to the local court. On 29 May 1927, Chu P'ei-te announced his support of Chiang Kai-shek and the authorities at Nanking. On the next day, Ch'eng T'ien-fang and the other condemned men were released.

Ch'eng immediately returned to his home in Hsinchien, Kiangsi. He then went, in disguise and under an assumed name, to Nanking, proceeding to Hangchow to recuperate from his ordeal. After about two months of rest, he returned to Nanking and in September took a position as professor of political science at Chung-yang University. He became a counselor to the National Government in November and chief instructor in the National Revolutionary Army officer corps. After the formal establishment of the National Government at Nanking in October 1928, Ch'eng became a counselor of the newly established Examination Yuan. But he continued in his teaching position at Nanking through the year 1928. In January 1929 he was appointed commissioner of education in the new Anhwei provincial government headed by Wu Chung-hsin (q.v.). During his first few months in that post, Ch'eng also served as acting chancellor of Anhwei University. There he encountered much unruliness among the Anhwei students and took stern action to maintain order. In March 1929, Ch'eng attended the Third National Congress of the Kuomintang as a delegate from Anhwei. He was elected an alternate member of the Central Executive Committee and held that position until 1935. From February to May 1930, while Chiang Kai-shek's political authority at Nanking was under heavy attack from a coalition of Kuomintang leaders in north China, Ch'eng T'ien-fang served as acting governor of Anhwei province. His problems were many: the warfare in central China affected the province and a poor harvest in 1929 had led to an increase in local banditry.

Ch'eng resigned as commissioner of education in Anhwei in May 1931 and returned to Nanking. In June, he was appointed deputy director of propaganda in the central headquarters of the Kuomintang. The director of propaganda at that time was his former schoolmate Liu Lu-yin. By 1931, however, Liu was associated with the faction of the Kuomintang that followed Hu Han-min (q.v.), while Ch'eng T'ien-fang had become closely identified with the faction of the party led by Ch'en Kuo-fu and Ch'en Li-fu.

Chiang Kai-shek had established his field headquarters at Nanchang and was directing military operations to dislodge the Communists from their base in Kiangsi. Ch'eng was ordered to Nanchang, where he was made a political officer in Chiang's headquarters. The Japanese aggression in Manchuria beginning in the autumn of 1931 brought the Kuomintang campaign to a halt. At the end of September, Ch'eng T'ien-fang returned to Nanking, where he resumed his post as deputy director of propaganda in the Kuomintang central headquarters and served as a member of a special foreign affairs commission. In those positions, he participated in the formulation of major policy decisions with regard to the deteriorating situation in Manchuria. When Chiang Kai-shek again went into retirement in December, Ch'eng left Nanking.

In April 1932 Ch'eng was appointed chancellor of National Chekiang University at Hangchow. He held that post for only one year. In April 1933 he was appointed commissioner of education in the Hupeh provincial government, but soon resigned that post on the grounds of poor health and retired to the resort town of Kuling in his native Kiangsi. In October 1933, however, Ch'en Kuo-fu was appointed governor of Kiangsu province, and he invited Ch'eng to join his government as its secretary general. Ch'eng accepted, left Kuling for Chinkiang, and served in Kiangsu for about a year. In August 1934 he returned to Nanking to take up the post of dean of the Central Political Institute of the Kuomintang. In May 1935 the diplomatic missions exchanged between China and Germany were raised in status from legations to embassies. In June, Ch'eng T'ien-fang, despite his lack of diplomatic experience, became China's first ambassador to Germany. Ch'eng did not leave to take up his assignment for some months. In November, at the Fifth National Congress of the Kuomintang, he was elected to full membership on the Central Executive Committee. He finally left Shanghai for Germany at the end of December, reached Berlin at the end of January, and presented his credentials to Adolf Hitler on 27 February 1936. Sino-German relations at that point were relatively cordial. Chiang Kai-shek was employing the services in China of a strong advisory group of German military officers, and trade between the two countries was increasing. Changes in the situation in the Far East and in Germany soon arose to complicate Ch'eng T'ien-fang's mission. After the outbreak of hostilities between China and Japan in July 1937, he attempted to induce the Germans to mediate the conflict. His effort proved fruitless. The winter of 1936 had marked a turning-point in Hitler's foreign policies, which had resulted in the political downfall of several of Ch'eng's potential sources of support in Berlin. Berlin recognized the Japanese-sponsored government of Manchoukuo in February 1938. Soon thereafter, under pressure from the Japanese, Germany stopped the flow of military supplies to China and recalled the German military advisory group. Ch'eng T'ien-fang then submitted his resignation to Chungking, where the National Government had moved. It was accepted, and he left Berlin in August 1938 to return to China. He reached Chungking in October, and in December he was appointed chancellor of National Szechwan University. In June 1939 the university was removed to O-mei-shan to avoid Japanese bombing raids. There, a normal school was organized in connection with the university to train middle-school teachers. As a veteran member of the Kuomintang, Ch'eng remained closely concerned with political affairs. In the winter of 1942 he left O-mei-shan for Chungking, where, on 1 January 1943, he assumed the post of vice chancellor of the Central Political Institute. He held that post for the remaining war years, and he was closely associated with Ch'en Kuo-fu and Ch'en Li-fu. After the Japanese surrender, the institute returned to Nanking, where it was reorganized into the National Political Academy.

