Obituary Shan Tianfang

choi

Tradition' Voice; Shan Tianfang, China's favourite storytellers, died on September 11th, aged 84. Economist, Sept 29, 2018.
https://www.economist.com/obitua ... tuary-shan-tianfang

My comment:
(a) "WHAT struck Shan Tianfang [本名 born 单传忠, stage name 单田芳] most, as he walked into the studio for his first radio broadcast at the end of the 1970s, was the lack of things. No brightly painted screen to set the scene for his pingshu 评书, or storytelling. No block of wood on the table, to make the audience pay attention or to scare them stiff. No folded fan to snap open for a surprise, simper behind, or whip through the air as a sword. A traditional storyteller needed only those three props. Still, he could manage. * * * And with his voice alone he could evoke * * * the power of an adversary, 'the corners of his eyes and brows showing a thousand streams of killing aura 眼角眉稍带着千层杀气.' * * * Here there were only two sound guys in headphones. * * * A few [persons] were as good as a crowd. So he told 'The Three Heroes and Five Gallants 三侠五义 [based on 清 石玉崑; but Chinese sources say that on May 1, 1979 at 鞍山人民广播电台, the topic was 隋唐演义》（《瓦岗英雄》）]' to the sound guys [in the late 1970s studio] * * * His hoarse, smoky voice, 'cloud covering the moon 云遮月' as the saying went, was listened to everywhere * * * 'Wherever a well has water,' people tuned in to him 凡有井水处，皆听单田芳."
(i) simper (vi): "o smile in a silly manner"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simper
(ii) 隋唐演义 (作者清 褚人获, 成书于1675年1695年付梓初版)  zh.wikipedia.org
(iii) smoky voice = raspy or rasping, grating, gravelly voice.

But
smoky (adj): "4 : a smoky voice or smoky eyes are sexually attractive in a slightly mysterious way"
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/smoky

(b) "He had grown up in Liaoning province before the Communist revolution of 1949 [born 1934 there], his mother ('The Pale Girl') an actress [王桂香是三四十年代著名的西河大鼓演员，人称 '白丫头'] and his father a player of the three-stringed lute [父单永魁是弦师]. * * * he was happy to spend the decade from 1956 to 1966 playing the tea-house circuit."

茶馆 abd/or 茶楼 were associated with 单田芳. I do not know how "tea house" should be translated. At any rate, Taiwan did not have a tea house as described here, as far as I know.

(c) "Fighters against injustice touched a soft spot with him: the wrongly court-martialled General Sheng of 'I Know Your Name Well,' or the 'White-Eyebrow Hero' Lord Bao, China’s most righteous judge, whose story he had been telling all and sundry since he was five years old.  During the Cultural Revolution, however, he fought injustice himself and lost. The builders of the New China * * * sent him to the far north-east, his teeth knocked out to silence him * * * In 1978 he was rehabilitated, though with a mouth full of painful plastic 牙套 through which he had to learn to speak again. He summed up life then in one word, 'Endure [I fail to find the Chinese character(s)].' * * * the government declared him an Inheritor of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage 国家级非物质文化遗产继承人; his fans called him 'an eternal electric wave 永不消逝的电波' and an evergreen tree 单田芳. * * *[Shan] put his favourite tales into 47 books and blogged on Sina Weibo. Yet most of that was words written down. His gravelly voice was what mattered"
(i)
(A) 贝小戎的微博.
https://webcache.googleuserconte ... cache:mcKtD7MY3KUJ:[/url]

Google cache of two consecutive weibos:

"9月29日 11:00 来自 微博 weibo.com
经济学人写单田芳，the 'White-Eyebrow Hero' Lord Bao, 不会把白眉大侠和包公搞混了吧？包公也是白眉？

"9月29日 08:45 来自 微博 weibo.com
单田芳评书，哪一部叫 'I Know Your Name Well,' 有个将军General Sheng？

* "贝小戎, 三联生活周刊记者。 北京 东城区"  self-introduction at weibo; he is a man.
(B) 单田芳的 (story)《白眉大侠》 是《三侠五义》的续书.
(ii)
(A) all and sundry (phrase): "formal  every person  <It was clear to all and sundry that something was wrong>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/all%20and%20sundry
(B) sundry (adj): "MISCELLANEOUS, VARIOUS  <sundry articles>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sundry

(e) All of these are alien to me, as Taiwan has not had a storyteller, tea houses or 三侠五义.