Cheng Pei-pei

In this Chinese name, the family name is Cheng.

Cheng Pei-pei
鄭てい佩佩
Cheng in 2014
Born	Jiang Pei-pei (1946-01-06)6 January 1946 Shanghai, China
Died	17 July 2024(2024-07-17) (aged 78) San Francisco Bay Area, California, U.S.
Citizenship	United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1964–2020
Spouse	Yuan Wen-tung ​ ​ (m. 1970; div. 1987)​
Children	4, including Eugenia Yuan
Awards	Hong Kong Film Awards – Best Supporting Actress 2000 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	鄭てい佩佩
Simplified Chinese	郑佩佩
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhèng Pèipèi Wade–Giles Cheng4 P'ei4-p'ei4 IPA [ʈʂə̂ŋ pʰêɪpʰêɪ] Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Zeng6 Pui3-pui3

Cheng Pei-pei (6 January 1946 – 17 July 2024) was a Hong Kong-American actress who started her career in 1963 and was considered cinema's first female action hero. She was best known for King Hu's wuxia film Come Drink with Me (1966) and Ang Lee's wuxia film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Career

Cheng was born Jiang Pei-pei in Shanghai, with her ancestral home in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. She was the eldest of four siblings, with a brother and two sisters. Her father, Jiang Xuecheng, was a Kuomintang member who worked for the Shanghai Municipal Police in Shanghai International Settlement. After World War II, Jiang established China’s first ink factory. In 1952, when Cheng was 6, her father was labeled a counter-revolutionary and sent to a labor camp in Inner Mongolia; she never saw him again and he died in 1963 without his family knowing. Cheng's mother, who was initially her father's secretary and later his concubine, decided to change the children’s surname to her own to protect them from their father's political consequences.

Cheng attended World Elementary School in Shanghai, where she was a schoolmate of future movie stars Grace Chang and Chen Hou. She went to the Shanghai No. 3 Girls' High School, where she was a schoolmate of Lydia Shum. Cheng studied ballet for six years in Shanghai. In the mid-1950s, Cheng's mother and siblings moved to Hong Kong, leaving Cheng in the care of a nanny in Shanghai before the nanny also left. Cheng lived independently for several years and moved to Hong Kong in 1960, during her second year of junior high, to reunite with her family. In 1963, she was admitted to the training programme at Shaw Brothers Studio. After graduating she joined the studio and made her film debut in The Lotus Lamp (1965), playing the male scholar Liu Yanchang opposite Lin Dai. Cheng followed this with her first female lead role in the Taiwanese drama film Lovers' Rock (1964).

Due to her Mandarin skills and dance background, she quickly worked her way up in the Hong Kong film industry at a time when the Mandarin-language productions commanded higher budgets and wider distribution than Cantonese works. Cheng gained fame for starring in the Hong Kong wuxia film Come Drink with Me (1966), directed by King Hu. Set during the Ming Dynasty, it stars Cheng as Golden Swallow, a skilled swordswoman on a mission to rescue her brother. Cheng continued to play expert swordswomen in a number of films throughout the 1960s.

In 1970, at the peak of her career, Cheng married and subsequently retired from acting, moving to the United States for her husband's business endeavors. She attended business school at the University of California, Irvine and also taught Chinese dance in Southern California. In the 1980s, Cheng founded a television production company in the United States and traveled across Hawaii and Northern California at her own expense to produce a documentary series about Chinese Americans. Both Cheng's TV business and her marriage failed around the same time. In 1987, she divorced from her husband but continued to live with him for two years. In 1989, her company declared bankruptcy, and Cheng moved out of their house.

With the comedy Flirting Scholar (1993), Cheng successfully returned to acting in the 1990s Hong Kong. In 2000, she returned to international attention with her role as Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, directed by Ang Lee, whom Cheng had befriended in the 90s when she was host of KSCI's Mandarin talk show, Pei-Pei's Time.

