Zhao Benshan

Zhao Benshan is a Chinese comedian, actor, and director whose career connects northeastern folk performance with national television entertainment. Trained in regional performance traditions, including errenzhuan—a form combining singing, dialogue, dance, and comic acting—he became nationally known after appearing in the sketch “Matchmaking” on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala in 1990. His subsequent performances made northeastern speech and rural characters familiar features of the annual broadcast. (cctv.com)

Zhao’s work extends beyond short television sketches to films, serial television, theatrical production, and performer training. His television projects include <i>Liu Laogen</i>, <i>Ma Dashuai</i>, and <i>Xiangcun Aiqing</i>, commonly translated as <i>Country Love</i>; his theatrical activities include the Liu Laogen Stage venues associated with errenzhuan. These activities link regional stage traditions, ensemble comedy, and screen portrayals of rural life. In January 2013, he announced his withdrawal from sketch performance while explaining that he intended to devote more time to television and other productions. (en.chinaculture.org)

Early Life and Regional Apprenticeship

Zhao Benshan grew up in Lianhua village, in the Kaiyuan area of Liaoning province in northeastern China. His family belonged to a rural community, and his childhood was marked by poverty and the early loss of parental care. His first sustained instruction in performance came from a blind paternal uncle, with whom he began learning as a young child. This was a household-based apprenticeship in local performing skills rather than training at a specialist drama school. The uncle provided both practical instruction and a model of behavior that Zhao later recalled drawing upon in his early stage work. (chinanews.com)

His training encompassed instrumental accompaniment, singing, and the manipulation of performance props. He learned the erhu, a two-stringed bowed instrument, and the suona, a wind instrument, while developing particular proficiency on the sanxian, a three-stringed plucked instrument. CCTV’s biographical account also lists handkerchief tossing, playing shouyuzi percussion, singing short popular tunes, and performing xiaomao, the short songs associated with errenzhuan. His apprenticeship therefore involved a range of musical and physical skills, not simply comic dialogue. Instrument playing, vocal performance, rhythmic accompaniment, and handkerchief work were all documented parts of the regional repertoire he learned. (cctv.com)

Zhao’s recollections of childhood also describe the material circumstances surrounding this instruction. In a CCTV interview, he remembered taking roasted corn to school when other pupils brought meals, and receiving food through a classmate whose family subsequently helped care for him. In the same interview, he connected his first prominent portrayal of a blind character directly to his uncle: familiarity with the older man’s movements and everyday conduct supplied an observational basis for the role. These recollections document two distinct aspects of his upbringing—dependence on support within the rural community and learning through close observation of an experienced performer. (cctv.com)

At seventeen, Zhao joined a commune arts publicity team. He subsequently entered the amateur troupe at Weiyuan and was later seconded to the Xifeng County troupe, where he performed errenzhuan in leading roles. His progression thus passed through several organizational settings: a commune performance team, local amateur theatre, and a county-level company. In 1982, he entered the Tieling County troupe, becoming a leading actor and taking responsibility for its artistic work. That year’s provincial presentation of Shuai Sanxian, in which he played the blind character Zhang Zhi, marked an important point in his regional recognition. In 1986, he transferred to the Tieling municipal folk-art troupe, moving from county-level employment into a city-level professional company. (cctv.com)

Errenzhuan and the Early Stage Career

Zhao’s early repertoire belonged to errenzhuan, a northeastern Chinese performance tradition combining singing, spoken dialogue, dance, comic acting, and prop manipulation. Its characteristic paired format brings together performers representing a chou, or comic role, and a dan, or female role, conventionally performed by a man and a woman. They alternate speech and song rather than presenting an exclusively spoken comedy routine. Silk handkerchiefs and fans are performance implements: their spinning and manipulation form part of the performers’ technical repertoire. Although errenzhuan supplied skills used in Zhao’s later television comedy, it is not synonymous with the short television sketch, or xiaopin. Singing and danced storytelling are integral to the regional form, not simply incidental additions to a comic scene. (chinadaily.com.cn)

The tradition’s techniques are commonly described as “four skills and one specialty”: singing, speaking, acting, and dancing, together with specialized handling of props. Spoken passages, known as shuokou, include comic interjections and verbal exchanges; acting uses representational gestures rather than depending on elaborate scenery. Errenzhuan also encompasses forms beyond the familiar duet. A solo singing-and-dancing performance is called danchutou, while lachangxi presents a short play in which performers take identifiable dramatic roles. This distinction concerns dramatic organization, not merely the number of people on stage: the flexible movement between narration and impersonation in paired errenzhuan differs from the more sustained characterization of lachangxi. (cctv.com)

