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In the spring of 1983, in a groundbreaking act of cross-cultural collaboration, Arthur Miller accepted an invitation to direct his play Death of a Salesman with an all-Chinese cast at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre despite not speaking a word of Mandarin. The production was a resounding success due, in no small part, to the multilingual talents of renowned Chinese actor Ying Ruocheng (Bertolucci's The Last Emperor ) who translated the text and played Willy Loman.
This extraordinary encounter, which Miller detailed in his memoir Salesman in Beijing , is the inspiration for Salesman之死 , which centers on Shen Huihui, a young university professor, who is summoned to the theater for a special task: to interpret for Arthur Miller, who will soon arrive to direct his iconic play – in Mandarin. Meanwhile, the Chinese ensemble, newly out of the Cultural Revolution, has never met “a salesman.” Will they be able to find common ground? Mostly based on true events, Salesman之死 is