Born in a small village of Kaiyuan County in Tieling City of North China's Liaoning Province , Zhao Benshan has been recognized as a folk performing legend who grew up in a peasant household.

Zhao became an orphan at the age of six, and then moved to live with a blind uncle who taught him various performing skills. Due to his hard work, he became highly skilled at playing the erhu (a two-stringed violin), the suona (a kind of Chinese trumpet), and especially the sanxian (a three-stringed plucked instrument), singing popular tunes, and performing song-and-dance duets. Zhao views the hardships endured during his childhood as having been a blessing in his life, as the difficulties laid a solid foundation for his skits as well as performing career.

He joined the commune art and literature publicity team at 17, and later became a member of an amateur troupe of Weiyuan town before being transferred temporarily to the Xifeng County Troupe for song-and-dance duet performances.

In 1982, Liaoning Province held the First Countryside Opereta Show, and Zhao Benshan rose to fame as a result of his performance as a blind man in Breaking the Sanxian, which won the first prize. In the same year, he joined the Tieling Troupe, serving as both the leading actor and the business president. In 1986, he was transferred to the Tieling Folk Art Troupe. At that time, Da Guan Deng, co-staged by Zhao and Pan Changjiang (another famous skit actor from Liaoning Province) ran for over 200 performances in Shenyang ; the crowd overflowed at each show, causing a stir in the three provinces in Northeast China.

Many of Zhao's performances, such as those in the song-and-dance duet 1+1=?, and opera TV plays like Double Knocking at the Door, Beyond this Village, and Tearing off the Signboard, have won many national- and provincial-level awards.

Recommended by Jiang Kun, a famous crosstalk (witty dialogue between two people) star, Zhao Benshan found his way to CCTV in 1987 and had his first Spring Festival Party performance in 1990, which marked a new beginning in his career. Since then, his skit has been a regular sight at the annual art gala, and many of his skits, including Marriage Seeking, Red Sorghum Model Team, Three Whipping, Sending Gifts, Yesterday, Hourly-paid Worker, Today, Tomorrow, Selling Crutches, and Selling a Bicycle, have won either the first or the second prize among all the programs of the party.

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