Into the 21st century, she became active across Greater China with Chinese TV dramas such as Young Justice Bao (2000), Chinese Paladin (2004), and The Patriot Yue Fei (2012), as well as Singaporean TV dramas Spring of Life (2002) and Women of Times (2006). She gained new popularity among the younger generation with Chinese reality show Divas Hit the Road (2014). Her notable international credits included the action film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009), the British drama Lilting (2014), the Canadian drama Meditation Park (2017), and Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan (2020).

Upon receiving a lifetime achievement award in Hong Kong in 2015, Cheng reflected on her acting career as follows: "I always remember that I represent the Hong Kong people. So no matter where I am in the world, I will always identify myself as a Hong Kong actress and maintain the professionalism that a Hong Kong actress should have."

Personal life and death

Cheng was Buddhist. She was fluent in Shanghainese, Cantonese, Mandarin and English.

In 1964, while filming Come Drink with Me, she fell in love with Chan Hung-lit, who played the villain Jade-Faced Tiger. The two often quarreled over Chen‘s infidelity and Cheng eventually left him for Yueh Hua, the leading actor in Come Drink with Me. Their relationship lasted five years until Cheng's friend Yi Shu, then an entertainment reporter, got involved; Cheng left the love triangle and moved to the United States after marriage. When Yi Shu discovered Cheng's letter to Yueh Hua from the US, she became so furious that she cut up Yueh's clothes and stabbed a knife into his bed. Yi Shu also made the letter public through newspapers, which put Cheng's marriage in jeopardy and made Yueh Hua to end his own relationship with Yi Shu.

In 1970, Cheng married Taiwanese businessman Yuan Wen-Tung, whose father was the agent for Shaw Brothers in Taiwan. The couple met when Shaw Brothers' film Lover's Rock was being shot in Taiwan; Cheng's mother lost money playing mahjong at the Yuan family's home, and Cheng was sent to deliver the money to Yuan's mother, where Cheng first met Yuan. After their marriage, they moved to the United States. Considering Yuan was the only son in his family, Cheng felt obligated to bear a son for him. She experienced eight pregnancies and four miscarriages and had four children until a son was born. In 1987, with an alimony of $100,000, she divorced quietly without informing her children and continued to live with Yuan for two years before moving out.

Cheng's son Harry Yuan is a host on National Geographic, and her daughters Jennifer, Marsha, and Eugenia Yuan are all actresses.

In 2019, Cheng was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration, but chose to keep the diagnosis private and spend her remaining time with her children and grandchildren. She died in the San Francisco Bay Area on 17 July 2024, at the age of 78.