Zhao’s important early success came in Shuai Sanxian (摔三弦), a lachangxi written jointly by Li Zhongtang and Cui Kai. At Liaoning’s first provincial showcase of short rural plays in 1982, he played Zhang Zhi, a blind man. The production received a first-class performance award and brought Zhao recognition within the regional theatrical circuit. The work therefore belongs to his career as a performer of musical regional drama, rather than to the sequence of television sketches for which he later became nationally known. Its title refers to the sanxian, the three-stringed instrument in which Zhao had acquired particular proficiency during his early training. In the same year, he entered the Tieling County troupe as a leading performer and took responsibility for its artistic work; his transfer to the Tieling Municipal Folk Art Troupe followed in 1986. (cctv.com)

Another major regional production was Da Guan Deng (大观灯), performed with Pan Changjiang. Their partnership developed in the mid-1980s, with Zhao portraying a blind character and Pan a character with a walking impairment. The pairing organized the comedy around the interaction between two distinct stage roles rather than a solo routine. CCTV’s biographical account records more than 200 performances together in Shenyang during this period. Alongside Shuai Sanxian, this production established Zhao’s reputation through repeated live theatrical appearances before his national television-sketch career. His early screen work also retained the regional dramatic repertoire: Shuai Sanxian was made into a television opera film in the mid-1980s, preceding his later identification with the Spring Festival Gala. (k.sina.com.cn)

Entry into National Television

In 1987, Jiang Kun brought the China Broadcasting Rap and Singing Troupe to Tieling, where Zhao Benshan was an actor in the municipal folk-art troupe. The local company arranged a special performance in a gymnasium for the visiting artists, including Jiang and Ma Ji. After seeing Zhao perform, Jiang offered to recommend him to China Central Television (CCTV). On returning to Beijing, he brought Zhao to the attention of television director Yuan Dewang. This professional recommendation connected Zhao’s regional stage career with the selection process for the Spring Festival Gala, rather than securing an immediate broadcast appearance. (news.cctv.com)

Two unsuccessful attempts preceded his debut. For the 1988 gala, directed by Deng Zaijun, Zhao recorded Tiao Dashen, a regional dramatic piece combining singing and speech, for the Harbin segment. The recording was withdrawn because its sound did not meet the production requirements. In 1989, he took Xiangqin (“Matchmaking”) to Beijing, but it was not selected. CCTV’s retrospective account attributes the rejection to the production team’s uncertainty about whether its northeastern dialogue and rustic presentation suited the gala. Neither preparation constituted an appearance in the transmitted programme: Zhao’s first CCTV gala performance came in 1990. (news.cctv.com)

“Matchmaking” paired Zhao with Huang Xiaojuan and was credited to writer Zhang Chao; CCTV’s retrospective catalogue lists a running time of 16 minutes 55 seconds. Zhao played an older rural man known as Xu Laonian, opposite Huang’s Ma Ya. The two meet ostensibly to arrange a match between their children, but recognize each other as former sweethearts. Their conversation shifts from parental matchmaking to the possibility of renewing their own relationship. The premise thus places older people’s affection at the centre of a compact television comedy rather than treating them merely as intermediaries in a younger couple’s romance. (cctv.com)

The sketch retained northeastern speech rather than replacing it with an exclusively standardized broadcast register. CCTV’s later account identifies northern Liaoning dialect and colloquial expressions as characteristic resources in Zhao’s sketches, beginning with “Matchmaking.” The contrast with the reservations recorded during the 1989 selection process is significant: the regional language that had raised doubts became part of his recognizable national television persona. CCTV’s archive describes the 1990 performance with Huang as the breakthrough that established his recognition among audiences across China. (news.cctv.com)

The gala subsequently provided a recurring broadcast setting for Zhao’s short sketches. Early appearances included Xiao Jiu Lao Le in 1991 and Wo Xiang You Ge Jia (“I Want a Home”), again with Huang, in 1992. These successive productions established a continuing association between his comedy and Spring Festival television viewing, while allowing changes in characters and partners. CCTV’s programme history describes him as one of the gala’s most anticipated performers over the following two decades; this describes a sustained broadcast relationship, not an uninterrupted record of annual participation. (big5.cctv.com)

