There was bright moonlight in front of the bed. I suspected it was frost on the ground. I raised my head and looked at the bright moon—pop! "The fat man on the stage slapped Xiangmu, "My name is Guo Degang! ”
On Sunday, February 5th, Guo Degang, who likes to call himself a “non-famous crosstalk actor”, performed at the Tianqiao Music Theater starting at 2 pm as usual. Before he came on stage, he was mainly dozing off. , while dozing off, he discussed the cooperation with Beijing TV Station for a new program. The performance of Tianqiao Music lasted until about 7 o'clock in the evening. Next, he had to catch a cross talk show of the publicity department, and then rushed to the cross talk show of Guangde Building. He lives in Daxing, a suburb in the southern suburbs of Beijing. At 11 o'clock in the evening, he was interviewed by two media outlets while he was on his way home and while climbing up the stairs to open the door, because the other party was about to have a deadline and there was still an interview outline lying around. In his mailbox...
Although Guo Degang, who once created "I Want to Go to the Spring Festival Gala", did not appear in this year's Spring Festival Gala, after Phoenix TV broadcasted "Guo Degang" for four consecutive days during the Spring Festival Crosstalk Special", as well as interviews with a series of programs such as CCTV's "To Tell the Truth" and "News Hall". After the New Year, Guo Degang's popularity is no less than that of any actor who has appeared on the Spring Festival Gala.
Just less than two months ago, when the media introduced Guo Degang, they still positioned him as "very little famous among ordinary people, but he has won the enthusiastic pursuit of quite a few senior cross talk fans." There are also many media and cross talk fans. Fans regard him as a "fighter" who "challenges mainstream crosstalk" and "fights TV crosstalk"
The first audience to laugh at him
Guo Degang said that he has no other hobbies. He doesn't smoke, drink, dance, listen to pop music, sing karaoke, or drive. He doesn't like to pick up the mahjong tiles and recognize the "eighty thousand" and count the "eight tubes". He memorized textbooks, but liked to memorize cross talk jokes.
In 1981, at the age of 8, Guo Degang began to formally learn storytelling from a teacher. His first master was Gao Xiangkai, a storytelling artist from Tianjin. Learning storytelling was not like him. It's interesting to see below the stage. Every morning, before the master wakes up, he has to get up to clean the house and make tea. When the master gets up and teaches him the jokes, he has to start practicing on his own at four or five o'clock every morning. , he would get up and go to the river to shout, recite jokes, and sing songs. When the old man came for morning exercise at seven or eight o'clock, he could finish the get out of class.
The next three years. For several years, Guo Degang learned Xihe Dagu from the blind artist Wang Tianyu, and learned crosstalk from Tianjin artists such as Chang Baofeng. He did not learn from a teacher until he was 15 years old.
"Traditional crosstalk requires seven or eight years of childish skills. "Guo Degang said that the so-called "speaking, learning, teasing, and singing" actually includes the four techniques of speaking, criticizing, reading, and speaking; "speaking" also includes reciting poems, couplets, guessing riddles, and solving words. Meanings, tongue twisters, nonsense words, inversions, quips, witticisms, short jokes, anecdotes... "Criticism" requires knowing "Briticizing Business", "Criticizing Three Kingdoms", "Criticizing Liaozhai"... the content of "reading" It means "Menuzi", "Geographical Map", "Foreign Medicine Prescription", etc... "Speaking", the ones you need to know include "Tao Di Hao" and the stand-up comedy "Jie Xue Shi", "Hua Wax Jiu Er"...
After studying for five or six years, Guo Degang had his first official opportunity to appear on stage - the "Tianjin Summer Crosstalk Party", which was said to be a crosstalk party, but it was just an open-air platform in the entertainment center and a banner. Two more microphones were put on. Guo Degang came on stage wearing a white shirt and blue trousers to perform "Five Lines of Poem". Standing on the stage for the first time, Guo Degang looked around and saw hundreds of people eating and going to the toilet. People were chatting, but not watching his performance. He suddenly glanced at a big fat man in the right corner of the stage, with a crew cut and wide-rimmed glasses. He was sitting in a wheelchair and kept smiling at him. Guo Degang didn't care about him. Why was he laughing? "Anyway, he just smiled at me." As if he had grasped a life-saving straw, he simply told him to finish the show. Fortunately, until he came off the stage, the fat man kept smiling at him.
Now, every game of Deyun Club is fully booked, and it is hard to get a ticket.
Guo Degang has always been very concerned about his "10 years of solid basic skills", although strictly speaking, he is in Tianjin He studied the art for 7 years until he went to Beijing to find a way out.
