Recently, the Fudan original drama Chen Wangdao, depicting the story of the late president of Fudan University Chen Wangdao, was performed in Xianghui Hall for the freshmen from Renzhong College. The play has drawn an audience of more than 700 people.
Chen Wangdao, the distinguished Marxist, linguistic and educator, is recognized as the first person who translated the complete Manifesto of the Communist Party into Chinese and one of the earliest founders of the Shanghai Communist Group, contributing to the dissemination of Communism and Marxism in China. As an outstanding rhetorician, he also pushed forward the modernization and normalization of linguistics in China.
The drama depicts the life of Chen Wangdao who studied in Japan when he was young, the experience of which brought him into contact with Marxist ideas, and later returned to China, where he dedicated his whole life to education and revolution.
In 1919, Chen became a teacher at Zhejiang Provincial No.1 Normal School and participated in the May Fourth Movement. He then started to teach at Fudan University in 1920. During his teaching at Fudan, Chen promoted Mandarin as the preferred spoken language and set up various linguistic courses. In 1952, Chen began to serve as the president of Fudan University and over the years, he made great contribution to the development of Fudan.
Debuted in 2017, the play was created by Renzhong College. This year, the entire cast was made up of Fudan faculty and students. The director Liu Yilin said, “The audience can easily feel the sincerity from the simple and unadorned acting style of the students.”
Renzhong College is not the only one that puts on stage an original drama. The other four residential colleges—Zhide, Tengfei, Keqing and Xide—are all producing their own dramas featuring the late presidents of Fudan University. These plays will successively come up to the stage as a part of the educational activity.
