page_title: Chen Liting
section_title: Put Down Your Whip
hierarchical_section_title: Chen Liting / Put Down Your Whip
caption_attribution_description: English: Put Down Your Whip, 1939 oil painting by Xu Beihong, portraying actress Wang Ying's performance of the eponymous play.
context_page_description: Chen Liting was a Chinese playwright, drama and film director, screenwriter, and film theorist. He was one of the most prominent film directors and screenwriters in pre-Communist China, together with Shi Dongshan, Cai Chusheng, and Zheng Junli. His most famous film was Women Side by Side.
  Chen was abandoned as an infant, and then lost his both foster parents during early childhood. Before becoming a film director, Chen worked mainly in drama. His patriotic play Put Down Your Whip was highly influential and performed countless times during the Japanese invasion of China. During the war he also made a famous staging of the play Qu Yuan, and wrote one of the first Chinese books on film theory.
  After the early 1950s, Chen's attempts at filmmaking were repeatedly thwarted by the PRC government for political reasons. He worked as general manager of Tianma Film Studio before being imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. After his rehabilitation at the end of the period, he spent three years on the historical film Da Feng Ge, but retired after that film was also cancelled due to politics.
context_section_description: After university, Chen worked as a primary school teacher in rural Nanhui County outside of Shanghai. In late 1931, he wrote the patriotic play Put Down Your Whip (also translated as Lay Down Your Whip), inspired by Meiniang, an earlier play by Tian Han. It became extremely influential and was staged countless times throughout China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The play was staged both by amateur performers as well as famous actors. The actress Wang Ying even performed an English version of the play in the White House for President Roosevelt and his wife. The future Madame Mao, then known as Li Yunhe, was also among its many performers. The play has been described in Chinese media as a "spiritual atomic bomb" against Japanese invaders. It also inspired famous paintings by artists Xu Beihong and Situ Qiao.
caption: 1939 painting Put Down Your Whip by Xu Beihong, depicting Wang Ying's performance of the play.
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