Source: PEKING REVIEW Vol. IV , No. 32, August 11, 1961
China mourns the passing of Mei Lan-fang. The nation’s foremost actor in the Peking opera tradition died of coronary arteriosclerotic heart disease on August 8 in Peking. He was 67 years old.
Mei Lan-fang was a people’s deputy to the National People’s Congress, a Standing Committee member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Vice-Chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, Vice-Chairman of the Union of Chinese Stage Artists, President of the Chinese Opera Institute and Director of the China Peking Opera Theatre. He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party. With more than 50 years of stage experience behind him, Mei Lan-fang was the most distinguished exponent of Peking opera. He devoted his whole life to the development of the arts of the people. His death is a great loss to the nation’s art.
Premier Chou En-lai and other Party and government leaders were among those who visited him during his last illness. A 61-member funeral committee has been set up. It includes the Premier and prominent leaders of the art world and is headed by Vice-Premier Chen Yi. A memorial meeting was held on August 10.
/Electric Power Aids Agriculture
Source: PEKING REVIEW Vol. IV , No. 32, August 11, 1961
Electric power is playing a steadily increasing role in the development of agriculture. Since the beginning of the year, power used for agriculture in Shansi Province, for instance, has increased by more than 100 per cent compared with the same period last year. It is a big weapon in the current anti-drought fight.
Not long ago this column mentioned the big electrically powered pumping station network that is being built in the Pearl River Delta in Kwangtung Province in the south. Last week, reports came in of the building of more such networks.
In Shanghai, one such network has just been completed and commissioned. Capable of watering 225,000 mu of farmland, it serves five neighbouring counties which supply the big industrial city with vegetables.
On the outskirts of Nanking, in Kiang-su Province, a big new power-operated pumping station last week started pumping over a million cubic metres of water daily from the Yangtse to the Chinhuai River, providing irrigation for 200,000 mu of farmland.
By the end of May this year, Hopei Province in north China had expanded its power-operated irrigation by 19 per cent as compared with last year.
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