In October 1945 Ch'eng was the Chinese delegate at the meetings in London to prepare for the establishment of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He then traveled extensively in Western Europe, returning to China in March 1946. In October 1946 he went to Europe to attend the first regular session of UNESCO at Paris. Ch'eng then vacationed in Switzerland, traveled for several months through the United States, Canada, and Cuba, and returned to China in September 1947. By that time, the Kuomintang's struggle against the Chinese Communists was reaching its end. Ch'eng remained at Nanking, where he became a member of the Legislative Yuan in 1948 and was given the concurrent appointment of director of the central propaganda department of the Kuomintang in 1949. In the autumn of 1949 Ch'eng went to New York as a member of the Chinesedelegation to theUnitedNationsGeneral Assembly. He introduced a resolution accusing the Soviet Union of aggression against China — a principal theme of Kuomintang propaganda. In February 1950, Ch'eng T'ien-fang went to Taiwan. In March of that year, when Ch'en Ch'eng became president of the Executive Yuan, Ch'eng T'ien-fang was named minister of education in his new cabinet. In 1951 he attended the fourth session of UNESCO as the Chinese delegate. Ch'eng continued to serve as minister of education at Taipei until June 1954, when he lost that post in a reorganization of the Executive Yuan. He then became a professor at National Cheng Chih University. In February 1955 he went to the United States to lecture on recent Chinese history at the University of Washington in Seattle. In the autumn, he moved to New York to do research, and in the spring of 1956 he lectured on Sino- Soviet relations at Fordham University. That summer he did further research at the Library of Congress in Washington. His research resulted in a book entitled A History of Sino- Russian Relations, which was published in 1957. Ch'eng left the United States in March 1957 and, after visiting Europe and the Middle East, returned to Taipei in June. He was appointed to teach in the Central Political Institute and to direct its foreign-affairs academy. In August 1958 he was named vice president of the Examination Yuan. In November 1960 he attended the twelfth session of UNESCO, and he attended UNESCO conferences thereafter. In addition to his doctoral dissertation and the book on Sino-Russian relations published in English, Ch'eng T'ien-fang wrote books and articles in Chinese on educational problems. A volume containing his speeches and articles of the previous five years was published in Taiwan in 1954. Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu Orig. Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu T. Yü-shuang [292 ] m 9fi flc 35 IB, m Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu (4 January 1904-9 March 1958), an actor whose popularity was equaled only by that of Mei Lan-fang, played the tan [female] roles of traditional Peking theater. Of pure Manchu descent, Ch'eng was the son of an impoverished member of the Yellow Banner. His native place was Peking. At the age of six, he became a pupil of the well-known drama teacher Jung Tieh-hsien, under whom he studied the rudiments of Peking-style acting and the k'un-ch'ü form of operatic singing. In 1918 he made the acquaintance of Lo Ying-kung, a Peking playboy and playwright who did much to foster the young actor's talents and who had a marked influence on Ch'eng's later career. Ch'eng frequently referred to the debt he owed Lo Ying-kung for his encouragement and assistance. Ch'eng began working as an actor at the age of 14, but he continued to study under older artists of the Peking theater such as Wang Yao-ch'ing (q.v.), Ch'en Te-lin, and Mei Lanfang (q.v.) and worked diligently to perfect his technique.

In the spring of 1919, Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu was a member of the troupe which accompanied Mei Lan-fang on Mei's first visit to Japan, a sign of the esteem in which Ch'eng was held by his seniors. During the 1920's, Ch'eng began to acquire the reputation which finally resulted in his being classed as one of the ssu ta ming tan [big four actors] of the tan [female] roles on the Peking stage. The other three were Mei Lanfang, Shang Hsiao-yun, and Hsün Hui-sheng. At the height of his career, Ch'eng's popularity with Chinese theater audiences was equaled only by that of Mei Lan-fang. His attractive appearance in stage make-up and the refinement of his singing and gestures endeared him to connoisseurs of the old-style theater. After a decade of experience in China, Ch'eng left for Europe in January 1932 to study the theater and opera of the West. This trip was made under the patronage of Li Shih-tseng (q.v.) and was formally sponsored by the Nanking Academy of Dramatic Arts. Ch'eng visited France, Germany, England, Italy, and Switzerland and was well received, particularly in France and Switzerland. In Geneva, Ch'eng gave a course in t'ai-chi ch'üan, a special system of Chinese physical exercise, to college students. A description of these travels is contained in his book, published in August 1932, Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu fu-Ou k'ao-ctia hsi-chuyin-yueh pao-kao shu [Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu's report on his visit to Europe to study drama and music]. In 1934 he was invited to head a dramatic training school in Peking, an institution which broke completely with tradition by accepting both boys and girls as students. Ch'eng originally intended the school to offer courses in Western as well as Peking-style acting, but financial limitations prevented this program from being carried out. The school, the first co-educational school of its kind in China, produced a number of talented actors and actresses before the Sino-Japanese war forced it to close.

