Singer Peng Liyuan became a celebrity long before the whole of China (and then the world) learned the name of her husband, Xi Jinping. By the time he took over the leadership of the Communist Party, Peng Liyuan was already a superstar, so the head of state was in some ways in her shadow – Sue Ling-Wong, a journalist for The Economist, who recorded one of the most discussed podcasts of 2022, The Prince, focused on this. . Forbes Woman decided to recall the story of the first lady of China.
Peng Liyuan was introduced to Xi Jinping by a mutual friend. Back then, in 1986, Xi was deputy mayor of the eastern port city of Xiamen, and Peng knew all of China—she was a famous singer. Xi fascinated her by asking about singing techniques, although at first he seemed to her like an old redneck. However, references to this fact have been purged from the Chinese Internet. In 1987, the couple played a modest wedding (for Xi it was the second marriage – the previous one broke up after three years of marriage): they arranged a simple dinner at the hotel, and then invited a couple of friends from the party to visit. According to legend, Xi, despite his status as an official, lived so poorly and ascetically that the newlyweds had to wash toothbrush cups so that all four could drink tea – Peng and Xi had only two cups, says Sue Ling-Wong on the podcast The prince. Forbes Woman recalls how Peng Liyuan became a nationally famous singer and later the first lady to outshine her husband in patriarchal China.
army singer
Peng Liyuan was born on November 20, 1962 in Yuncheng County in the eastern coastal province of Shandong (the second most populous in China) in the family of an opera singer and the head of the house of culture of a “counter-revolutionary” – her father was stigmatized because his relatives served in the Taiwanese army, with whom China has been at odds since 1949 (opponents of Mao Zedong fled to the island to return after the fall of the communist regime, but this did not happen, and over time Taiwan became a partially recognized state). Peng herself, unlike her father, emphasized all her life allegiance to the Chinese government.
At the age of 14, Peng entered the University of the Arts, and at the age of 18 she joined the army as a singer. During the Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts (they continued after the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979 until 1990), she performed at the forefront. The whole country heard Peng’s voice for the first time in 1983 when she performed at a New Year’s Eve party broadcast on China’s main TV channel. The aspiring singer instantly became a star.
Subsequently, Peng has repeatedly appeared on the Chinese New Year’s lights. Due to the fact that China was constantly involved in military conflicts with neighboring countries, a demand was formed in the country for military-patriotic music, which was played on television all the time. “About 90% of her songs glorify the Communist Party, and the rest glorify our beautiful life,” Chinese music critic Qi Yui quipped.
In 1989, Peng reaffirmed her patriotism by addressing the military as they cracked down on a protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. According to official figures, 241 people died then, according to unofficial figures, the death toll reached several thousand. The photo of Peng singing was subsequently removed from sites in China, but after Xi Jinping was elected as the chairman of the PRC, it spread on Twitter, which is blocked in the country.
After the devastating Sichuan earthquake in China in 2008, Peng Liyuan sang for local residents and told that her and Xi Jinping’s 16-year-old daughter, Xi Mingjie, volunteered to help the victims. Later it turned out that Xi Mingjie was studying at Harvard at that moment under an assumed name.
But Peng isn’t just performing in China. The opera Mulan, in which she plays the heroine of a Chinese legend disguised as a man to go to war in place of her father, was performed at Lincoln Center in New York in 2005 and in Vienna in 2008. With her own concerts, Peng has traveled to more than 50 countries, including Moscow: in 2007, Peng Liyuan performed at the closing of the Year of China in the Kremlin Palace, performing an aria from the opera Farewell, My Concubine. In 2013, Peng again took to the stage in Moscow, this time with the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble of the Russian Army and the song “Oh, the viburnum is blooming.”
People’s love and party
“When he comes home, I never think about the fact that some state leader has come. In my eyes, he is just my husband. When I come home, he doesn’t see me as a star. For him, I’m just a wife,” Peng Liyuan once shared in an interview with a Chinese state magazine.
When Xi Jinping took over as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2012, and became President of the People’s Republic of China in 2013, many feared that the famous singer would outshine him, the first person in the country – it would not be possible to hide such a popular wife from the public. In 2017, Forbes USA included Peng Liyuan in the list of the most influential women, placing her on the 51st line of the rating, which also included the names of Angela Merkel, Queen Elizabeth II, Hillary Clinton. However, already in 2018, Xi Jinping himself was named the most influential person in the world.
In the 1990s, a Hong Kong talk show host asked Peng about Xi Jinping: “It must be difficult for your spouse, because everyone knows him as Peng Liyuan’s husband. Many men would not be able to endure such a thing.” To which Peng replied: “I am an ordinary Chinese woman, according to tradition, I will always be subordinate to my husband.” Nevertheless, now Peng Liyuan is a member of the National Committee of the People’s Political Consultative Council of China (an advisory body under the government of the PRC), a major general in the Chinese army and a professor at the Academy of Arts at the National Defense University.
It is impossible to say that Peng breaks stereotypes about the traditional role of a Chinese woman with her independence and popularity, says Ivan Zuenko, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO, a sinologist: “In China, women have traditionally been much more public and independent than in the so-called enlightened West. This was also the case in communist China: for example, Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing was an independent politician.
However, several recent leaders of China kept their wives in the background and did not allow them to take part in politics. Historians consider this a reaction to the fate of Jiang Qing, who, after his death, Mao was arrested as one of the leaders of the “Gang of Four”, allegedly intending to seize power.
In China, Peng is called “gomu” – the mother of the nation. But in its relations with the nation there is another participant: the party, which strictly monitors the manifestations of people’s love. For example, in 2013, after the first lady appeared in public in a navy blue wool coat and a matching bag, copies of these things became hits on the Taobao marketplace. Peng’s coat was sold under the name “first lady’s coat”, but soon the enterprising seller had to rename it simply “lady’s coat” – the platform, under the influence of the authorities, banned the promotion of things using the image of Peng.
Peng, after her husband was elected President of the People’s Republic of China, was assigned a special mission by experts: she was supposed to be the one who softens China’s relations with the rest of the world through her charm and publicity. “This is a symbol of China adopting international experience,” Chen Yang, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, said of the arrival of a real glamorous first lady in the country. However, when Angelica Chang, editor-in-chief of Vogue China, asked for an interview with Peng Liyuan, the party did not allow the nation’s leader’s wife to appear on the pages of the glossy magazine.