With her bobbed hair, makeup, short skirt and rolled-down hose (and her obvious sexuality), the flapper image became the ideal for many young urban women in the 1920s, with Hollywood providing the template. Through their roles in such movies as "Flaming Youth," "Rolled Stockings" and "Our Dancing Daughters," actresses like Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore, Joan Crawford and Clara Bow came to personify the flapper for the American public. The flapper was a popular figure in 1920s Chinese film as well. We have already met one of the Shanghai flappers, Great Wall studio's Yang Aili. Another was Yin Mingzhu, who made her film debut in 1921 in "The Sea Oath," directed by her eventual husband, Dan Duyu.
Yin Mingzhu 殷明珠, also known as Pearl Ing, was born Yin Shangxian in
Wujiang, Jiangsu province in 1904. Her professional name Mingzhu
("Jewel") was a term of endearment given to her by her parents. She
later altered this to "Pearl," out of admiration for American star
Pearl White. As a young girl, her mother moved to Shanghai so her
daughter could attend a good private school, the Shanghai
Sino-Western
School for Girls, where young Mingzhu became an avid student of Western
culture. Modern innovations and pastimes from the West were becoming
quite trendy in China, and Yin Mingzhu enthusiastically tried
everything. Where foreign things were concerned, she was what today
would be termed an "early adopter," so much so that her schoolmates
dubbed her with the nickname "Foreign Fashion," [F.F. or Miss F.F. for
short], a label that continued into her movie career. In addition to
mastering English, the future film star was very fond of foreign dress,
and took up Western dance, singing and riding. She is thought to be
one of the first women in China to learn to drive a car. In 1921, she
met young artist Dan Duyu [aka Darwin Dann], who had just formed his
Shanghai Photoplay Company 
and was assembling a cast for its first
motion picture, "The Sea Oath." He cast her as the female lead for the
1922 release. Although not completely a critical success, it was
commercially successful, and Yin Mingzhu became an overnight star. In
doing so, Yin Mingzhu became China's first female star of a motion
picture, breaking through a pattern in which all the principle roles
had been males, while the women were largely eye candy, little more
than attractive parts of the scenery. But this breakthrough role
almost turned out to be her last: her mother objected to Pearl
becoming an actress, and insisted her daughter find some other, more
respectable line of work. So the 18-year-old took a job in a medical
clinic, but three years later returned to movies, starring in another
Dan Duyu production, "Home Again." On February 1, 1926, "Pearl and
Darwin" were married in Hangzhou, making them China’s first filmmaking
couple. Of the more than 30 movies Dan Danyu directed in his career,
Yin Mingzhu had the lead in nearly half of them. Their most successful
collaboration was 1927's "The Spider Cave" (Pan Si Dong 盘丝洞), based on a
part of the classic novel Journey to the West (Xi You Ji 西游记), in which
she 
played the Spider Queen 蜘蛛精. No copies are known to exist of this
or any of the couple's films today.*
[Left and right, two stills from 'The Spider's Cave']
The worldwide depression hit China in 1930-31, touching off a wave
of mergers or dissolutions among Shanghai's film studios. Dan Duyu's
Shanghai Photoplay Company merged with two other studios, and the
couple continued working for the new, joint operation. But by 1935,
their family was growing, so Yin Mingzhu retired from the screen. When
the Japanese invaded in 1937, the Dan family left Shanghai for Hong
Kong, but when Dan Duyu was unable to find regular film work there,
they returned to China, moving among such unoccupied areas as Guilin
and Guiyang in the far south, and Chongqing and Chengdu in far west
China, with Dan falling back on his artistic talents, supporting the
family by selling his drawings. When the war ended, they returned to
Hong Kong, where Dan Duyu directed several films for various studios.
In 1952, the couple's daughter Judy Dan was named Miss Hong Kong, an
achievement that usually guarantees a movie career there, but in that
same year Miss Dan went to the U.S. to participate in the Miss Universe
contest, placing 4th, then stayed on to work in American television
throughout the 1950s and 60s. Back in Hong Kong, the one-time
celebrity couple of Chinese movies became more known as celebrity
parents. Dan Duyu made his last motion picture in 1953, then quit the
industry to return once again to art, becoming a frequent contributor
of satirical drawings to Hong Kong newspapers, mainly the Hsing Tao
Daily. He died in Hong Kong in 1972. Yin Mingzhu lived out her days
in Hong Kong, dying in 1989.
*Unfortunate, because while I can't locate the citation, I once came
across a scholarly reference to "The Spider Cave" which belittled the
movie as an early example of "soft-core pornography disguised as art."
It would be interesting to see if that was a valid assessment or
critical prudishness.
*******************************************
Yin Mingzhu Filmography (all as actress)
1922:
The Sea Oath
1925:
Return to the Hometown
1926:
Family Heirloom
Repayment
1927:
The Spider Cave
1928:
A Dream of Red Mansions
The Diamond Case
1929:
I Love You All, Sisters
The Spider Cave II
1930:
The Leering Swordsman
The Case in the Studio
Tofu Master
1931:
Oriental Story
Stranger in the Old House
1932:
South Seas Beauty
1933:
An Innocent Girl
1934:
Golden Age
1935:
Peach-Blossom Dream
