On the Hollywood Walk of Fame, there are more than 2,000 stars shining brightly, and few of them belong to the Chinese.
Today we are going to tell the legendary life of the first Chinese star-picker, Anna May Wong.
Huang Liushuang's life is not long, only a short 56 years, but it has gone through several ups and downs, ups and downs, and has been praised in the West, but it has been criticized by the Chinese people as "insulting China".
Image from the Internet
In the eyes of Westerners, Huang Liushuang is a legendary Chinese woman who has crossed the era, she rose from the silent film era, experienced the golden age of Hollywood movies, and is considered by many people to be "the most important Chinese-American film star of the 20th century", which perfectly shows what is "the beauty of Chinese women".
In honor of her, in 2020, Google's homepage was replaced by her classic image.
Just recently, the U.S. Federal Mint announced plans to issue five new 25-cent coins each year from 2022 to 2025, commemorating their achievements with the heads of deceased outstanding American women of different ethnicities and fields.
Among them was Huang Liushuang, and she was the first Chinese woman to be engraved with an American coin.
But in China, she was snubbed and ostracized, and even after her death, she was misunderstood for a long time.
In 1942, As Chiang Kai-shek's special envoy, Soong Mei-ling gave a wonderful speech to the US Congress, which was welcomed by the entire United States. According to the itinerary, she next had to attend a celebrity tea party organized by Hollywood, but Song Meiling specially entrusted someone to relay it to the organizers, naming and not wanting Huang Liushuang to appear at the scene.
As the first Chinese woman to brave Hollywood, her appearance even opened a brief golden age of Asian American actors.
However, standing on the cusp of the anti-Chinese trend in the United States, she is facing the heavy hostility of the social system and ordinary people, and she is deeply eager to return to her motherland, but it is difficult to advance and retreat, and she regrets her death.
When we gaze at her life story again, from a humble washer daughter to a Hollywood legend, criticizing her for "insulting China" does not seem objective.
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From the daughter of a washer to a Hollywood legend
On January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles' Chinatown, a poor family that opened a laundromat welcomed a daughter, huang liushuang.
Huang Liushuang's ancestors immigrated to the United States from Taishan, Guangdong Province, during the "gold rush" era, and by the time of Huang Shanxing, the father of the second generation of Huang Liushuang, the dream of gold panning had long disappeared, and the Huang family opened a laundry shop in Chinatown to live.
The mother held the yellow willow cream in her arms
Huang Liushuang's father has two wives and has given birth to 8 children, and Huang Liushuang ranks second. His father was a traditional Chinese who sent all his children to school, but because of the serious chinese exclusion in the United States at that time, Huang Liushuang was often bullied and ridiculed in the class.
Just when Huang Liushuang was in elementary school, it was when Hollywood movies were in their infancy, and watching movies became fashionable. When she was nine years old, Huang Liushuang received a tip from a generous customer, so she took the tip to see her first movie.
Since then, the dream of stardom has changed her life.
The colorful and vivid stories of the film lens have become the world that young Huang Liushuang yearns for most in her heart, and her favorite thing to do is to rehearse the bridge section in the movie alone, often talking to herself and even crying.
At that time, in Hollywood in the era of silent films, it often took the story of mocking the Orientals or vilifying the Chinese as the subject of filming, so it often went to Chinatown to go out on location, and recruited Chinese as extras on the spot.
The young Huang Liushuang ran to see the hilarity without a problem, and mixed his face in front of the set staff. Finally, when she was 14 years old, she had her first chance to take photos, playing an unnamed little role in a film called "Red Lantern".
Since then, in 1919, he has stepped into the road of starlight.
Compared with Liu Yuling, who later broke into Hollywood, Huang Liushuang's appearance is actually more in line with the public aesthetic. Her face was plump and round, her eyes were flashing and agile, and Hollywood quickly took a fancy to her, calling her a beautiful "Chinese doll.".
In 1921, Huang Liushuang, who was still studying in Los Angeles at the time, decided to give up her studies for her dream and concentrate on becoming an actor.
At the age of 16, she played the female lead in the movie "Life", working with Lon Chaney Srt, a big Hollywood actor at the time.
