Wang Xue-Bing 王学兵
Wang Xue-Bing first came to prominence as Le Yan in the youth series Cherish Our Love Forever, and after the domestic-violence drama Don't Respond to Strangers - Domestic Violence he spent several years in a row playing police officers. On the big screen he was given very different roles. On the set of Black Coal, Thin Ice he put to use the skating skills he had learned as a schoolboy in Urumqi, and in the directorial debut of his old friend Chen Jian-Bin he played a man whose arrival disrupts the peace of an entire village.
Wang Xue-Bing (王学兵) was born on September 6, 1971, in Urumqi. After graduating from university, his parents came to work in Xinjiang. Both taught, and for a time his father gave lessons to his son as well. During his school years, Wang was most drawn to after-class activities. He joined a meteorology club, hunted for fossils, did high jumping and thought about applying to a sports institute. In winter he skated on open-air rinks. In 1990 he entered the acting department of the Central Academy of Drama. A whole group of future classmates came from Xinjiang to Beijing that year. Among them was Chen Jian-Bin, whom Wang had known since childhood. Their families lived across the road from each other, and their mothers were friends. Wang graduated from the Academy in 1994.
In Spicy Love Soup (1997), assembled from stories about how people love at different ages, Wang played Zhou Jian. He became widely known after the series Cherish Our Love Forever (1998). Its characters meet at university and then try to preserve their friendship and make sense of their relationships beyond it. The good-natured and awkward Le Yan, played by Wang, was one of the close friends of the protagonist, played by his classmate Li Yapeng. Years later both returned to these characters in Eternal Moment (2011), in which the heroes' story received three different continuations.
In the series Don't Respond to Strangers - Domestic Violence (2001), Wang played the policeman An Jiamu, the younger brother of a doctor who beats his wife. From the outside the family seems perfectly well-off, and Wang's character only gradually learns what goes on in his brother's house. That role was followed by Absolute Control (2003), and after several more crime series the press wrote of Wang as a master of police roles. He himself explained that in these stories he was drawn to the mystery and the conflict that are gradually clarified over the course of the investigation. In historical series he swapped his police uniform for the costume of another era. In Ling Yun Zhuang Zhi Bao Qing Tian (2005) he played Judge Bao Zheng, and in Seven Swordsmen (2006) he was cast as Yang Yuncong, one of the disciples of the Heavenly Mountain school.
On the set of the fantasy series Born Under a Lucky Star Pig (2004), Wang worked with Fan Bing-Bing. They dated for a while, and after breaking up they acted together again in The White-Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom (2014). In 2009 Wang married the actress Sun Ning. Their divorce in 2012 was announced by her representative. The following year Wang married former TVB presenter Zhang Qianqian, also known as Zhang Xuan. In January 2014 he showed a video of his son, who had been born in the United States a few months earlier.
In Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) by Diao Yi-Nan, the actor played Liang Zhijun, the husband of the woman around whom the threads of the investigation converge. His character takes to the ice on skates, and on set Wang put to use what he had learned back in Urumqi. He said that behind Liang's frightening actions he saw the man's attachment to his wife. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and Liao Fan, who played the detective, was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Actor. That same year the Taiwanese Golden Horse festival screened A Fool, Chen Jian-Bin's directorial debut. Wang played Li Datou, one of those who intrude on the life of a peasant who has taken in a stranger. Wang was nominated for a supporting role award, while Chen received prizes for best directorial debut and for his leading role.
In the 2000s, Wang took part in Beijing anti-drug campaigns and said he wanted to use his fame to help prevent drug abuse. In March 2015, Beijing police announced they had detained him on suspicion of providing a space for others to use drugs. According to the police, Wang admitted he had used drugs in the past and had provided the space, while a test taken after his detention came back negative. On March 25 he was released on bail pending investigation. Another person involved in the case, actor Zhang Bo, who appeared in the case files under his real name Zhang Lin, received ten months in prison in July. In April 2016, Wang's company cited a written police decision dated March 9. According to its statement, the police found no evidence that Wang had committed a crime, and he faced neither criminal punishment nor administrative penalty.
A Fool was due for release in May 2015 but came out in November. Some publications reported that Wang's scenes had been cut. Chen Jian-Bin said that during editing he removed a long street scene but kept Wang's role in the film. The actor himself said in the autumn that he had spent about six months at home with his son and had already returned to shooting. In the historical series The Qin Empire 3 (大秦帝国之崛起, 2017), the role of the general Bai Qi, which Wang had played, was given to Xing Jia-Dong. Filming had already wrapped by then. Xing performed the necessary scenes in front of a green screen, after which his image was combined with the previously shot material.
At the 2018 Shanghai International Film Festival, The Road Not Taken (未择之路) was named best film in the Asian New Talent competition. Wang played the owner of an ostrich farm in the Gobi Desert who sets off on a journey with a boy left in his care. That same year, The Moment of Pluto (冥王星时刻) screened at Cannes in the Directors' Fortnight. Wang's character, a director named Wang Zhun, heads into the mountains with a small film crew in search of material for a film. The actor worked with Chen Jian-Bin again on Eleventh Chapter (第十一回), where he played a lawyer in a story about a theatre company taking on the staging of a long-ago criminal case.
