Recently on eBay I saw about a dozen photos of an enchanting actress named Yang Pei Yun. Since I'd never heard of her before, it goes without saying that I was irresistibly intrigued. I searched the online catalog of the Hong Kong Film Archive and found out that she had made just three films: an Amoy-dialect movie, He Has Taken Her for Another (1959), co-starring a young Ivy Ling Po; and two Cantonese movies, The Two Generations (1960) and Secrets between Husband and Wife (1962).
I had a hunch that there was more to Yang Pei Yun than this brief film career, but I was unable to find any other information online. So I asked Oldflames if he knew about her, and sure enough he was able to shed a little light on the mysterious Miss Yang. A pioneer of the Malaya/Singapore entertainment scene, she started singing in the mid-1940s and subsequently started her own highly successful performing troupe. She quit singing for a couple of years when she got married but staged a comeback in the late 50s, following in the footsteps of younger Nanyang singers like Zhuang Xue Fang, Chang Lye Lye, and Poon Sow Keng.
Last night I did manage to find this photo caption about Yang Pei Yun at the National Archives of Singapore website: "Miss Rosalind Yang was one of Singapore's top singers. With her good looks and sultry voice she captivated the hearts of many radio and nightclub fans. She was the most talked about person in the Chinese world of song."
Except for these scant traces, little else has been written about her. While she may have fallen through the cracks of history, Yang Pei Yun remains a beautiful enigma, still capable of captivating us today.
* A big thanks to Oldflames for providing the information and title of this post!
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