Up close with the man behind Xue Buhui

TV comic turns out to be full of surprises when you sit down for a real-life chat

Do you know Xue Buhui? The 28-year-old single woman has different occupations, such as flight attendant, a waitress of a hot pot restaurant, a taxi driver and an intern doctor. She wears a fringed chin-length bob haircut and chronically discombobulated in her way of solving problems. Like her name indicates, she never learns to do the right thing.

You may have met her through a variety show, Tonight Parliaments, which was hosted by Jin Xing, one of the country's most popular TV hostess and aired by Shanghai Dragon TV from September to December of 2016. If so, you will never forget her.

In each show broadcast on weekends, the woman appears in an eight-minute comic sketch and the character was vividly brought to life by a 28-year-old actor, Zhang Haiyu, a man, who has quickly risen to fame as one of the freshest rising stars on screen.

In person, he's a quiet, soft-spoken and serious young man, very unlike his screen images.

He is sensitive as an actor but he says that he has no big ambition.

Since Tonight Parliaments, Zhang says, he has received lots of invitations from TV stations, film and TV series producers. But he turned most of them down.

"It's not about money and I am not afraid of being forgotten in this fast-paced industry. I have my own tempo and I want to take it slow," Zhang says.

In fact, he is busy lately because he has just released a rap piece, called The Song of Belt and Road Initiative, his first song, which was a collaboration with People's Daily on the occasion of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing this month.

Also, Zhang has the lead role - a car washer named Shi Feilou, working in Thailand - in the fifth season of the popular internet comic drama Two Idiots, now being broadcast by China's online video giant iQiyi. Besides promotions for the internet drama, he is also preparing for a movie project, about which no details have been revealed yet.

"For audiences, it's an overnight thing. But for me, it's a long process," says Zhang, sitting in a gallery located in outskirt of Beijing, recalling his "instant" success with on Tonight Parliaments.

This is not a complaint. For one thing, he doesn't consider the wait for success to be painful. For another, what he has achieved is just the beginning.

Rewarding experience

Born in Qingdao, a coastal city of Shandong province, Zhang had lots of hobbies as a child.

He studied classical guitar for two years and dreamed about becoming a professional athlete in basketball or table tennis.

But what attracted him most was acting. He recalls being good at mimicking singers and actors on TV from childhood. From high school, Zhang was determined to become an actor. But he wasn't accepted to be an acting major at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing.

In 2012, he graduated from the academy with a bachelor's degree of performance production.

He joined many competitions on campus, which allowed him to present himself onstage.

Before graduation, Zhang got his first break by performing five different minor roles in the Chinese version of the Broadway musical Avenue Q, which toured around China for over 100 performances.

The Tony Award-winning show is a puppet-filled comedy, which follows a group of adults struggling with their big city lives.

"When I auditioned for the roles, I competed with students who majored in musicals. I barely knew what a musical was then," says Zhang. "I guess I won the opportunity because I had a good sense of acting. The result turned out to be good."

He says Avenue Q was both exhausting and exciting. During each show, he kept running to change costumes and to interact with people in the audiences.

It was a rewarding experience, which taught Zhang to do improvisation onstage and polished his techniques of making audiences laugh.

However, he didn't continue his acting career after graduation. Instead, he worked at a performance production company in Beijing.

"I often doubt myself. The job with Avenue Q won lots of praise from my peers but I was not sure if it was just my good luck or my real talent in acting," Zhang says.

He spent a year with the production company before deciding to get serious as an actor. So he quit his job and joined in some small drama productions.

Making people laugh

In 2016, he got a phone call from the producer of Tonight Parliaments and made his debut performance in the role of Qingdao Dayi, or Qingdao Aunt, who is a middle-aged woman character speaking Qingdao dialect.

He teamed with famous Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming, and they won wide acclaim.

"Both of us came from Qingdao and the role of Qingdao Dayi is very successful. She is the most typical aunt I saw in my childhood, talkative, gossiping and warmhearted," says Huang, who later recruited Zhang to his own agent company.

The role of Qingdao Dayi was born in 2013, when Zhang discovered Renren, a social media platform on which people record their local dialects online.

He spoke some jokes with Qingdao dialect and soon received lots of attention.

Then he created the role of Xue Buhui, and paired with actor Jiang Yi, who is also a graduate of the Central Academy of Drama. Jiang plays the role of a man with bad luck man, who is frequently embarrassed by Xue.

"From the script to the images of the role, we started from nothing and kept on experimenting. I often looked at the mirror, trying on different wigs and making different facial expressions," Zhang says. "The process of giving birth to an 8-minute piece of work is very intensive because you have to make people laugh within this short period of time. Now, when I look at the performances in the show again, I feel that I could do a better job."

However, Zhang says that he doesn't want to repeat these characters though they have a stable fan bases.

"Comedy is changing," he says. "The appetite for more diverse stories is getting bigger."

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/27/2017 page17)