Old Movie Star Private Album - (Treasure Edition)

Author: Liu Shu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Ai Xia, originally named Yan Nan'an, was born in Tianjin in 1912. In 1932, she joined the Mingxing Film Company and starred in films such as Daughter of the Times and Spring Silkworm. In 1933, she wrote and starred in the silent film A Modern Woman. The following year, she took her own life. Later, the film New Woman, starring Ruan Lingyu, was based on Ai Xia as its prototype. The character Wei Ming, played by Ruan Lingyu, was a free-spirited but weak-willed intellectual woman who eventually proclaimed, "I Want to Live," achieving awakening. Unbeknownst to many, this new female image on screen, much like its real-life prototype, met a tragic fate at the hands of destiny. Before Ruan Lingyu, there was another actress named Mao Jianpei who had taken her own life. She had participated in the filming of films such as Spring Dreams by the Lake, though this happened several years before Ruan Lingyu's suicide, and her tragic end was different from Ai Xia's. In the 1920s and 1930s, martial arts films were in vogue. Fan Xuepeng and Xia Peizhen were both once part of the "Five Heroine Actresses of the Film World." Fan Xuepeng gained fame for starring in the five-part series Children of Heroism (Shi Mei). Xia Peizhen, on the other hand, rose to prominence for her portrayal of Gan Lianzhu in The Temple of Red Lotus on Fire, adapted from the novel Strange Heroes of the Martial World. P17