Immediately after, 17-year-old Huang Liushuang ushered in Hollywood's first color movie "The Death of the Sea".
In this film, she plays a young girl named Lotus, who falls in love with a white man and gives birth to a son, does not want to be abandoned, and finally has no choice but to jump into the sea and commit suicide.
Huang Liushuang's vivid and delicate performance made this film a great success, and the next film continued. But she soon found that the roles she played began to converge, and the fate of those tragic and lowly roles was the same as the stereotype of Chinese women in Hollywood's eyes.
In 1924, Huang Liushuang starred as a beautiful Mongolian slave girl in "The Thief of Baghdad", shocking four seats.
Thick bangs straight down the eyebrows, a pair of black and shiny single eyelids, sideburns, bright red lips, and a poisonous snake licking her thighs, such an exotic and sexy image makes the audience unforgettable, and this film has become one of the highest-grossing films in Hollywood that year.
However, the sexy and seductive Mongolian slave girl is like a prelude, making it difficult for Huang Liushuang to escape such a character setting.
In the American society with a serious atmosphere of racial discrimination, she can only play the despised prostitute, the dragon girl who incarnates evil, most of the time, these charming, evil, lowly and humble female characters either die of death, or only promise to submit to fate and men's obscenity.
This kind of "insulting Hua" performance made the Chinese people collectively disgusted with her, and even her family openly said: "Yellow willow cream is the shame of our family."
In 1928, Huang Liushuang was tired of always playing the same role in the film, unwilling to put a black veil on the Chinese female image, and she was determined to leave Hollywood and go to Europe.
Shine on the European journey
Leaving Hollywood, she first starred in the film "Song" in Germany, from Britain to the Netherlands, from Spain to Italy, from Hungary to Romania, etc., and the media from various countries tirelessly reported on her.
Huang Liushuang's photo album was published in vanity fair magazine, which is distributed worldwide in France
In 1929, she starred in "The Prosperous Dream of Chinatown", which continued to sensationalize the world and was one of the british film classics of the silent film era.
With short straight hair, high cheekbones and red lips, her image was once regarded as a representative of modern women with oriental moods, and her makeup and hair skills were also imitated by British girls.
Next, she successively starred in audio films such as "Love is Sharper Than a Knife" and "Fire of Love", and recorded three versions of her lines in French, English and German.
Huang Liushuang, which was widely acclaimed in Europe, once again entered the eyes of Paramount Pictures in the United States, and this singing and dancing trip to Europe also raised her status in the United States, and then she participated in the Broadway stage play "On the Spot", which was well received.
The New York Times called her "an incredible pure love girl."
Before each stage, she would say a few statements: "No matter what role I play, I can't represent all of Chinese, and I hope that you will not be misunderstood." ”
Subsequently, Huang Liushuang ushered in the peak of her career.
Dragon Girl
Played the second heroine in "Shanghai Express",
It was the first work she didn't die in the play
However, Huang Liushuang's success does not mean that she is mainstreamed by Hollywood.
She had long taken a fancy to Pearl Buck's Nobel Prize for Literature masterpiece "The Land" and hoped to play the role of the Chinese woman Alain in it, which was the first time to show a positive image of Chinese on the big screen, so she tried her best to fight for it, but as a result, MGM chose a white actor to play.
The reason for rejecting her was: "You are too "Oriental" ”
"The Earth"
German actress Louise Rena won the 10th Oscar for her performance in "The Land".
Just imagine, if there was a chance, would Huang Liushuang have already created an Oscar-winning miracle for the Chinese?
Frustrated by conservative exclusion and discrimination in Hollywood, she decided to return to China to find her roots. "Although I was born in the United States like my parents, I was a pure Chinese," she says. ”
However, by the time she sailed across the Pacific, domestic criticism and criticism had poured in like a sharp knife.
Because the characters she played were boldly dressed and lowly, they were labeled as "insulting China" in China, and because of some villains who hurt the image of the Chinese, they were once stigmatized as "female traitors" and "puppets who smeared China".
The Ta Kung Pao criticized her: Huang Liushuang, who was ashamed of being Chinese and insulting Chinese, was also famous for her habitual performance of films that abused Chinese people.
