Jin Yan: The Rudolph Valentino of Shanghai

by Richard Meyer

Jin Yan The Rudolph Valentino of Shanghai tells the remarkable story of the “Emperor of Film,” who dominated the golden age of Chinese silent movies. Jin Yan achieved his greatest stardom in the 1930s, when women literally threw themselves at his feet. Married first to the Shanghai actress Wang Renmei, his movie roles with “the Goddess” Ruan Ling-yu spurred public demand for more of them together in films made by the leading studio, Lianhua. It was Jin who made Ruan aware of film’s awesome power to portray social problems while evading the censors with melodramatic soap opera formats. Jin’s life spanned the most turbulent period in modern Chinese history―a childhood escape from Japanese-occupied Korea, through the long civil war, the bitter Cultural Revolution, and Deng Xiaoping’s reformation. Jin's embodiment of the modernizing May Fourth ideals of the 1920s and 30s added a new layer of sexuality to the liberal movement. But the Communists later cast Jin aside in their campaign to “learn from Lei Feng,” a humble young soldier. As Jin’s second wife Qin Yi rose to new heights in the politically charged film world, the sick and aging star languished in obscurity. Reproducing dozens of beautiful stills from the personal collection of Qin Yi and the China Film Archive, Richard Meyer contextualizes Jin’s tragic transformation with riveting details on many fellow performers. About the DVD The Peach Girl Starring Jin Yan and Ruan Ling-yu Ruan plays Lingu, a peasant girl, who falls in love with the landlord’s son De’en, played by Jin, who fathers her child. He promises marriage but is forbidden by his mother to see her because of class differences. De’en finally comes to Lingu’s side, as she lies dying. The landowner relents after her death and allows her son to raise the child.

236 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2009

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't understand why this was given 2 stars by a few reviewers. This brief biography is a great service to English speakers who want to know more about this great Chinese movie star whose career spanned the silent era to the war years to Maoist propaganda. We learn a great many things about Jin Yan, like his Korean origins and how he came to be in Shanghai. A muscular and vital man who broke into film with a can do attitude ended up having terrible health problems, many stemming from his last film, shot in Tibet under horrible conditions, the worst result being the removal of most of his stomach. He deserves to be remembered today. He was a capable, cooperative worker but a complicated husband. His screen persona was a beautiful masculinity, tinged with sadness, engaged in romantic resistance. Like most of his compatriots at Lianhua film studios, he believed that cinema should educated society and tackle social problems...although in melodramatic form to enable plausible deniability if they ran afoul of any censors. He was the highest paid male star in the 1930s, although the highest paid female, Hu Die, made 8 times more. There is mention of the careers of great directors and writers and stars, plus how they fared during the Japanese occupation and under the Communists. We get a fairly good sense of his two wives, one of which is also the subject of a book by this author, which I will read this week. His life, like most of his contemporaries' from the Shanghai film industry, became sad and lonely. They were often viewed as carriers of the old decadent culture. Even his hobbies (knitting, keeping birds, woodwork, growing flowers), which he needed after his career ended, were suspect as petty bourgeois activities. The book provides an overview of a life lived in one of the most tumultuous times and places of recent history.