The outbreak of hostilities in 1937 prevented Ch'eng from carrying out his ambition to take a Chinese theatrical troupe to Europe. He had been invited to Paris, and preparations were well under way when the war forced cancellation of the venture. Ch'eng himself continued to act occasionally during the early war years. On his way from Shanghai to Peiping in 1942, however, he was manhandled by Japanese gendarmes at the Tientsin railway station. Angered and embittered, he returned home, sold all his theatrical costumes, and refused to perform again during the Japanese occupation. He retired to Ch'ing-lung ch'iao in the western suburbs of Peiping and supported himself until the end of the war by farming.

He returned to the stage after 1945, but faced with the difficulties that confronted all leading actors in the chaotic postwar period, he made relatively few stage appearances. With the establishment of the Communist regime in 1949, Ch'eng, like Mei Lan-fang, was encouraged to resume his career. During the final decade of his life, he took an active part in the cultural activities of the new government. He was vice president of the Chinese Dramatic Research Institute, headed by Mei Lan-fang; a member of the national committee of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles; and a member of the standing committee of the Union of Chinese Stage Artists, the theatrical subdivision of the Federation. As a senior dramatic adviser, he was particularly active in training the new generation of classical actors. In 1953 he toured west China, where he had earlier had considerable success just before the Sino- Japanese war. In 1956 he made his first color film in Peking, based on the play Huang-shan lei [tears in the wilderness], a drama from his personal repertoire. Although he had no previous record of political activity, he joined the Communist party as a probationary member in October 1957. He died of heart disease and pneumonia in March 1958, at the age of 54. The day after his death the Chinese Communist party admitted him posthumously to full membership, and subsequent official commentary praised his "progressive views," his "resolute character," and his "closeness to the people." Like many men of Manchu descent, Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu was a large man, nearly six feet tall. Noted for his grace and beauty in stage makeup, he grew very stout in middle age, and his increasing plumpness was an unfortunate physical handicap for one playing the fragile women of the Peking theater. While his voice remained sweet and true, Ch'eng had long since passed the zenith of his powers as a stage performer when he died.

Ch'eng specialized in the ch'ing-i roles, the traditional faithful and virtuous women. Good singing is an important feature of the technique required in these roles, supported by skill in the graceful gestures with the long silk sleeve characteristic of the costumes worn. Ch'eng excelled in both respects. His greatest contribution to Chinese dramatic art was in the creation of his individual style of singing, marked by a soft, haunting, undulating quality. Although Ch'eng's voice lacked the robustness of Mei Lan-fang's, by constant study, practice, and experiment he turned his disability to advantage in the particular type of role he favored. His singing was especially popular with women. Inseparable from the singing in the Peking drama is the use of stylized gestures to express actions or emotions. Ch'eng's special contribution in this respect was his use of sleeve movements. The actors playing female roles in the Peking-style theater wear garments with long, broad sleeves with white silk cuffs that are more than a foot long. Ch'eng was widely known in China for his distinctive and expressive sleeve movements, gracefully used to convey complex emotions.

He made his greatest reputation in a score of plays which were written especially for him and which provided scope for his particular talents. In addition to Huang-shan lei, his repertoire included such plays as ICung-ch'iao p'ing [the peacock screen], Fu-shou ching [the auspicious mirror], Wen Chi kuei-Han [Wen Chi's return to Han], Ch'un-kuei meng [the wife's spring dream], and Yu-ching Vai [the jade mirror stand]. Ch'eng's technique was widely imitated by both professionals and amateurs, and many of his followers are still to be found on the stages of Peking and Shanghai.

The frustrations of Ch'eng Yen-ch'iu's professional life were caused by the troubles of his country. A man of integrity in his private life, he was survived by his wife, the daughter of an actor, and by his son, Ch'eng Yung-kuang, who is known to have studied engineering in Switzerland.

Chern, S. S.: see Ch'en Hsing-shen. Chi Ch'ao-ting West. C. T. Chi m®