Nighttime phone call bridges actor to real-life hero

While filming the espionage drama Silent Honor in Xiamen, Fujian province, actor Na Zhidong received a late-night call from an unknown number. Despite the hour being nearly 1 am, he decided to answer.

To his surprise, the caller was an elderly woman who addressed him by name. Na was even more astonished when she identified herself as Li Min, the granddaughter of General Chen Baocang — a high-ranking Kuomintang official who secretly worked for the Communist Party of China due to disillusionment with the corruption of Chiang Kai-shek's government. Chen was executed with three fellow undercover CPC agents in Taiwan on June 10, 1950, after they were betrayed by a traitor.

"I was speechless for almost a minute. It felt as if I were speaking to General Chen himself," Na, who portrays the general in the series, recalled during a recent seminar in Beijing.

He said that they spoke for around two hours and that Li expressed her gratitude for his efforts in bringing her late grandfather to life on the screen.

She also shared a little-known story about him: while still a low-ranking official on a military mission to evacuate a town, Chen met an elderly woman who was distraught and refused to leave as she had been paid in counterfeit money after selling all her livestock. Rather than physically removing the woman, Chen gave her his own money to resolve the situation peacefully and ensure the woman was quickly evacuated.

A native of Harbin in Heilongjiang province, Na said he has collaborated with the drama's director, fellow Harbin native Yang Yazhou, for 16 years and is grateful to the director for offering him the role of Chen, for which he gained over 15 kilograms to better portray the general.

As the country's first TV drama to recount the covert operations of CPC agents in Taiwan between 1949 and 1950, Silent Honor centers on Wu Shi — the highest-ranking Kuomintang official to secretly work for the Party during the period — along with Chen and several other key members of the CPC underground intelligence network.

Stirring a wave of patriotism, the drama has been mentioned 720 times in trending topics on Sina Weibo, with related hashtags garnering 3.45 billion views on this popular social media platform. On iQiyi's international streaming service, the series has also achieved strong ratings in Canada and Singapore, according to Wang Xiaohui, chief content officer of iQiyi.

Actress Zeng Li, who plays the wife of Wu, said that she was deeply attracted to the role of Wang Bikui when reading the script for the first time.

"The character is the family member of a martyr, a real historical figure, and I felt a profound responsibility to portray her in a way that honored that weight," said Zeng.