Peng Yu

Peng Yu was born on 26 January 1934 in Hulan District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, into the family of a railway worker. Some sources also record the alternative name 彭彧. As a girl she loved to sing and dance. At teacher training school she was the class arts officer and regularly wrote, directed and acted in plays with her classmates.

Her father did not approve. In interviews she recalled that when he happened to see her rehearsing in a park on his way home from work, he said nothing and kicked her once they got home. From then on she rehearsed and performed in secret. "I really loved stage performance so much back then," she said.

Peng Yu trained at a teacher training school (师范学校) in Harbin and, after graduating, was assigned to teach at a primary school for about a year. Feeling the classroom was too small for her, she secretly auditioned for an amateur drama troupe without telling her father. At 17 she made her stage debut in How the Steel Was Tempered (钢铁是怎样炼成的), playing the sister of a Red Army soldier in a single scene. Her careful, truthful performance led to a transfer into a professional troupe. For years she told her father she was only copying scripts for the company.

Stage. Peng Yu became an actress with the Harbin Drama Theatre (哈尔滨话剧院) and spent more than a decade on stage before her first film. She returned to the theatre in 1977 in Harbin Under the Night Curtain (夜幕下的哈尔滨).

Film debut and the Cultural Revolution. In 1964 director Xie Tieli cast her in Never Forget (千万不要忘记). At 29 she played the male lead's scheming mother-in-law, an older character type that would define much of her career. The film took her to Beijing and she was received by Premier Zhou Enlai. In 1966 she was denounced for having played a "wicked old woman" and sent to a farm for reform, ending her performing for years.

Caregiving pause. In the late 1980s her husband Zhao Wenxin suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. She took early retirement and turned down all roles to care for him for about eight years until his death in 1995.

Beijing comeback. In her sixties she moved to Beijing to restart her career, becoming one of the oldest "Beijing drifters" in the industry. Her first Beijing role had just two words of dialogue. In 2000 Ying Da cast her as Chen Jiuxiang, wife of Niu Yonggui (Li Qi), in the sitcom A Family in Dongbei (东北一家人), which aired from 2001 and ran for several seasons. She also appeared in The Empty Mirror (空镜子, 2001) and The Perpetrator (肇事者, 2002).

Awards peak. Her role as the mother Liu in The Full Moon (月圆今宵) won her the Golden Goblet Best Actress award at the 5th Shanghai International Film Festival and the Best Supporting Actress award at the 21st Golden Rooster Awards in 2001, when she was 67.

Later work. She starred as the mother in Yang Yazhou's Romance (浪漫的事, 2003), and went on to Shang Shu Fang (上书房, 2005), Dad and Mom, Brothers and Sisters (老爸老妈兄弟姐妹, 2005), Mother's Family, Wife's Family (婆家娘家, 2006), Running After Happiness (追着幸福跑, 2007), the films My Left Hand (我的左手, 2007) and Speechless Love (大爱无言, 2012), I Marry Along With Mom (我和老妈一起嫁, 2010 to 2011), Parents at Home (家有父母, 2011), Who Will Look After Mom (谁来伺候妈, 2012), and Fushan Love (囍事儿一串串之福山恋) with her daughter and grandson. Her later films included Waiting for You in Heaven (在天堂等我, 2018) and Yiqie Ru Ni (一切如你, 2019), her final screen appearance. She held the title of National First-Class Actor and was an adviser to the Actors' Committee of the China TV Artists Association.

Peng Yu married her Harbin Drama Theatre colleague Zhao Wenxin (赵文欣) when she was about 19. She often told the story of how he courted her: at a cinema he handed her a roll of fruit sweets and asked her to give him an answer in three days. They had two daughters, Zhao Lingqi (赵玲琪) and Zhao Jiaqi (赵珈琪), both of whom became actresses with the Harbin Drama Theatre. After Zhao Wenxin's stroke she cared for him for about eight years; he died in 1995.

