However, feeling inadequate in his knowledge on history and literature, Shan enlisted in the correspondence class of Liaoning University's History Department in 1957, where he studied for three years. Many years later, when commenting on the decision, Shan still sighs with wonder, saying, "It is the then hard work that laid a solid cultural foundation for my later success."

Just as Shan Tianfang was heading for artistic maturity, in 1966 the ten-year catastrophic Culture Revolution started. The honest and frank man was listed as an active counterrevolutionary only because he spoke the truth. During a session of criticism and denouncement, all of his teeth were knocked out, causing the inflammation and enlargement of his throat. His clear and magnetic voice was therefore destroyed, a really huge loss for a storyteller.

Later, Shan and his family were sent to the countryside for reformation, spending a total of nine years scraping the ground, cutting grass, and collecting manure. However, even while doing the strenuous farm work, Shan did not forget to recite his books, such as Romance of Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Strange Tales of Liaozhai, as well as poems by a poet he once studied. Even in such hard times, he was thinking about his storytelling!

In November 1978, Shan was finally rehabilitated. Shortly after, he returned to the Anshan Quyi Troupe, taking on his storytelling again. The then fifty-plus-year-old Shan, having had his freedom stripped for so long a time, extremely cherished the opportunity and brought his artistic creativity into full play.

From 1979 to 1994, Shan recorded 43 tapes in cooperation with the Anshan TV Station, altogether 3,500 sessions, which were broadcast through more than 100 TV and radio stations throughout the country. When Wang Gang, a famous CCTV anchorman, visited America in 1993, he surprisingly heard Shan's storytelling in a Chinese shop in Washington.

Once a fan from Central China's Henan Province wrote to him, "I have always wondered why you can tell a story in such a fascinating way, and finally got the answer in your name. The original complex form of your surname 'Shan(单)' has seven '口（kou, meaning mouth）', and your middle name 'Tian (田)' also has five such mouths. Including your own mouth, there are altogether 13 mouths in all. No wonder!" Although it is only a joke, it shows the fan's (as well as represents people's) high opinion of him. The deciding reason behind Shan's success lies in his diligence.

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