Happy Chinese New Year!

Shaw star Pat Ting Hung on the cover of The Young Companion (Feb. 1958)

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous Year of the Rabbit! I mentioned before that I had some unfinished blog business to wrap up before I finally call it quits. And so, later this month you can look forward to some vinyl delight from Singapore songstress Zhuang Xue Fang and a post about one of Anna May Wong's lost films. In the meantime, why don't you check out the latest episode of Lucky Cat's always entertaining radio podcast or the ear-opening new installment at Antique Shanghai Pop Music devoted to "The Gentleman Singers of Shanghai". See you again soon!

Movie Stars in the Cartoonist's Eye

Check out these delightful caricatures by cartoonist P. L. Chang from the May 1934 issue of the Shanghai pictorial magazine Young Companion. For those of you who read Chinese, here are the captions. For those who can't (and that includes myself), I'll attempt to conjecture about some of the situations depicted.


Chen Yumei
Remember Chen Yumei, who battled Hu Die for the title of China's movie queen? Supposedly when rising star Hu Die left the Tianyi Film Company in 1928 and signed on with rival Mingxing, Tianyi boss Runje Shaw (the eldest of the Shaw Brothers) decided to take Chen Yumei — one of his actresses — as his second wife and make her the studio's new top star. In this way, it was rumored, the notoriously stingy Shaw wouldn't have to pay a high salary to his leading lady. Poor Chen Yumei... all she could do was dream of getting that crown, while sleeping with rats on a patched mattress.


Wang Renmei
"Wildcat" Wang Renmei had married Korean hunk (and Shanghai's "Emperor of Film") Jin Yan at the beginning of 1934. Jin Yan was an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and if this cartoon is accurate, then "Wildcat" Wang also shared his love of rifles and campfires.


Ai Xia
This cartoon shows Death coming to claim the rebellious modern girl Ai Xia, who committed suicide during the Lunar New Year of 1934. She was China's second female scriptwriter and had written and starred in the film A Woman of Today (1933) before her death. In a traqic turn of events, director Cai Chusheng — who was rumored to have had an affair with Ai and who blamed the Shanghai paparazzi for her death — made a film about her life called New Woman (1935), starring Ruan Lingyu as her fictional stand-in. The press responded to Cai's attack by hounding Ruan Lingyu, who ended up taking her own life shortly thereafter on March 15, International Women's Day. It clearly wasn't easy being a "modern woman" in modern Shanghai.


Li Minghui
A singer turned movie star, Li Minghui was the daughter of "Father of Mandopop" Li Jinhui. In 1934 she married one of China's most famous athletes, football star Lu Zhongen. To read more about Li Minghui, check out The Chinese Mirror, your one-stop shop for information (in English!) about early Chinese cinema.


Hu Die
Here's Queen Hu Die looking a little uptight. I don't know what's going on in the cartoon, but I wonder if it's a reference to Hu Die's suit against her fiance for the annulment of their long-standing engagement. She also demanded monetary compensation for being taken out of the marriage market for such a long time (I believe they were engaged for three years). According to one American newspaper account, Hu Die was "never loath to use her affairs of the heart as stepping stones for her career" (Salt Lake Tribune, March 1, 1936).


Hu Ping
All I can tell you about Hu Ping is that she played the mad woman in Song at Midnight (1937), an adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera that was later remade in Hong Kong during the 90s as The Phantom Lover, starring Leslie Cheung. I'm curious to know more about her, so please leave a comment if you have any information.


Xu Lai
My buddy Oldflames helped me identify this one and was kind enough to translate the caption, in which Xu Lai says, "I couldn't live another day if I can't dance." I guess she was known for her terpsichorean passion. And to think, I only knew her as the first Chinese actress to do a bathtub scene.


Ruan Lingyu
And last but not least is our beloved Ruan Lingyu, whose winning smile and lanky beauty is perfectly captured by cartoonist P. L. Chang.

I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I have!

Merry Christmas!

Here's a little holiday cheer for all of you from myself and from Oldflames — who has generously shared his amazing collection here on my blog all year long.

With lovely Grace Chang as Santa's helper, you're guaranteed double the joy this festive season!


from Oldflames

Or if you find yourself in the mood for a "blue" Christmas, why not let sexy Helen Li ring your bell!


from Duriandave

Old Shanghai Comes to San Francisco

Imagine my surprise when I saw this giant-sized cover of The Young Companion in a vacant San Francisco store front. What used to be a Diesel retail outlet is now cleverly being used as advertising space for Shanghai, an upcoming exhibition at the Asian Art Museum. Obviously I'm biased, since this is totally up my alley, but it promises to be the museum's coolest show since the amazing Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga exhibit from two years ago.

If you live in the Bay Area or happen to be in San Francisco next year between February 12th and September 5th, be sure to check it out. If not, then pick up the catalog, which — judging by these sample pages and cover — looks like it will be a must-have addition to the Soft Film Bookshelf.

To get you as excited about this as I am, here's a little something to set the mood...


"San Francisco" (1939) by Martha Soo with Don Jose & His Orchestra

Martha Soo won the first prize in an amateurs singing contest hosted by the Paramount Night Club, one of the biggest and poshest in Shanghai, and together with it a recording contract with Pathé Records (EMI). She recorded her prize-winning song, Jeanette Macdonald's San Francisco, not in the original English but in a translated Chinese version, and sang it in a jazz-influenced style which included bits of scat singing, imitating her favourite singer Ella Fitzgerald.

* Song and liner note from The Age of Shanghainese Pops 1930-1970 by Wong Kee Chee

Lam Fung, Won't You Be My Young Companion?

Every time I look through my eBay archive — a folder of some 6,000 unnamed and unorganized JPEG files that I've downloaded over the past three-and-a-half years — it's like opening a treasure chest.

Case in point: this absolutely stunning portrait of Patricia Lam Fung from the cover of The Young Companion (June, 1960). I love everything about it: from the soft focus seaside background to the bold and modern characters of the magazine title (良友, liang you, literally "good friend"). And of course, there's Lam Fung, impeccably stylish as always, in her adorable summer print dress and colorful hat with hanging yellow ribbon.

Anyway, I was intending on just posting the cover, because as far as I'm concerned, a picture of lovely Lam Fung doesn't need any words to accompany it. But, you know me, I felt the need to say a little bit about the seminal Young Companion magazine, or a least point a link to someone else who has already said it better than I could. As luck would have it, I found Young Companion's official website, which features a great English-language introduction to the magazine's history, along with some (unfortunately small) images of covers from the 1920s and 30s.

Chung Ching: Goddess of the Silver Screen

I'm not sure when I became a devotee of Chung Ching (Zhong Qing), but she is now, along with Bai Guang, one of my favorite Hong Kong movie actresses whose movies I am tragically unable to see. She does appear very briefly in the MP&GI huangmei opera The Magic Lamp (1964), which is available on DVD, but if you want to see one of the many musicals that made her a star in the mid to late 1950s, you'll need to buck down for a flight to Hong Kong and visit the HKFA.

So imagine my absolute delight when I flipped through the pages of an October 1954 issue of The Young Companion that I recently bought because it featured on its cover a very young Lin Dai (long before she became Shaw Brothers' reigning movie queen) and was surprised instead by this deliciously literal depiction of Chung Ching as goddess!