If a good dog is not a good dog, Beijing will bark.
"At that time, the whole country came to Beijing to develop, and even a good dog would come to Beijing to bark." Guo Degang said, This "good dog" of his has visited Beijing several times before.
In the spring of 1988, 15-year-old Guo Degang went to Beijing with a friend to apply for the Art Troupe of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. He did not know that they and thousands of similar "good dogs" had a unified title: "Beijing" drift". My friend has some connections in the group, so the two of them can still stay in the group smoothly, and can occasionally perform in Sichuan and Henan.
"I have a formal unit, with a fixed salary and residence, and regular performances. I slowly accumulate some connections and get to know a few big names. I can then appear on TV and attend parties, and I can earn 81,000 yuan a month. ” Guo Degang, who had just arrived in Beijing, only had this kind of imagination for the future.
Guo Degang did not expect that a year later, in 1989, just when his personnel relations were about to be transferred to the ACFTU Art Troupe, Beijing stipulated that those with overseas registered permanent residence must return to their place of origin. Without exception, Guo Degang was sent back to Tianjin and assigned to a cultural unit to continue engaging in folk arts.
After six years of ordinary and boring life, Guo Degang decided to go to Beijing for the second time, imagining that he could regain some relationships in the "circle", so he confidently opened a hotel in a small hotel in Dashilar, Qianmen. The bed costs 15 yuan a day, and there are more than 10 businessmen in the same room. The idea of ??"moving there as soon as you find a connection" seems too naive now. Five or six days have passed, and none of his "connections" want to have anything to do with him. "I'm not here to stay in a hotel." Guo Degang returned in despair. Tianjin.
At this time, he began to switch to business, but he only paid for what he did. When the business failed, he started singing again and followed the troupe to perform in the countryside. Once I went to Wen'an, Hebei Province for a performance, and the actors all stayed with fellow villagers. The local water was very alkaline, and I had to wear heavy makeup to sing and perform. When it came time to remove my makeup, I found that it couldn't be removed with water, so I had to sleep with my painted face. The next day The makeup was blurred, so I had to put new makeup on top of the old makeup. This way, the oil paint was applied over and over again on my face, and my face became red and swollen within a few days.
"It is better to endure hardship here than to endure hardship in Beijing." Guo Degang made up his mind to go to Beijing for the third time in 1995. This time Guo Degang was fully prepared. He would live wherever the houses were cheaper in Qingta or Daxing. As long as there was an opportunity to perform, he would live there. Finally, he found a small Peking Opera troupe in Shakou, who promised to give him 1,000 yuan a month, "at least he would have money to eat." After singing for two months, he didn't get a penny. He tried to argue with the other party, but the answer he got was: "If you want money, just keep singing. If you don't want to do it, you can leave, but you can't get the 2,000 yuan from before." "Guo Degang had no choice but to continue singing. One day the performance was late and the bus was gone. He couldn't afford a taxi, so he walked more than 20 kilometers from the city and returned to his rental house in Daxing on foot.
The film and television industry is much easier to deal with
Even Guo Degang himself did not expect that his fortune would start in the film and television industry. At that time, the impression that Beijing gave him was: "Everyone has something to do with CCTV." He met some "people who claimed to be CCTV directors" and began to discuss scripts and plans. It is often after he has written his own script that the other party takes it to seek sponsorship. The TV series "Extraordinary Files" and "Emperor Zhengde Goes to Jiangnan" are his writings. He has also done folk art special topics, food programs, and filmed juice commercials. Guo Degang’s experience in the film and television industry is that “it’s much easier to get along than in the cross talk industry.”
Until one day, he saw a group of 10-year-old children talking about cross talk in a teahouse in Nancheng, Beijing, and he stood in front of the stage on a whim. The child asked: "Have you also learned cross talk?" "I have learned it too." Guo Degang said that he had been waiting for this question for many years.
Playing tickets made Guo Degang discover that there is a market for cross talk, so he began to recruit people and found two other cross talk actors, Zhang Wenshun and Li Jing. They got together and started talking about cross talk in teahouses in Beijing. It’s called the “Beijing Crosstalk Conference” and it costs 10 yuan to listen to it.
Almost everything in the entrepreneurial stage is a tragedy. Guo Degang said: "The worst time was when we tried to perform for an audience. In the cold winter, there was no one on the street, and they were still standing outside the door. After calling people to come in, someone finally came in. Maybe he just wanted to come in to warm up his body. The actor on the stage continued to talk in a decent manner. After a while, the audience's cell phone rang, and the actor stopped and waited for him to call. On the phone, the man finished talking quickly, and I came up and said to him: 'You have to listen carefully and say hello to me when you go to the toilet. There are many more people in the backstage than you.'"
