You Benchang

CCTV News reported on 24 September 2026 that You Benchang, first-class actor and performance artist of the National Theatre of China, died of illness in Beijing that morning. He was 93, having celebrated his birthday eight days earlier. Chinese and overseas outlets including China Daily, Lianhe Zaobao, and HK01 carried the announcement the same day. Wikipedia and Wikidata list the death date as 24 September 2026 in Beijing. A precise medical diagnosis beyond illness was not detailed in the initial official reports.

You Benchang was born Ye Benchang on 16 September 1933 in Taizhou, Jiangsu, then part of the Republic of China. His father, Ye Yusheng, worked as a bank clerk; his mother was a homemaker. He was the family's only boy among several sisters. Childhood illness and a fortune teller's warning that he might not survive past age thirteen led his parents, when he was six, to send him to Fazang Temple in Shanghai. There he received monastic ordination under Master Xingci and the dharma name Chengpei. He lived as a young novice until his mid-teens, when his parents brought him home after he had passed the feared age.

War and relocation shaped his boyhood. From 1939 he studied and lived mainly in Shanghai and Nanjing, including a period in a crowded Shanghai French Concession pavilion room. A second sister's love of film and her stage photograph from a school production of Ge Nenniang fixed the idea of performance in his mind. The family hoped he would learn a practical trade such as accounting, but theatre kept calling.

He attended Nanjing's Zhongying Middle School. In August 1951, after finishing high school, he joined the Nanjing Cultural Troupe (also described as the Nanjing Song and Dance Troupe in some English sources). In 1952 the troupe moved to Shanghai and organizers recommended him for the acting department of the East China branch of the Central Academy of Drama, which became Shanghai Theatre Academy. He trained in the Stanislavski system on a people's stipend. Teachers and campus figures of the era included Xiong Foxi, Zhu Duanjun, and other leading dramatists. He graduated in 1956 after a standout graduation production of Safe Journey (Yi Lu Ping An), which helped win him a place in the first cohort of the Central Experimental Drama Theatre in Beijing.

From 1956 You worked at what is now the National Theatre of China, building a reputation as a meticulous supporting actor rather than a star. He joined the Chinese Dramatists Association in 1980. That same year his performance as the servant in The Servant of Two Masters earned a first-class award in a central arts-troupe appraisal. His silent, carefully researched serf in The Storm became a textbook example of elevating a walk-on.

In 1984 he performed the pantomime Shower on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. In 1985 Shanghai Television cast him as Ji Gong. Broadcast success made him a household name; children across China imitated his broken-fan gait and theme song. He won the Golden Eagle Award for Best Actor in 1986 and revisited Ji Gong in later series, including Ji Gong Travels (1995), which he helped produce after founding Beijing Benchang Movie and TV Cultural Co., Ltd. in 1994.

Film work included The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman (Tang Pangzi), Reign of Assassins, Painted Skin: The Resurrection, and later cameos. He also played Daode Tianzun in the Lotus Lantern television series and appeared in Thank You, Doctor and The Blood of Youth. In 2023 Wong Kar-wai chose him as Ye Shu (Yeshu / Yaso) in Blossoms Shanghai opposite Hu Ge. Entering the set in his late eighties and finishing near ninety, he learned Shanghainese lines overnight and prepared multiple performance options for each scene. Viewers and critics called Ye Shu the series' anchor, renewing You's national fame nearly forty years after Ji Gong.

You married Yang Huihua. They raised a son, You Zhichao, who studied directing before turning to finance and living much of his adult life in the United States, and a daughter, You Sihan, who works in arts education and often accompanied her father on sets and public appearances. Two granddaughters, identified in Chinese media as You Yeyingqi and You Yingqi, remained close to the couple. In later years You and his wife lived in Beijing with domestic help and family support; reports that he entered a nursing home prompted him to explain publicly that he sought a dignified, active late life among peers rather than isolation.

He kept official social accounts under names such as Ji Gong Grandpa You Benchang on Weibo, Bilibili, Douyin, and YouTube, often greeting fans as his "dolls." His 2018 short-video return in Ji Gong costume went viral. In interviews he rejected rumors of abandonment, stressing family warmth and his wish that younger relatives continue charity work.

Buddhist ethics and craft humility shaped his public philosophy. Childhood ordination, the 2009 short-term vows at Great Light Temple under the dharma name Dingchang, and roles as Ji Gong and Master Hongyi were of a piece with his motto, painted in his home: use literature and art to guide people's hearts. He argued that actors should first be good people, that supporting players can still create classics, and that traditional figures such as Ji Gong needed dusting of feudal habits and infusion of contemporary kindness. He described a drop of water lasting only when it joins the sea, and late in life framed aging as continually changing battlefields while keeping home wherever one stands.

On 30 June 2025 he took an oath as a probationary member of the Chinese Communist Party at age ninety-two, after submitting a long handwritten application. State media reported that Xi Jinping conveyed encouragement through the Organization Department, praising his faith and urging an exemplary role for cultural workers.

You's Ji Gong remains the default screen image of the folk Buddhist trickster for millions who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. Blossoms Shanghai introduced him to younger urban audiences as Ye Shu, a Shanghainese mentor whose glance and silence carried moral weight. Theatre colleagues remembered the hard-lining craftsman who researched mute roles as if they were leads. Through Ji Gong schools, free drama camps, and the Zhejiang Ji Gong Public Welfare Foundation's partnerships, he tried to convert celebrity into children's education and cultural charity. His career arc, from thirty years of bit parts to two separate national icons, is routinely cited in China as proof that patience and sincerity can still reshape a late-blooming life.

Major honors include the Golden Eagle Award for Best Actor (1986) for Ji Gong; a first-class performance award among central arts troupes (1980) for The Servant of Two Masters; Lifetime Achievement Artist recognition at the 2nd China TV Drama Annual Gala (January 2024); and the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Lifetime Achievement Award at the 32nd China TV Golden Eagle Awards (October 2024). He held the rank of first-class actor at the National Theatre of China and remained associated with drama education and public-welfare projects into his nineties.

Ji Gong reruns, the theme song with its broken shoes and broken hat, and viral clips of You in costume made him a perennial nostalgia figure. Blossoms Shanghai memes compared childhood longing to learn magic from Ji Gong with adult longing to learn business from Ye Shu. He published and promoted an official autobiography, Bu Zhuo Ji (Notes on Mending Clumsiness), late in life. Variety shows, CCTV interviews such as Our Home Our Country, and short-video platforms repeatedly brought him back into trending lists. Foreign and Chinese drama channels continue to circulate restored Ji Gong episodes and English-subtitled monk films featuring his image.