Principal Sketches and Creative Partnerships

Zhao’s collaboration with Fan Wei and Gao Xiumin placed the same three performers in changing relationships rather than a single continuing set of characters. In “New Year Greetings” (Bainian, 1998), Zhao and Gao played fish farmers visiting a township official, played by Fan, because they feared losing their fishpond contract. Their anxiety about his authority structured the encounter: apparent news of his departure from office encouraged familiarity, before the discovery that he had been promoted restored their deference. The Spring Festival Gala sketch was written by He Qingkui and Zhang Qingdong and directed by Zhang Huizhong, distinguishing the trio’s performance partnership from the work’s writing and production credits. (vistopia.com.cn)

“Selling Crutches” (Mai Guai, 2001) reorganized the trio around a fraudulent sale. Zhao played a persuasive swindler, Gao his wife, and Fan a passing cook whom Zhao convinced that his healthy legs required crutches. The transaction ended with the cook surrendering money and his bicycle for the unnecessary equipment. “Selling a Car” (Mai Che, 2002) brought the performers back for a sequel in which the cook again encountered the sellers, and Zhao used purported tests and diagnoses to undermine his resistance. The continuity lay in the adversarial relationship between seller and customer, unlike the official–petitioner arrangement of Bainian. CCTV credits list He Qingkui, Gong Kaibo, and Zhang Qingdong as writers of Mai Guai, with Yin Xingjun responsible for its staging; Mai Che credits He and Gong as writers and Ma Lijuan as director. (ent.sina.com.cn)

With Song Dandan, Zhao developed a separate partnership centered on older characters and their conversational disagreements. “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” (Zuotian Jintian Mingtian, 1999) featured Zhao and Song alongside television presenter Cui Yongyuan, with the elderly couple Heitu and Baiyun participating in a television interview. Their recollections and exchanges supplied the material within Cui’s questioning framework. In “The Hourly Worker” (Zhongdiangong, 2000), the two actors instead appeared in a domestic encounter: Zhao’s rural character, lonely after moving to his son’s city home, received a paid visitor played by Song but misunderstood the service she provided. Both sketches were directed by Zhang Huizhong; He Qingkui wrote the 1999 work, while the 2000 script also credited Gong Kaibo and Zhang Hong. (cctv.com)

“Not Short of Money” (Bu Cha Qian, 2009) combined a restaurant encounter with an aspiring-performer storyline. Zhao’s character invited Star Boulevard presenter Bi Fujian to a meal in order to promote his granddaughter, played by Maomao, also known as Yadan. Lacking money for an expensive dinner, he arranged for the waiter, played by Xiaoshenyang, to declare costly dishes unavailable. The waiter’s own wish to enter the talent show turned the meal into an impromptu audition, giving both younger performers opportunities to sing. Zhao connected the restaurant negotiations and talent-show ambitions, while Bi supplied the recognizable television-host role. The broadcast became Xiaoshenyang’s prominent introduction to the gala audience and brought him widespread attention during 2009. (yule.sohu.com)

In “Deskmates” (Tongzhuo de Ni, 2011), Zhao appeared with Wang Xiaoli, Li Lin, and Xiaoshenyang. Wang’s character visited his former school desk partner, played by Li, accompanied by his son, played by Xiaoshenyang; an old letter provoked misunderstandings involving her husband, played by Zhao. The reunion therefore distributed the action across two generations and four performers. The sketch credited Yin Qi as its sole writer and Zhao as director as well as actor. Yin’s contemporary interview distinguished that sole writing credit from his earlier shared credit on Bu Cha Qian: the recognizable performing ensemble was not identical to the credited authorial team. (wapbaike.baidu.com)

Language, Characterization, and Comic Technique

Zhao’s spoken comedy is rooted more specifically in northern Liaoning than the broad label “northeastern dialect” suggests. A 2003 CCTV profile identified his speech as Liaobei fangyan—northern Liaoning dialect—and emphasized his use of colloquial quips drawn from everyday life. Regional speech functions within conversational exchanges rather than simply as an accent attached to a joke. In “Selling a Car” (Mai Che, 2002), for example, the colloquial verb huyou, referring here to deceptive persuasion, names the activity around which the encounter is organized: one character attempts to control how another interprets his own words and actions. These examples establish a particular regional performance register, not a uniform description of speech throughout northeastern China. (news.cctv.com)

