Meng Xin performs traditional rhythmic storytelling in Taoranting Park in Beijing. WEN CHENGHAO/FOR CHINA DAILY

"Gao told me not to give up before my departure to the rural area in Inner Mongolia," Meng says. "He gave me his clappers and said, 'Remember that a man can never become a saint without adversity.'"

Despite poverty and unemployment, Meng persisted with shulaibao and even incorporated folk art of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region into it, before he resettled in Beijing in 1979.

He was a meat seller at a department store until his talent was rediscovered and landed him a job at a performing troupe in Beijing about a year later. It later became Beijing Children's Art Troupe.

Yet Gao's health wore out quickly. Gao was moved to tears when he saw Meng bring self-prepared food 10 days in a row.

"He told me that he had not wanted to teach me. But since I had done well with the art form, he decided to help me learn," Meng says of Gao.

"I would shut myself in the troupe's rehearsal hall, so I could see myself in the mirror and the blanket would soften the damage if the bones dropped."

He finally got the rhythms correct, after breaking baskets of scapulas and injuring himself during practice.