When Guo Degang implemented the policy of "no one must act", he did not know that Yuan Hong, the former manager of the Northern Theater, was also in the audience, and he did not expect that one day he would become the protagonist of overwhelming news in the media.
In 2001, Yuan Hong was preparing to do Taiwan Lai Shengchuan's theater cross talk, and wanted to expand cross-strait cross-strait exchanges, so Yuan Hong began to pay attention to cross talk in Beijing and Tianjin. After watching Guo Degang's theater crosstalk on and off for two years, Yuan Hong recommended Guo Degang to participate in the 2003 Beijing Crosstalk Sketch Invitational Competition. In order to meet the standards of "TV crosstalk", Guo Degang spent one hour creating "Hello, Beijing" to participate - This is the first time since Beidiao that Guo Degang's cross talk has been so close to television.
"Unfortunately, he was the first to appear in the draw in the final, and his score was not very high, so the organizing committee gave him a special award." Yuan Hong recalled.
Finally "Full House"
In October 2004, Guo Degang did not expect that the "Exclusive Crosstalk on the verge of being lost" that he participated in would not only be a turning point for traditional crosstalk, but also a turning point for him. A turning point in cross talk - the special performance not only expanded Guo Degang's influence among senior cross talk fans, but was also picked up by the "Happy Teahouse" program of Beijing Literature and Art Radio Station, and the special show began to be simulcast on the radio station.
"I'm very pleased." Guo Degang likes to use this mantra when he appears. Since October 2004, he has been really pleased that the Tianqiao Music Theater, where he has been staying for a year and a half, finally has "fully booked" on the ticket window.
""Happy Tea House" broadcasts cross talk every day, but it is Guo Degang's cross talk that became popular." The analysis of Dongdong Qiang, a senior cross talk fan, is that Guo Degang's cross talk has "the bones of Tianjin and the meat of Beijing." .
The key point of "Tianjin's Bones" is to tell the story of the small calculations, small grievances, small cowards, and small fantasies of the ordinary people. In Guo Degang's cross talk, you can often hear little jokes about the traffic jam on Beijing's Third Ring Road, the lack of bathing in bathing centers, and the fact that singers may not know music.
"Beijing's meat" refers to his grandeur, integrity, stability and lack of panic. "He who jumps up and down as soon as he comes on stage just doesn't understand cross talk." It is not difficult to make people laugh if you learn traditional cross talk well. Guo Degang said: "The old man has refined all the joke techniques that can make people laugh in the Chinese language. To this day, no matter what jokes you make, they are all in traditional cross talk."
Guo Degang’s traditional jokes are actually not “traditional”. The original text of "Marriage in a Dream" is about a poor man who daydreams about being taken back by a rich man to be his consort. He changes "eight-carrying sedan chair" to "helicopter". "Lingluo silk and satin" has become "suits and leather shoes"; the former "Bailang" has become the current "Western Expedition Dream", and "warlords will annihilate the grass bandits" has been changed to "Bush asks you to annihilate the terrorists"; "Article "Hui" tells the story of how a person pretended to be knowledgeable, but met another person who really knew how to write. During the Republic of China, this person who knew how to write was called "Kang Youwei." In Guo Degang's case, the structure of the story does not need to change, but "Kang Youwei" becomes "Jin Yong".
As the "tight wires" around Guo Degang gathered more and more, Dongdong Qiang discovered that one day the last few sentences of the famous "The Truth" had changed from the previous "If you have nothing to do, just put this cross talk conference into " turned into "If you have nothing to do, just come to the Deyun Club" - the Beijing Cross Talk Conference, which has been called the Beijing Cross Talk Conference for seven or eight years, finally has an official name: Deyun Club. "De" is taken from Guo Degang's "De" character, and "Yun" is taken from Guo Degang's apprentice with the character "Yun". This is also one of the four known folk crosstalk groups in China. The other three are all in Tianjin, namely Zhongyou, Hahaxiao and Jiuhe.
At the end of September 2005, Yuan Hongbei’s business at the Bingmas Theater could not survive. After the theater closed, he was invited to do publicity preparations for the Third Crosstalk Sketch Grand Prix—his duty was to lead the circle People and media should think of some plans and find more works for the Grand Prix.