Deception in “Selling Crutches” (Mai Guai, 2001), performed with Gao Xiumin and Fan Wei, depends on the contrast between Zhao’s assured seller and Fan’s increasingly uncertain prospective customer. The seller presents a healthy man’s legs as defective, making the customer’s own movements serve as supposed evidence for the claim. In the sequel, “Selling a Car,” Fan’s character tries to demonstrate his recovery by walking, running, and offering further physical feats. Zhao’s character interrupts and recasts this display as evidence of another problem. Read as a comic mechanism, the reversal lies in the seller’s control of interpretation: even resistance to the deception becomes material for renewing it. (ent.cctv.com)

Repetition and misunderstanding produce a different rhythm in “The Hourly Worker” (Zhongdiangong, 2000), with Song Dandan. Zhao’s character attempts to repair an unflattering comparison between two women, but successive rearrangements of his wording preserve the insult rather than remove it. Each apparent correction therefore supplies another punch line. Authority is similarly unstable in “Heart Trouble” (Xinbing, 2003): the fictional doctor Zhao Dabao confidently counsels another man, then collapses after learning that he himself has unexpectedly obtained one million yuan. The contrast between fluent advice and sudden incapacity creates irony through action rather than through a separate explanatory joke. (cctv.com)

Characterization also depends on visible and audible cues. CCTV’s retrospective singled out Zhao’s askew cap and contrasting mouth position as recognizable features, while distinguishing the whip-bearing elderly character in “Three Whip Lashes” (San Bianzi, 1996). Costume and props thus identify particular stage figures, rather than documenting the performer’s personal habits. Timing can unsettle those figures: in “Three Whip Lashes,” an old man condemns the assumption that everything requires money, pauses, and then asks how much he will actually receive. The pause separates an apparently principled declaration from its compromising reversal. Regional voice, facial gesture, costume, and the placement of the final question work together to establish—and then disturb—the character’s apparent position. (cctv.com)

Production testimony documents a continuing role for improvisation and responsiveness to partners. In an August 30, 2023 interview about Quedaomen Chuanqi, director Tang Tiejun distinguished Zhao’s delivery and performance as the stern martial artist Ximen Changhai from those of his timid cook brother, Ximen Changzai. Tang identified Changzai’s remark while repairing straw sandals as an improvised addition. In Yangcheng Evening News on September 1, actress Li Xiaohe, who played Ximen Rou, reported that Zhao helped her rehearse but did not necessarily retain the original wording during filming, requiring her to respond immediately and sustain the exchange. Wen Song likewise described cast members supplying one another with comic openings. These accounts identify improvisation as interaction within a prepared scene, rather than evidence that the production dispensed with scripts. (m.bjnews.com.cn)

Rural Television Series

Liu Laogen began broadcasting on CCTV-1 on March 5, 2002. The original 18-episode series, produced by the China Television Production Center, featured Zhao as both director and the actor playing its title character, alongside Gao Xiumin and Fan Wei. Its central subject was rural entrepreneurship: Liu invests in a business in his home region and develops tourism as an alternative source of income. Rather than presenting village life solely through agricultural work, the story follows a farmer’s efforts to establish and operate a commercial enterprise. Zhao’s established sketch partners thus entered a continuing dramatic narrative in which business decisions and personal relationships developed across multiple episodes. (chinanews.com)

Liu Laogen II, which premiered on CCTV-1 on February 4, 2003, shifted the emphasis from starting a business to managing its expansion. Liu’s Longquan resort has grown into an enterprise combining holiday accommodation, catering, entertainment, and commercial agriculture. Its difficulties include entrenched family management, inadequate legal and managerial knowledge, competition from the Fengwu resort, and a fraudulent investment. CCTV credited Zhao as director and He Qingkui as screenwriter, distinguishing their responsibilities. The franchise resumed with Liu Laogen 3 in February 2020: Zhao returned as the lead actor and was credited as chief director, while Li Chunxiao directed. The continuation placed the resort under the management of Liu’s son Dakui, making succession within the family business a central concern. (cctv.com)

