Before Jackie Chan and Zhang Ziyi

I've been terribly remiss for not mentioning all the fascinating subjects that Dev Yang has been blogging about at The Golden Age of Chinese Language Cinema during the past two months. He was rather quiet for a while, but now he's back with a vengeance, pulling surprises out of his hat, one after the other, like a mad magician.

Read about Madame Mao when she was an aspiring actress; Maria Menado, the "Most Beautiful Woman in Malaya"; Ruby Wah, the "Willow Waist Pop Diva"; and Ai Li, the Nationalist general's daughter who posed for Playboy.

See Grace Chang in a leopard print swimsuit; the "Virgin Starlet" Lee Fang Fei and her red umbrella; the thousand expressions of Ruan Lingyu; Chinese actresses in kimonos (long before Memoirs of a Geisha); and of course, Pang Fei and Lai Cheuk-cheuk, the Chinese Tarzan and Jane.

I'm so happy to have Dev by my side, spreading the gospel of vintage Chinese cinema!