Inviting Tianjin cross talk to Beijing is the first step. Yuan Hong brought screenwriter Shi Hang, theater critic Crystal and more than 10 media reporters to the Tianqiao Theater. This was the first time for everyone to see Guo Degang's cross talk. After one scene, these people became "tightropes". Shi Hanghe Crystal began to promote Guo Degang in various ways as much as possible, paving the way for Guo Degang to appear in the media in January this year.
The media broke out
In fact, Yuan Hong took a group of people not only to the Tianqiao Music Theater, but also to see Dongcheng Li Jindou’s Crosstalk Club, Tianjin Friends, Hahahaha, etc. A performance by the cross talk troupe. After all, there is a "physical distance" when communicating with clubs in Tianjin; when communicating with "successful" actors in the Dongcheng Crosstalk Club, "we can't talk about going together."
Less than a week after they watched the performance of Deyun Club, on November 5, Guo Degang took all the people of Deyun Club to Tianjin to hold a special cross talk performance. This was Guo Degang’s first time in the grand theater Talking about cross talk, Yuan Hong and Shi Hang took more than 10 media from Beijing to Tianjin. Most of these reporters knew about Guo Degang for the first time.
Taking November 5th as the date, only one article about Guo Degang could be found before - Guo Degang's cross talk review written by Crystal; after that, the name "Guo Degang" gradually began to appear in the media , in mid-December, "Sanlian Life Weekly" published "Interview with Guo Degang, a Grassroots Hero in the Crosstalk World", which was regarded as the media's first large-scale report on the Guo Degang phenomenon. The article defined Guo Degang as "famous among ordinary people. Although it is very small, it has won the enthusiastic support of many senior cross talk fans."
During this period, Guo Degang's "On the Current Situation of Crosstalk in the Past 50 Years" was widely circulated on the Internet, and more people thought it was a speech that denounced the corruption and abuses of the crosstalk circle.
Since then, according to statistics from "Steel Wire", the media has introduced Guo Degang at an average frequency of one report per day. Adjectives such as "crosstalk fighter" and "competing with the mainstream crosstalk circle" have been placed in the three words "Guo Degang" Before. Until January this year, there was an explosion of high-intensity media interviews.
"We have a new column called "Cultural Grand View Garden". I heard that Guo Degang is very popular, so I am considering doing an interview with him." Phoenix TV editor Wei Fang went to see it on January 2 this year. Guo Degang's special performance, "I can't laugh for 5 minutes when listening to other crosstalk, but I can laugh after listening to 3 sentences of Guo Degang."
Guo Degang was in good condition that day, and the interview was also very successful. After the program was broadcast, station director Wang Jiyan was still unfinished. He felt that Guo Degang’s cross talk in the program was too little, “Who said the TV station wouldn’t take half an hour? Crosstalk?" It was decided that "Cultural Grand View Garden" would produce a solo show for Guo Degang during the Spring Festival, which would last for four days and last for one and a half hours each day - this was Phoenix TV's first time in several years.
Wang Jiyan personally arranged the broadcast: originally two recording machines were used for recording, but the number was increased to five; in order to make the picture beautiful, he also explained that a "rocker arm" must be used.
"Guo Degang did not mention any broadcast fees. In order to cooperate with our recording, he temporarily added a show on the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month." Jiang Youxi, producer of Phoenix TV's "Cultural Grand View Garden" said.
In fact, Guo Degang never interfered with live recording or video recording during his performances. The "tight wire" recorded each of his performances and uploaded them to the Internet. People who want to listen can download them for free at any time. It is this kind of communication method that allows more people to Many people know what Guo Degang is.
Originally Jiang Youxi was worried that the atmosphere would be lost due to the lack of audience for a temporary extra concert. Guo Degang patted his chest and said, "I'll take care of it." Just a few days before the performance, he posted a message online Posts to add event notifications.
The official recording of the program was at 1 noon, and the cameraman went to set up the scene at 6:30 in the morning. Unexpectedly, a large number of "wires" were guarding the entrance of Tianqiao Lemen as early as 5:30. When Jiang Youxi arrived at Tianqiao Le at 8 o'clock, he almost couldn't squeeze in.
"It was in the first row. I found that the old man never smiled." Guo Degang's apprentice quietly discussed this serious issue with Jiang Youxi. They all paid great attention to the reaction of the audience. Jiang Youxi looked at it and said to him: "This is Lin Zhaohua, the famous director of Renyi." She pointed to the couple next to her: "Those are Meng Jinghui and his wife." The apprentice smiled and said: "They don't stop. ”