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1964	Lovers' Rock (情人じょうにん石せき)	Lin Qiuzi
1964	The Last Woman of Shang (妲己)	Dancing girl
1965	The Lotus Lamp (寶たから蓮れん燈とう)	Liu Yanchang
1965	Song of Orchid Island (蘭らん嶼之歌か)	Ya Lan
1966	Come Drink with Me (大醉たいすい俠)	Golden Swallow
1966	The Joy of Spring (歡樂かんらく青春せいしゅん)
1966	Princess Iron Fan (鐵扇てっせん公主こうしゅ)	White Bone Demoness
1967	Blue Skies (艷つや陽ひ天てん)	Chen Yun
1967	The Dragon Creek (龍虎りゅうこ溝みぞ)	Guo Er-niu
1967	Hong Kong Nocturne (香こう江花えばな月夜づきよ)	Chia Chuan-chuan
1967	Operation Lipstick (1967) (諜網嬌娃)
1967	The Thundering Sword (神劍しんけん震ふるえ江湖こうこ)	So Jiau-jiau
1968	Golden Swallow (金きむ燕つばめ子こ)	Golden Swallow
1968	The Jade Raksha (玉たま羅ら剎)	Leng Qiuhan
1968	That Fiery Girl (紅べに辣椒)	Pearl
1969	Dragon Swamp (毒どく龍りゅう潭)	Qing-er/Fan Ying
1969	The Flying Dagger (飛ひ刀がたな手しゅ)	Yu Ying
1969	The Golden Sword (龍りゅう門もん金きん劍けん)	Ngai Jin-feng
1969	Raw Courage (虎とら膽きも)	Shangguan Xiuyi
1970	Brothers Five (五ご虎とら屠ほふ龍りゅう)	Yen Hsing-kung
1970	Lady of Steel (荒江あらえ女おんな俠)	Fang Ying-qi
1971	The Lady Hermit (鍾馗しょうき娘むすめ子こ)	Leng Yu-shuang
1971	The Shadow Whip (影かげ子こ神かみ鞭むち)	Yang Kaiyun
1971	The Patriotic Heroine (拼命娘むすめ子こ)
1972	The Yellow Muffler (玉たま女おんな嬉うれし春はる)	Singer
1973	Attack of the Kung Fu Girls (鐵てつ娃)	Siu Ying
1974	Whiplash (虎とら辮子)	Hu Pien-tze
1982	Lunatic Frog Women (烈日れつじつ女おんな娃人)
1983	All the King's Men (天下てんか第だい一いち)
1988	Painted Faces (七なな小しょう福ぶく)	Ching
1993	Flirting Scholar (唐から伯はく虎とら點てん秋香あきか)	Madame Wah
1993	Kidnap of Wong Chak Fai (綁架黃き七なな輝てる)	Kung Tse-sam
1994	From Zero to Hero (亂世らんせい超人ちょうじん)
1994	The Gods Must Be Funny in China (非ひ洲しゅう超人ちょうじん)	Aunty
1994	Kung Fu Mistress (神かみ鳳おおとり苗なえ翠みどり琴こと)
1994	Lover's Lover (情人じょうにん的てき情人じょうにん)
1994	Wing Chun (詠えい春はる)	Ng Mui	Cameo
1996	How to Meet the Lucky Stars (運うん財ざい五福ごふく星ぼし)	Chu Ba
1998	The Spirit of the Dragon (老ろう鼠ねずみ龍りゅう之の猛もう龍りゅう過か港みなと)	Yun Gee
1999	Four Chefs and a Feast (四個廚師一圍菜)		Cameo
1999	A Man Called Hero (中華ちゅうか英雄えいゆう)	Hero's mother	Cameo
1999	The Truth About Jane and Sam (真心まごころ話ばなし)	Sam's mother
2000	Fist Power (生死せいし拳こぶし速そく)	Brian's mother
2000	Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥が虎とら藏ぞう龍りゅう)	Jade Fox	Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actress
2000	Lavender (薰かおる衣ころも草そう)	Madame Tung	Cameo
2001	Shadow Mask (武神ぶしん黑くろ俠)	Red Goddess	a.k.a. The Legend of Black Mask
2002	Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger (龍りゅう騰あが虎とら躍おど)	Liu Ruyan	also producer
2002	Naked Weapon (赤裸あかはだか特とく工こう)	Faye Ching
2004	Sex and the Beauties (性感せいかん都市とし)	Mona
2004	The Miracle Box (天てん作さく之の盒)	Joanna's mother
2005	Insuperable Kid (無敵むてき小しょう子こ霍元甲かぶと)	Aunt San
2005	House of Harmony	Amah
2007	They Wait	Aunt Mei
2007	Special Boys (功夫いさお好こう男兒だんじ)	Aunt Lan
2007	Shanghai Baby	Conny
2007	The Counting House (藏くら)	Lia
2008	Kung Fu Killer	Myling
2008	Love Under the Sign of the Dragon	Tham
2009	Basic Love (愛情あいじょう故事こじ)	Ling's grandmother
2009	Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li	Zhilan
2009	Blood Ties (還かえ魂たましい)	Madam Lee
2009	Taishan Kung Fu (泰山たいざん功夫いさお)
2010	Flirting Scholar 2 (唐から伯はく虎とら點てん秋香あきか2之の四よん大だい才子さいし)	Madame Wah
2010	Here Comes Fortune (財ざい神しん到いた)
2011	Coming Back (回かい馬ば槍やり)
2011	Legendary Amazons (楊門女將おかみ之の軍令ぐんれい如山)	She Saihua
2011	Let Love Come Back (讓ゆずる愛あい回かい家か)
2011	Shanghai Hotel
2011	Double Bed Treaty (雙そう人じん床ゆか條約じょうやく)
2011	Speed Angels (極きょく速そく天使てんし)	Auntie Fen
2011	My Wedding and Other Secrets	Mrs. Chu
2012	Imperial Bodyguard (御前ごぜん侍さむらい衛まもる)
2012	Give Me Five (五ご行ぎょう攻略こうりゃく)
2014	Lilting	Junn
2014	The Scroll of Wing Chun White Crane (永えい春はる白しろ鹤拳之の擎天画が卷まき)
2014	The Eyes of Dawn (黎明れいめい之の眼め)
2014	Streets of Macao
2014	The Bat Night
2015	Bright Wedding(璀璨的てき婚禮こんれい)
2015	Lost in Wrestling
2016	Good Take Too
2016	Goldstone	Mrs Lao
2017	Love Of Hope(讓ゆずる愛あい活かつ下か去さ)
2017	Meditation Park	Maria Wang
2019	Flirting Scholar from the Future
2020	Mulan	The Matchmaker	Final film role