Ma Dashuai, first broadcast in 2004, moved the rural protagonist into an urban setting. Zhao directed and played the title character, whose attempts to settle in a city foreground employment, insecurity, and the gap between rural expectations and urban circumstances. Fan Wei’s Fan Debiao supplied a second principal character, with misunderstandings and misplaced confidence generating encounters between the two men. This differed from Liu Laogen: the protagonist was not primarily building a tourism enterprise at home but trying to secure a livelihood away from the countryside. Ma Dashuai II began its CCTV broadcast on March 18, 2005, again with Zhao directing and starring. The third installment followed in 2006; its plot included Ma’s dangerous work cleaning high-rise windows after the loss of his school and headmaster’s position. (csm.com.cn)

Xiangcun Aiqing (Country Love) adopted an ensemble structure rather than organizing village life around Zhao’s title character. Its first 30-episode installment began broadcasting on CCTV-1 on September 30, 2006. The principal romance joined university graduate Xie Yongqiang and Wang Xiaomeng, a young woman working in a family tofu business, while surrounding characters introduced competing marriage expectations and family pressures. Zhao appeared as the businessman Wang Dana, and Fan Wei played his son Wang Musheng; CCTV described their appearances as guest roles. The production drew on performers with errenzhuan backgrounds, including Wang Xiaoli, who played Liu Neng, and returned screen collaborators such as Wang Xiaobao and Tang Jianjun. (cctv.com)

Zhao’s responsibilities in Country Love varied by installment. The original series was directed by Zhang Huizhong, with Zhao serving as producer and artistic director as well as appearing on screen. For the third installment, Xiangcun Aiqing Gushi, first broadcast on February 16, 2010, CCTV credited Zhao and Xu Zhengchao as directors and Zhang Ji as screenwriter. Its continuing stories followed Xiaomeng and Yongqiang’s expanding businesses and the village’s joint development of a hot-spring resort with the Wang business group. By 2014 the franchise had reached its seventh installment, allowing recurring households and intergenerational disputes—not Zhao’s individual character alone—to sustain the serial narrative. (dianshiju.cctv.com)

Film Acting

In Zhang Yimou’s Happy Times (2000), Zhao Benshan plays Zhao, an impoverished, aging bachelor who pretends to be wealthy in order to marry. His friend Li proposes converting an abandoned bus into a place that couples can rent for privacy, the “Happy Times Hotel.” The prospective bride then insists that Zhao employ her blind stepdaughter, Wu Ying, played by Dong Jie. This arrangement turns his initial deception into a responsibility for another person’s welfare. The film is adapted from Mo Yan’s novella Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh, with a screenplay credited to Gui Zi; Zhao’s principal contribution is his leading performance, rather than authorship or direction. (sonyclassics.com)

The central relationship in Happy Times develops through an increasingly elaborate simulation of employment: Zhao and his friends arrange a makeshift massage room and impersonate customers so that Wu Ying can believe she has a paying job. The producer’s synopsis describes genuine empathy emerging beneath these deceptions. Although the role retains comic mechanisms familiar from Zhao’s sketches—false claims, improvised explanations, and the difficulty of sustaining a lie—the feature-length narrative gives those actions continuing emotional consequences. Zhao is not simply a confident trickster: his character’s limited means and growing attachment to Wu Ying make the deception both protective and precarious. This distinction rests on the particular fictional character, not on treating the film as an extension of the performer’s biography. (pressman.com)

Zhao again carries the narrative in Zhang Yang’s Getting Home (2007), playing an impoverished migrant construction worker who undertakes to return his deceased friend Liu to his home region for burial. Liu, played by Hong Qiwen, dies after drinking with him. Unable to afford adequate transportation, Zhao travels with the body and repeatedly devises ways to keep moving. The episodic road-film structure brings him into contact with a truck driver, beekeepers, a lonely wealthy man, and a homeless woman played by Song Dandan. These encounters place physical comedy and deception within a sustained obligation to the dead companion: the corpse is simultaneously the practical obstacle around which scenes are constructed and the reason for the journey. Festival exhibitor Subway Cinema identifies Zhao as the central performer and describes the film’s combination of friendship, hardship, and black comedy. (subwaycinema.com) His performance received a Best Leading Actor nomination at the 44th Golden Horse Awards in 2007, rather than an acting win. (goldenhorse.org.tw)

In Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster, released in mainland China on January 8, 2013, Zhao plays Ding Lianshan in a supporting appearance within the martial-arts ensemble, rather than a narrative-leading role comparable to those in Happy Times and Getting Home. The British Film Institute’s screening credits identify the character by name. The Hong Kong Film Archive’s discussion singles out Ding’s pipe-lighting scene as an expression of humility, locating the appearance within the film’s philosophical treatment of martial arts. Its narrative function therefore extends beyond merely displaying a familiar comedy performer in a cameo. (cctv.cntv.cn)

Selective filmography

Theatrical Production and Performer Training

The first Liu Laogen Stage opened in Shenyang on April 1, 2003, in a leased, 600-seat theatre on Zhongjie, opposite the Shenyang Imperial Palace. Its name drew on Zhao’s television series Liu Laogen, linking an established screen character to a permanent theatrical venue. The Liaoning Folk Art Troupe, organized under Zhao in April 2003, supplied its performers. Expansion subsequently took the brand beyond Shenyang: an April 2009 report recorded eight venues in cities including Changchun, Harbin, and Tianjin, with more than sixty contracted performing pairs drawn from the troupe. This was a network of resident commercial theatres, rather than simply a touring company. (finance.cctv.cn)

The stages formed part of an organization connecting live performance with television production. A 2009 account identified it as Benshan Media and described troupe members appearing both in the theatre chain and in company-produced series such as Ma Dashuai and Country Love, as well as a Liaoning Television programme bearing the Liu Laogen Stage name. Shared performers and backstage resources reduced duplication between these activities; the account also described theatre receipts as a source of financing for screen production. Recruitment included competitions held in 2001 and 2004, alongside recommendations and the selection of established regional performers. (finance.cctv.cn)

Personal apprenticeship and university study provided distinct, sometimes overlapping routes into this production system. On February 2, 2004, Liaoning University and Zhao’s Liaoning Folk Art Troupe formally inaugurated the Benshan Art Academy as a full-time constituent college of the university. Its announced fields included screen performance, folk-art performance, directing, and dramatic and screen writing, with an initial recruitment target of 100 students from the three northeastern provinces. The founding arrangements included a practical-training base financed by Zhao, teaching in performance and artistic creation, and courses delivered by invited scholars and practitioners. This placed training associated with errenzhuan within undergraduate education, alongside the troupe’s apprenticeship relationships. (edu.cn)

The academy’s first admissions illustrate how those routes intersected. In July 2004, it reported enrolling 100 students, including 49 in screen performance. Gao Ming’e, already known as Guiying in Ma Dashuai, entered the folk-art programme; Zhao’s apprentice Yan Guangming and his performing partner and wife, Zhao Haiyan, also enrolled to undertake further study. Cao Jiarui and Meng Zhen, who had played Xiaoyun and Xiaocui in the same series, entered screen performance. The academy’s vice-dean stated that students would receive opportunities to participate in the Ma Dashuai sequel. Training therefore also accommodated working actors returning to formal study, rather than serving only beginners awaiting their first screen roles. (ent.sina.com.cn)

The urban stage programme was broader than paired errenzhuan alone: the Shenyang venue presented short comic sketches and northeastern song-and-dance numbers as well. Zhao promoted the designation “green errenzhuan” for presentations that removed sexually explicit and coarse material to address a broader public audience. These were documented programming and content policies within his theatre operation, not evidence that its mixed bill represented every form of the regional tradition. (finance.cctv.cn)

Withdrawal from Gala Sketches and Later Screen Work

Zhao’s absence from the 2012 CCTV Spring Festival Gala followed rehearsals for that year’s broadcast, rather than an announcement of retirement. On January 19, 2012, CCTV issued a statement saying that he had prepared his contribution and attended several rehearsals but had withdrawn because of exhaustion. His withdrawal from preparations for the 2013 gala was a separate event. On January 18, 2013, CCTV announced that Zhao considered the sketch under development insufficiently close to his expectations and had decided not to participate. These statements gave different explanations for the two withdrawals; neither announced an end to his screen career. (chinadaily.com.cn)

On January 30, 2013, while recording a programme hosted by Guo Degang, Zhao announced that he would withdraw from sketch performance. He extended the announcement beyond CCTV, saying that he did not intend to perform sketches at provincial television stations’ Spring Festival celebrations the following year. At the same time, he said that he wanted to devote more time to his works and to the television dramas and comedies produced by his company, including appearing in them. The announcement therefore concerned a particular performance format and its holiday-broadcast circuit, not retirement from acting altogether. His participation in provincial gala productions that season also distinguishes the January 30 announcement from the earlier decision to withdraw from CCTV’s programme. (chinanews.com)