Tianjin Film Magazine accused her of using Huang Liushuang's prostitute image to humiliate us again Chinese.
Huang Liushuang helplessly explained: "Even if I don't play those roles, there will be other white people to play, rather than let them play, it is better for me to play." ”
It is difficult to find roots, and it is lonely to end up in old age
Huang Liushuang loves movies and tries to reverse the misunderstanding of the image of the East, but she breaks into Hollywood alone, and what she can do is a drop in the bucket.
In 1924, she raised $400,000 and gave it to investors to invest in a series of films showcasing "Chinese Legends." But investors switched hands and put that money into the stock market, and the movie project fell through.
Until 1936, as a third generation of Chinese born and raised in the United States, she set foot on Chinese soil for the first time.
Although there were many criticisms from all walks of life, she was warmly welcomed by celebrities such as hu di and Peking opera master Mei Lanfang.
In a letter to her American friends, she wrote: "Although China is a strange country to me. However, I finally went home. ”
This journey to find her roots also made her deeply fall in love with China, she wore an authentic Chinese qipao, behaved dignified and elegant, and showed a charming oriental style at all times.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, she launched anti-Japanese speeches in many places in the United States, calling on the American people to support china's War of Resistance, and took out many jewelry she had purchased in China for charity sale, leaving no penny of the proceeds, and remitted back to China in 1939 to support the War of Resistance.
Throughout the War of Resistance, she faded out of show business, devoting most of her time and energy to supporting the War of Resistance and actively engaging in the filming of anti-fascist films.
In 1937, Huang Liushuang participated in the filming of "Shanghai Daughter", in which she starred as a wise and resourceful heroine. Subsequently, in 1942, she starred in two anti-war films, "The Lady from Chongqing" and "Bombing Burma", playing leaders and intelligence officers respectively.
She strives to maintain the image of Chinese and portrays her role as a genuine, kind, broad-minded Chinese woman.
However, Huang Liushuang's efforts have not been recognized by the outside world.
Her parents adhered to the old-fashioned idea of "good women don't sing", and they couldn't understand her choice. Emotionally, no one who was willing to love her or accept her also appeared.
Her first love was filmmaker Mickey Neeland, but the other party abandoned her under the pretext that "California law prohibits whites from intermarrying with Chinese.". She also thought about marrying Chinese who settled in the United States, but most of them cared about Huang Liushuang's actor status and did not dare to marry such a flaunted woman home.
She has interpreted many loves on the screen, but she has never found a happy destination in her life. She was helpless: "Chinese men think I am a drama, and white people cannot intermarry with Chinese." ”
After 1950, the cold reception of his career and the unhappiness of his emotional life made Huang Liushuang depressed and constantly drunk. However, tobacco and alcohol hurt her health and damaged her appearance, and the real estate invested in the early years became the only guarantee for her lonely life in her later years.
In 1960, at the age of 55, Huang Liushuang starred in the last color film" "Portrait of Black".
On February 2 of the following year, she died unexpectedly at home due to a heart attack, along with the fireworks of the New Year, just like her short and shining life, blooming when the style was unique and stunning the world; when she disappeared, it was silent, drowning in the tide of the times.
She was buried next to her mother's grave after her death, and there was no text on the tombstone indicating her identity and life trajectory...
From a washer's daughter at the bottom of society to a generation of legends in Hollywood, as a new woman born in the United States, living in the United States, and acting in the United States, Huang Liushuang inevitably suffered from misunderstandings from ethnic compatriots and rejection from different cultural environments in the East and West.
It may be difficult for us to imagine how such a legendary Chinese beauty 100 years ago sensationalized Hollywood with a unique oriental atmosphere, and how much helpless resistance and persistence are hidden behind this beauty.
It can only be said that in this tragic life, she has made her best efforts.
Author: Cheryl, elite said post-90s author, British returnee, write with heart.
Elites are said to be a gathering place for the world's elite, returnees and international students. We deliver global messages, explore cultural landscapes, innovate social models, and discover independent ideas. There is a temperature and attitude here, and you are welcome to pay attention to the elite (ID: elitestalk) if you smell alike.
Reference：
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