Xuan Jinglin

Xuan Jinglin (; 1907 – January 22, 1992), also romanised as Sie King-ling, was a Republican-era Chinese actress. She was bought out of a brothel and became a successful actress for the Mingxing film company.

Early life Xuan was born in Shanghai in 1907 under the name Tian Jinlin. She was discovered by Zhang Shichuan. He had seen her as a child in an amusement park where he was the manager. He later re-found her and offered her a small part in a now lost film. He liked her acting and bought her out of the brothel so that she could act in films by the Mingxing Film Company. This was then a small company that he was a director of, and from May 1925 she had parts in Mingxing films as both her, and the company's, fortunes improved.

Her stage name was devised by Zheng Zhengqiu who based it on the name she had adopted in the brothel and a transliteration of Lillian Gish into Shanghainese.

Her second film, A Woman in Shanghai, was devised for her and echoed her own Cinderella story. She played a prostitute who is rescued by a millionaire. She was not typecast, and she played a female gangster, an innocent country girl, a dancer and a poor widow in 1920s Mingxing films.

Xuan died in Shanghai in 1992. Because of her important role in early Chinese cinema she has been included with Yang Naimei, Wang Hanlun and Zhang Zhiyun as one of China's "Four Famous Actresses".

Films

The Last Conscience (1925) Little Friend (1925) A Pitiful Girl (1925) He Wants a Baby (1926) Nameless Hero (1926) A Good Man (1926) The Rich Man's Daughter (1926) A Lovelorn Actress (1926) Suspicious Couple (1926) Real and False Daughters (1927) Fallen Plum Blossoms (1927) The Young Mistress's Fan (1928) A Dissolute Woman (1930) Virtuous Mother From a Brothel (1930) Last Love (1931) Shanghai Woman (1931) Farewell to Yuren (1931) A Couple in Life and Death (1931) Pleasures of the Dance Hall (1931) Shadow on the Window (1931) A Married Woman (1932) Twin Sisters (1933 or 1934) Two Against One (1933) The Future (1933) Mother and Son (1933) Homesick (1934) A Brief Life (1934) The Doctrine of Women (1934) Sisters Reborn (1934) A Big Family (1935) Tears of Blood in the Dance Hall (1936) Family (1956) Beside the Sanba River (1958) Fragrance in the Air (1959) The Underground War (1959) Family Problems (1964)