His continuing screen work included both Country Love and Liu Laogen. In Country Love 6, broadcast in February 2013, he appeared as Wang Dana, whose dealings with Liu Datou and Wang Tianlai formed part of the ensemble’s business and domestic disputes. In Liu Laogen 3 (2020), he returned as the title character alongside Fan Wei as Yaoxiazi. The production distinguished his responsibilities as chief director and lead actor from Li Chunxiao’s directing credit; its credited writers were Yin Shouguo, Li Haiyang, and Yang Xuehui. These were continuing dramatic roles and production-specific responsibilities, rather than a resumption of his annual CCTV sketch appearances. (epaper.qlwb.com.cn)

Quedaomen Chuanqi, also distributed under the English title *Legend of the Undercover Chef*, began streaming on Tencent Video on August 18, 2023. Directed by Tang Tiejun and Wu Di, it placed Zhao in a fictional martial-arts setting rather than the contemporary villages of his rural franchises. He played both Ximen Changhai, the head of the Quedaomen martial-arts school, and Ximen Changzai, his cook brother. Changhai undertakes a secret mission against raiders and their collaborators and arranges for Changzai to impersonate him, making the substitute leader’s lack of martial expertise a central source of comic complications. (bjnews.com.cn)

The series retained an ensemble associated with Zhao’s earlier productions, including Song Xiaobao, Song Xiaofeng, Wensong, Cheng Ye, and Yang Shulin. Much of Zhao’s screen time was devoted to Changzai rather than the accomplished fighter Changhai. The setting combined period costumes and martial-arts conventions with contemporary comic subjects: one storyline concerned a talent competition whose financial backers offered guaranteed rankings in exchange for payments. Tang Tiejun told Yangcheng Evening News that Zhao had initially preferred to leave the role to another performer and agreed to act after repeated discussions. His participation was thus documented as a new television acting assignment, not a return to gala sketches. (ep.ycwb.com)

Awards and Documented Cultural Significance

Zhao’s early theatrical recognition concerned regional productions rather than nationally televised sketches. In 1982, Shuai Sanxian, in which he played the blind character Zhang Zhi, received a first-class performance prize at Liaoning Province’s first showcase of short rural plays. CCTV’s biographical account identifies the distinction as an award to the production; it should not be recast as a separate best-actor award for Zhao. The work belonged to lachangxi, a regional dramatic form, placing this recognition within northeastern theatre before his national television career. (cctv.com)

His later gala awards operated through a different mechanism: CCTV’s audience selection of favourite broadcast programmes. In the 2009 “My Favourite Spring Festival Gala Programmes” selection, “Not Short of Money” (Bu Cha Qian) received first prize in the sketch category, with the results announced during the Lantern Festival broadcast on February 9. The winning programme was an ensemble performance by Zhao, Bi Fujian, Xiaoshenyang, and Maomao, not a solo acting competition. In 2011, “Deskmates” (Tongzhuo de Ni) likewise received the sketch-category first prize. That year’s selection combined votes from CCTV’s website, its public-response platform, and China Television News, and the awards broadcast took place on February 17. These were programme-level audience-vote distinctions: the frequently accompanying press label “sketch king” was not the formal name of an award category. (news.cctv.com)

Recognition in film must also distinguish nomination from victory. At the 44th Golden Horse Awards in 2007, Zhao was nominated for Best Leading Actor for Getting Home (Luoye Guigen), directed by Zhang Yang. The award went to Tony Leung Chiu-wai for Lust, Caution. This nomination concerned Zhao’s performance in a feature film and was institutionally separate from both provincial theatrical prizes and CCTV’s favourite-programme voting. (taipeitimes.com)

Zhao’s documented association with Spring Festival viewing rests on identifiable broadcasts and their subsequent circulation, rather than on an assumed universal audience response. CCTV’s retrospective “Those Years, the Spring Festival Galas We Watched Together” includes his sketches within its record of shared holiday television memories and identifies the restaurant-and-talent-show scenario of “Not Short of Money.” Such retrospectives and the favourite-programme awards document how northeastern regional comedy entered the recurring national setting of the Spring Festival Gala. They do not establish that every viewer preferred Zhao or that his regional speech represented all northeastern speakers. (cctv.com)