Some years later her younger daughter Zhao Jiaqi suggested a match with Chen Jiurong (陈久荣), a neurosurgeon at China Medical University in Shenyang and the widower of Zhao Wenxin's sister. Reports date their reunion to 1999 and their wedding to around 2001. The couple became well known in Chinese media for their late-life romance and appeared together on the talk show Super Interview. Peng Yu told Chen's children that she wanted nothing from their family except their father. The couple lived in Shenyang, and later in Beijing for her work and in Zhuhai in the winters. Her grandsons Zhang A'liang (张阿亮), an actor with a military drama troupe, and Meng Asai (孟阿赛), a Central Academy of Drama graduate, also became actors.

Peng Yu described herself as traditional about love. "I think in love you shouldn't always talk about repayment. You should give without cost and without asking for a result," she told the press in 2005. She saw no shame in being cast as old women, saying one should be generous of heart and not haggle over parts, and treating every small role as an opportunity. She kept a firm line between work and life when playing sad roles: "A play is a play, life is life; you can't sink into it." She credited a cheerful outlook for her stamina, joking that a young heart kept her body young too, and her daughter said she would never retire as long as her health allowed.

Peng Yu became the archetypal screen mother and grandmother of 2000s Chinese television, earning the title "the screen's first mother" (荧屏第一母亲). Her Chen Jiuxiang in A Family in Dongbei remains, for many viewers, the defining image of the straight-talking northeastern Chinese grandmother. Her late-blooming career, beginning a second life in Beijing in her sixties and winning major film awards at 67, made her a symbol of perseverance. Critics singled out the naturalness of her acting: her voice, gait and gestures seemed lifted directly from daily life, so that audiences believed the women she played were the women in their own homes.

2001: Golden Goblet Award for Best Actress, 5th Shanghai International Film Festival, for The Full Moon (月圆今宵). 2001: Golden Rooster Award for Best Supporting Actress, 21st China Golden Rooster Awards, for The Full Moon. 2003 to 2004: Nomination, Outstanding Actress, 24th Feitian Awards, for Romance (浪漫的事); also reported as shortlisted for the Golden Eagle Awards. 2016-12-28: China TV Good Actor Ruby Award (中国电视好演员红宝石奖), actress. Rank: National First-Class Actor (国家一级演员). Role: Adviser, Actors' Committee of the China TV Artists Association.

Stage: How the Steel Was Tempered (1951, debut); Harbin Under the Night Curtain (1977). Film: Never Forget (千万不要忘记, 1964); The Full Moon (月圆今宵, 2000); My Left Hand (我的左手, 2007); The Alley Premier (小巷总理, 2007); Speechless Love (大爱无言, 2012); Waiting for You in Heaven (在天堂等我, 2018); Yiqie Ru Ni (一切如你, 2019). Television: Rings of the Years (年轮, 1992); The Empty Mirror (空镜子, 2001); A Family in Dongbei (东北一家人, 2001 to 2003); The Perpetrator (肇事者, 2002); Romance (浪漫的事, 2003); Shang Shu Fang (上书房, 2005); Dad and Mom, Brothers and Sisters (老爸老妈兄弟姐妹, 2005); Mother's Family, Wife's Family (婆家娘家, 2006); Running After Happiness (追着幸福跑, 2007); I Marry Along With Mom (我和老妈一起嫁, 2010 to 2011); Parents at Home (家有父母, 2011); Who Will Look After Mom (谁来伺候妈, 2012); Fushan Love (2013 to 2014); Guarding the Beauty (守护丽人, 2014). Talk shows: Super Interview (超级访问) episodes in 2012 and, with daughter Zhao Jiaqi and grandson Meng Asai, in 2015.

Peng Yu died peacefully in Zhuhai, Guangdong, at 10:27 am on 7 October 2026, according to an announcement by the Actors' Committee of the China TV Artists Association on 8 October, reported by CCTV News, China News Service, The Paper and others. Chinese reports gave her age as 93 in the traditional count; by her birth date of 26 January 1934 she was 92. A cause of death was not made public. Tributes on Chinese social media remembered her as "Aunt Niu" and noted that the original cast of A Family in Dongbei could never be reunited.