Zhang Jia-Yi 张嘉译, 张小童, 张嘉益
A native of Xi'an, Zhang Jia-Yi was long regarded as an unlucky provincial actor, and only found fame at nearly forty, with the role of the corrupt official Song Siming in the series Dwelling Narrowness. Since then he has collected every major television award in China, played the patriarch Bai Jiaxuan in White Deer Plain and the stage rigger Diao Shunzi in The Stage, appeared in films by Zhang Yi-Mou, Ann Hui On-Wah, Jia Zhang-Ke and Feng Xiao-Gang — and all the while, by his own admission, battling a severe spinal illness. Since 2020 his name in the credits has been written with the characters 张嘉益.
Zhang Jia-Yi, born Zhang Xiao-Tong, was born on April 8, 1970, in Xi'an, in a residential compound of a coal research institute. He was the fifth of six children; his mother worked at the institute's library, and the boy often did his homework among the bookshelves. At school he took up wrestling — in his words, "so as not to lose fights" — and even dreamed of becoming a professional wrestler, but his uncle, who worked at the Xi'an Film Studio, and an aunt who was a makeup artist at a local theater persuaded him to try his hand at acting. In 1987, before finishing school, he passed the entrance exams for both the Shanghai Theatre Academy and the Beijing Film Academy and chose the acting department of the latter; at the audition the young man sang, recited poetry and staged a fight with a brick. Among his classmates were the future directors Wang Quan-An, with whom he shared a room for four years, and Guan Hu. After graduating from the academy in 1991, he took the new name Zhang Jia-Yi — by his own account, without much meaning: "Anything but Zhang Xiao-Tong."
Staying in Beijing proved impossible, and Zhang Jia-Yi returned to Xi'an, where he was assigned to the film studio — to work in the Communist Youth League committee for a hundred yuan a month. While still a student he made his debut in the children's film Rubiks-clock (1990), and then appeared in Guan Hu's debut Dirt (1994), the television drama Dao Bei Ren (1995) and the comedy Xian's Finest (2000), which brought him the Golden Phoenix Award. Around 2000, with thirty thousand yuan to his name, he moved to Beijing and began working prolifically in television — for example, in the detective series Tan Zhang Ou Guang Ci (2002) and the series Guo Jia Shi Ming (2004), on the set of which he met his future wife. In cinema he appeared in Wang Quan-An's drama In Love We Trust (2008), which won the Berlinale Silver Bear for Best Screenplay. He acted so much that in time his tally ran to more than a thousand episodes, and he earned the nickname "obsessed with filming"; at the same time, in 2006 internet users named him "the most underrated actor of the year."
Real fame came to Zhang Jia-Yi in 2009. In the series Dwelling Narrowness (2009), about young city dwellers struggling for a home of their own, he played the charming and cynical official Song Si-Ming, and there followed the series I am the Proprietor (2010) and the spy drama Borrow Gun (2011), which brought him the Magnolia Award. An even greater success was the spy series The Brink (2012), about Chinese intelligence agents trained in the USSR and infiltrated into Manchukuo; Zhang Jia-Yi also served as its artistic director and received the Huading Award for this work. And in 2013 he became a Magnolia Award winner for the second time — for his role as the director of a state factory undergoing reform in the series Fu Chen (2012). For his role as a rural policeman in the series Ying Pan Zhen Jing Shi (2012), Zhang Jia-Yi received the Feitian Award and the Golden Eagle Award, thus collecting all the country's main television honors. In cinema he appeared in the romantic comedy Love Is Not Blind (2011) and in Beginning of the Great Revival (2011), where he played Li Da-Zhao, and then with the most celebrated directors: in Jia Zhang-Ke's A Touch of Sin (2013), Zhang Yi-Mou's Coming Home (2014), Ann Hui's Golden Age (2014) and Feng Xiao-Gang's I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016).
One of his major works was the adaptation of Chen Zhongshi's famous novel White Deer Plain (2017): Zhang Jia-Yi, who also served as artistic director of the series, played Bai Jiaxuan, the head of a village clan whose fate spans the history of China in the first half of the twentieth century. He also appeared in the series One Servant of Two Masters (2014), Fourty Nine Days·Fiesta (2014), which brought him an Asian Television Awards, and Wonderful Life (2018), for which he received the Huading Award. That year viewers noticed his stiff gait, and Zhang Jia-Yi spoke publicly for the first time about suffering from ankylosing spondylitis since the age of twenty-five: "It's quite possible that one day I won't be able to act anymore. But I keep going for the sake of my first dream." Then came the role of a father in the youth series Growing Pain (2019) and the fantasy drama Novoland: Eagle Flag (2019).
In 2020, Zhang Jia-Yi played the lead role in Li Shao-Fei's series The Stage (2020) – Diao Shunzi, a foreman of Xi'an stage riggers; preparing for the role, he spent a month living in a Xi'an "city within a village" among stage workers. "I am Diao Shunzi," he said afterwards. Then followed the series Zai Yi Qi (2020) about the fight against the epidemic in Wuhan, Minning Town (2021) about the relocation of peasants from poor mountain regions, and Growing Pain 2 (2022), as well as the historical drama Dawn in the East about the first years of the new government in Shanghai, in which he played Marshal Chen Yi and was nominated for a Golden Eagle Award as Best Actor. On the big screen he appeared in Wen Mu-Ye's drama Nice View (2022). In 2024 and 2025, two seasons of the family comedy "Happy Parents' Chat Group" were released, in which his co-star was Chen Hao. In the autumn of 2025, the press reported that Zhang Jia-Yi would teach acting at his alma mater, the Beijing Film Academy. And since 10 May 2026, Li Shao-Fei's series Zhu Jue (2026), based on Chen Yan's novel about the world of Shaanxi qinqiang opera and made under the patronage of Zhang Yi-Mou, has been airing on Central Television and Tencent Video: Zhang Jia-Yi is the artistic director of the project and plays Hu Sanyuan, the "drum king of the Northwest," while his cousin Ji Ta played one of the supporting roles.
Zhang Jia-Yi's first marriage, to actress Du Jun, quickly fell apart. In 2007 he married actress Wang Hai-Yan, whom he met on the set of "Guo Jia Shi Ming," and on 19 September 2010 the couple had a daughter. The actor invariably ties his life to his hometown: "The three most unforgettable periods of my life are connected with Xi'an – entering the film academy, working at the Xi'an Film Studio, and shooting White Deer Plain."