Scholarship has examined this circulation through language, regional identity, and rural representation. In her 2008 Cornell doctoral dissertation, Signifying the Local: Media Productions Rendered in Local Languages in Mainland China Since 2000, Jin Liu interprets Zhao’s dialect performances as encounters between rural vernacular expression and authoritative broadcast discourse. Her analysis of “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” focuses on the rural couple’s literal interpretation of the host’s title: their answers about specific days unsettle his intended formula of past, present, and future. Liu reads the exchange as a temporary reversal of linguistic authority, not merely a misunderstanding. She also connects Zhao’s sketches and rural television dramas with errenzhuan’s movement from village performance spaces into mainstream broadcasting, and discusses Liu Laogen and Ma Dashuai in relation to entrepreneurship and rural-to-urban migration. These are attributed interpretations of his work, rather than biographical claims about his intentions. (studylib.net)

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16. 赵本山今年捧徒弟 小品《不差钱》亮相春晚彩排yule.sohu.com
17. 央视春晚赵本山扩张“地盘” 放飞小沈阳cctv.com
18. 同桌的你（2011年尹琪编剧的小品）wapbaike.baidu.com
19. 《同桌的你》编剧：赵本山太累了 靠安眠药睡觉chinanews.com
20. 2001年春节联欢晚会小品 赵本山 高秀敏 范伟《卖拐》ent.cctv.com
21. 2000年春节联欢晚会小品 赵本山 宋丹丹《钟点工》ent.cctv.com
22. 《鹊刀门传奇》导演：赵本山是最合适演西门兄弟的人m.bjnews.com.cn
23. 《鹊刀门传奇》：武侠版乡村爱情ep.ycwb.com
24. 赵本山"关东派喜剧"《刘老根》今起央视播出chinanews.com
25. 赵本山春节贺岁 “刘老根”又出新传cctv.com
26. 《刘老根》(Ⅱ)cctv.com
27. 重启喜剧IP欲打造长寿剧 《刘老根》离长寿剧还有多远chinanews.com
28. 焦点研究 RESEARCH FOCUScsm.com.cn
29. Decoding Zhao Benshanen.chinaculture.org
30. 马大帅2tv.cctv.com
31. 马大帅3iqiyi.com
32. 电视剧《乡村爱情》将在央视一套黄金时间播出cctv.com
33. 三十集电视剧《乡村爱情》主要人物表cctv.com
34. “五个一工程”获奖电视剧《乡村爱情》tvguide.cctv.com
35. Happy Times Pressbooksonyclassics.com
36. Sony Pictures Classics Non-Theatrical Cataloguesonyclassics.com
37. Happy Times — Pressman Filmpressman.com
38. Getting Home — Subway Cinemasubwaycinema.com
39. 台北金馬影展 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival: 2007 Awardsgoldenhorse.org.tw
40. Film “The Grandmaster”, Center Stagecctv.cntv.cn
41. The Grandmaster (Yi dai zong shi): BFI Screening Notesbfidatadigipres.github.io
42. Hong Kong Film Archive ProFolio 109filmarchive.gov.hk
43. 赵本山“转”大产业链finance.cctv.cn
44. 刘老根大舞台扎根北京 不惧德云社竞争盼同进步ent.sina.cn
45. 辽宁大学本山艺术学院成立-中国教育edu.cn
46. 本山艺术学院录取结束 小云、小翠金榜题名ent.sina.com.cn
47. 赵本山宣布退出小品舞台 两退春晚成导火线(组图)chinanews.com
48. 新京报：《鹊刀门传奇》报道bjnews.com.cn
49. 《鹊刀门传奇》：打造东北武侠世界ep.ycwb.com
50. 赵本山领奖落泪 感言“终把徒弟送上春晚”news.cctv.com
51. 那些年，我们一起看的春晚cctv.com
52. 視頻]2011央視元宵晚會：最受歡迎的春晚節目揭曉big5.cctv.com
53. 2011年元宵晚会暨“郎酒红花郎杯”我最喜爱的春节联欢晚会优秀节目颁奖晚会成功举办cctv.com
54. The 44th Golden Horse Awards nominations and winnerstaipeitimes.com