A year to remember

Submitted by admin on Tue, 08/25/2009 - 11:29

War and Peace over Peking (Beiping Zhan Yu He), a 34-episode TV drama on the peaceful liberation of Beijing (then called Beiping), hits the small screen yesterday.

Celebrating the 60-year anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the series shown on CCTV 8 focuses on Fu Zuoyi, a Nationalist leader of Beijing garrison. Fu played a key role in the peaceful liberation of Beijing in 1949, which ended the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists in 1945 and prevented the 2 million citizens of Beijing from a chaotic war.

Very few films or TV series have shown the general before and this put Chen Yiheng, a senior actor who plays the role, under great pressure.

Zhang Jinlai, known for playing the Monkey King in the smash-hit TV series adapted from Journey to the West (Xi You Ji), plays Hu Shih, then chancellor of Peking University.

Famous TV anchor Cheng Qian plays Wang Kejun, a member of Fu's think tank.