Early this week, Lu Liping, a prominent Chinese film and TV actress, opened a comprehensive performing arts studio in western Beijing to help more young talent fulfil their dreams of becoming popular film, TV and music stars.

The studio gives professional training in performing arts skills and related image packaging and market promotion to promising young artists who aspire to achieve stardom in China's entertainment industry, according to Lu, who is also the chairperson of Beijing Stars Performing Arts School.

Backed up by a roster of film and TV industry veterans, the 10-year-old film school is widely recognized as one of the largest privately run performing arts schools in China.

A large portion of its graduates have entered the TV and film industries while others have pursued further studies in film art or stage art in institutions of higher performance art education such as the Beijing Film Academy, Central Drama Academy, Beijing Broadcasting Institute and the Shanghai Drama Academy, to work for bachelor's degrees or above, according to Sun Xiaodong, managing director of Lu's school.

Lu is one of the earliest Chinese celebrities in the film and TV industries to have opened a privately run performing arts school, which she did in the early 1990s. Li has starred in TV drama series such as Stories from a Newsroom (Bianjibu De Gushi), Years of Passion (Jiqing Ranshao De Suiyue) and feature film Blue Kite (Lan Fengzheng).

With a series of favorable policies and regulations being or about to be enacted for China's fledgling TV and film industries, both film schools, film and TV research centers at universities and privately run film training schools are mushrooming across the country.

(China Daily April 29, 2004)