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1980	Chivalrous Shadow, Fragrant Footprints (俠影香が蹤)	Golden Swallow
1984	The Legend Continues (霍東閣かく)	Chan Shi-chiu
1996	Wong Fei Hung Series: The Final Victory (黃き飛ひ鴻おおとり之の辛からし亥い革命かくめい)	Beggar So
1997	The Pride of Chaozhou (我わが來らい自じ潮うしお州しゅう)	Poon Yuk-lin
1998	Master Ma (馬うま永えい貞之さだゆき爭そう霸上海しゃんはい灘なだ)	Ma Daniang
1998	Master Ma II (馬うま永えい貞之さだゆき英雄えいゆう血ち)	Ma Daniang
1999	Young Master of Shaolin (少年しょうねん英雄えいゆう方かた世よ玉だま)	Ng Mui
2000	Young Justice Bao (少年しょうねん包つつみ青天せいてん)	Bao's mother
2001	Legendary Fighter: Yang's Heroine (楊門女將おかみ—女おんな儿當自じ強つよし)	She Saihua
2001	Heroes in Black (我わが來らい也)	Feng Pobu's mother
2002	Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge (書しょ劍けん恩おん仇かたき錄ろく)	Empress Dowager Chongqing
2002	Springs of Life (春はる到いた人ひと间)	Yun Shuheng
2004	Chinese Paladin (仙せん劍けん奇き俠傳)	Granny Jiang
2004	Water Moon, Hollow Sky (水月すいげつ洞ほら天てん)	Long Po	a.k.a. Paradise
2005	Li Wei Resigns from Office (李り衛まもる辭じ官かん)	Li Wei's mother
2006	Women of Times (至尊しそん紅顏こうがん)	She Huijun
2006	The Yang Sisters	Honey Yang
2008	Home with Kids 5 (家いえ有ゆう儿女5)
2010	A Weaver on the Horizon (天涯てんがい織女しょくじょ)	Mrs. Fang
2012	Xuan-Yuan Sword: Scar of Sky (軒のき轅ながえ劍けん：天てん之の痕あと)	Granny Ma
2012	The Patriot Yue Fei (精せい忠ちゅう岳だけ飛ひ)	Yue Fei's mother
2013	Daughter's Return (千金せんきん归来)	Mother Rong
2015	The Lost Tomb	Huo Xian Gu
2016	Ice Fantasy (幻まぼろし城じょう)	Feng Tian

External links

• Cheng Pei-pei at IMDb
• Cheng Pei-pei at the Hong Kong Movie Database
• Cheng Pei-pei at AllMovie
• Cheng Pei-pei at Rotten Tomatoes
• Cheng Pei-pei entry at Lovehkfilm.com