Twenty-four years ago Irish-American teenager Claire Conceison got on a plane for the first time and traveled all the way to China. Little did she know the trip would lead to meeting someone who would determine her life and career path.

From a distance, the petite redhead could easily be mistaken for the foreign student she was back in the 1980s, except today she speaks perfect Putonghua and has countless Chinese friends and admirers.

But her greatest friendship was a “father-daughter” relationship with famous Chinese actor Ying Ruocheng, a founding member of the Beijing People's Art Theater and the former Vice Minister of Culture who drank himself to death after contracting liver disease in 2003.

“There was nobody like Ying Ruocheng,” she says. “He was a father figure to me and he was so significant in the development of theater in China since the 1950s. Yet he was more than just an actor – he was crucial in bringing Western theater to China.”

In 1991 Conceison returned to China as a Harvard University graduate student when she was introduced to Ying at a play rehearsal in Shanghai.


Claire Conceison, author of Voices Carry.(Global Times Photo)


The photo shows the “father-daughter” relationship between Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison. (Global Times Photo)

She credits their “father-daughter”relationship that inspired her own remarkable career as an actress, director, translator, author and one of the world's top experts on modern theater in China.

Ying was from a Manchu Catholic family and educated in a missionary school with only four Chinese students. He spoke perfect English even though he never left China until he was 51-years-old.

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