Feng Yuanzheng (third from right) in Germany. [Photo provided to China Daily]

As for acting, Feng says he believes in the method developed by Polish theater director and theorist Jerzy Marian Grotowski (1933-99), who encourages actors to relax to "get back to their natural self".

Grotowski's training focuses on connecting audiences and actors to make them transcend the stereotyped visions and conventional responses.

Quoting Shakespeare's well-known line "There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes", Feng reckons the most charming part of performing is how the role is seen differently by different audiences.

To most theater sources, the well-known foreign acting methods in China are those of Stanislavsky and German playwright and theater director Bertolt Brecht (1889-1956).

Grotowski's method is not well known.

Given his early campus life in Germany, Feng says he is "lucky" to be one of the few followers of the system on the Chinese mainland.