Pioneering Chinese voice actor passes away aged 91

Zhang Yukun, voice actor on the first foreign dubbed film after the founding of New China in 1949, died Friday evening, aged 91.

Zhang, who passed away at about 11 p.m., had worked for China's first film company, Changchun Film Studio in northeast China's Jilin Province. During his career, he dubbed more than 1,000 foreign and Chinese films and TV series. Many Chinese grew up listening to his voice.

Zhang was born in 1926 in east China's Shandong Province, and joined the People's Liberation Army in 1946. He began working at Changchun Film Studio, known then as Northeast China Film Studio, in 1948.

In "Private Aleksandr Matrosov," the first dubbed film screened in the People's Republic of China, Zhang dubbed both the characters of Matrosov and Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin. He also worked on other well-known movies including "And Quiet Flows the Don" and "The Million Pound Note." Endi