T'ien Han (13 March 1898-), playwright and pioneer of the modern theater movement in China and a founder of the Nan-kuo she (South China Society) and the League of Left-Wing Dramatists. He was also known for his film scenarios and song lyrics. During the Sino- Japanese war he revised and adapted the traditional Peking drama for modern production. In 1966 T'ien Han became a major target of criticism in the so-called Cultural Revolution.

Born into a peasant family in T'ien village, Changsha hsien, Hunan, T'ien Han received his early education at local schools. At the Changsha Normal School, which he entered in 1914, he performed in school productions and wrote plays, two of which were published in the literary magazine. After being graduated, he went to Japan to study at the Tokyo Higher Normal School where he remained until 1921 ; in this time his training as a teacher became less important to him than literature, the theater, and films—he saw all the foreign films that came to Tokyo while he was there. His stay in Japan coincided with the most active period of the Modern Dramatic Society of Kamiyama Sojin and Matsui Sumaku and with the rise of the art forum movement of Shimamura Hogetsu. Among the Chinese students then in Japan were Kuo Mo-jo and Chang Tzu-p'ing (qq.v.), who decided in 1918 to join with Yü Ta-fu (q.v.) and Ch'eng Fang-wu in starting a new literary magazine. T'ien Han decided to join this group after talking with Kuo Mo-jo, who had been introduced to him by Tsung Pai-hua, the editor of the Shih-shih hsin-pao (China Times). In 1921 the members of this group went to Shanghai, where they founded the Creation Society (Ch'uang-tsao she). The first issue of the society's Ch'uang-tsao chi-k'an (Creation Quarterly) appeared in May 1922 and contained two plays by T'ien Han : Chia-fei tien chih yeh [a night at a tea house] and Wu-fan chih ch'ien [before lunch]. The publication of these plays won him widespread recognition as a talented playwright.

In 1925 T'ien Han quarreled with Ch'eng Fang-wu, left the Creation Society, and became a professor at the Shanghai i-shu ta-hsueh (Shanghai College of Fine Arts), which he made his base for plays and the film projects that he began in 1926. The Hsin shao-nien ying-p'ien kung-ssu (New Youth Motion Picture Company) was the first organization to invite him to participate in its endeavors. In the latter part of 1926 T'ien Han organized the South China Film Drama Society, wrote its charter, and wrote and directed To the People!, the society's first film. In 1928, having resigned from the Shanghai College of Fine Arts because of a dispute with the principal, he founded the Nan-kuo i-shu hsueh-yuan (South China Academy of Fine Arts) . The academy was forced to close six months later because it lacked funds. Nevertheless, it was important as the progenitor of the Nan-kuo she (South China Society), a dramatic club under T'ien Han's direction which became the center of a new theater movement. The South China Society enabled students to make some kind of living as actors while studying new dramatic methods. Performances were staged regularly in Shanghai, Nanking, and Canton. At first, the company's repertoire consisted of romantic French pieces and T'ien Han's new plays. Such works as Su-chou yeh-hua [night talk in Soochow] and Nan-kuei [return to the south] achieved great popularity. T'ien Han also served as editor of the society's publications. The bi-weekly Nan-kuo pan-yueh-k' an ceased publication after four issues; it was succeeded by a monthly magazine, Le Midi yueh-k'an. The South China Society was closed down in 1930 by the central party headquarters of the Kuomintang, which also banned Le Midi yueh-k'an.

During this period, T'ien Han wrote Three Modern Women and Survival of the Nation for the Lien-hua ying-p'ien kung-ssu (Lotus Motion Picture Company). In addition, he lectured on dramatic art at Chinan, Ta-hsia, and Futan universities, and he served as an editor at the Chung Hua Publishing Company, which issued the Shao-nien Chung-kuo yueh-k'an [young China monthly]. In 1930 he presided at a conference attended by members of the South China Society, the Creative Dramatic Society, and the Shanghai Art Drama Association which led to the formation of the League of Lcft-Wing Dramatists in 1931, the year in which T'ien Han joined the Chinese Communist party. Two plays staged by T'ien to emphasize contemporary social and political problems were Hung-shui [flood] and Huo-chih Ciao-wu [a dance of fire]. When war broke out in Shanghai in February 1932, the League of Left-Wing Dramatists conducted a propaganda campaign against the Japanese. It soon became too vocal for the National Government, which arrested a number of the league's leading members, including T'ien Han. Information about the date of T'ien's release is lacking, but it is known that by June 1932 he was free and writing for a new and influential literary monthly, the Wen-hsueh yueh-pao.

While working for the Lotus Motion Picture Company, T'ien Han collaborated on a number of film songs with the composer Nieh Erh (q.v.) . Their first effort was "The Miners Song" for the film Glorious Motherhood. In 1934 they wrote and produced an opera, Storm on the Yangtze. The best-known product of this creative association was the song "March of the Volunteers," written for the film Children of the Storm. This song later became the national anthem of the People's Republic of China. After the Sino-Japanese war began in July 1937, T'ien Han went to Kweilin, where he established a theatrical training school for children. In 1938 he joined the political training board of the Military Affairs Commission at Chungking. He held office as director of the cultural work committee of the third department until 1 945, and he also served as head ofthe propaganda section of the Military Affairs Commission's general affairs department. During the war, he devoted much attention to revising and adapting the traditional Peking drama for modern production. He experimented with several plays, working to modernize stage techniques and make archaic dialogue intelligible to modern audiences without destroying the old forms or altering their basic style. He was strongly criticized by traditionalists, but he received the sympathetic cooperation of such actors as Mei Lan-feng (q.v.) and Chou Hsin-fang. His version of the Pai-she chuan [white snake legend] achieved great popularity, and he organized theatrical troupes which presented this and other plays in the northwestern provinces. Of his several wartime film scenarios the most important was for Victory March, an episodic film about the war effort in northern Hunan.

At war's end T'ien Han returned to Shanghai, where he taught at the Municipal Experimental Drama School. He then moved to Hong Kong and remained there until December 1948, when he went to Manchuria to join the Chinese Communists. After the Central People's Government was established, he became a member of the national committee of the All-China Federation of Literary and Arts Circles and the Union of Chinese Writers, chairman of the Union of Chinese Dramatists, director of the drama improvement bureau of the ministry of culture, and a member of the culture education committee of the Government Administration Council. From 1951 to early 1958 he headed the art affairs bureau in the ministry of culture. He was a delegate from Szechwan to the First and Second National People's congresses, and at various times he served on the executive board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, the China Peace Committee, and the Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.

A prolific playwright, T'ien Han began his literary career as a proponent of romanticism and moved through reformist realism to advocacy of class struggle. Throughout his career, however, he remained first and foremost a practical man of the theater. Among his greatest contributions to the modern Chinese theater were his encouragement of new teaching and training methods and his insistence on improving the technical aspects of Chinese stage production. His own plays reflect his careful attention to construction and detail. In the 1950's and early 1960's he continued to experiment with traditional Peking drama and Western stage techniques, and he wrote several costume plays based on historical figures. In 1966, however, he became a major target of criticism in the so-called Cultural Revolution.

T'ien Han married three times. His first wife, I Shu-yu (d. 1923), was a dramatist. After a brief union with a Miss Lin, about whom nothing further is known, he married a Cantonese actress named Ah O in 1925. T'ien Han had one son, Hai-nan.