Han Yunzhen (韩云珍) was born in Beiping (now Beijing) in 1903. Her family moved to Shanghai and later Suzhou and after graduating from a girls' secondary school in Suzhou, she took a teaching job there. The details as to how the transition to acting came about are unrecorded, but in 1923 she joined Dan Duyu's Shanghai Film Company, and after making several films for that studio she largely free-lanced for several Shanghai studios throughout the 1920s, retiring in 1932. She was married twice: her first was to the Shanghai Film Company actor-director Chen Baoqi 陈宝琦. Chinese sources say they divorced right after the "January 28 incident" of 1932, but don't explain how the two events are related, if at all. After the divorce, Han remarried, to a businessman named Peng 彭, but the two became opium addicts, which forced her into retirement, after which she disappeared.
Although she didn't always play sexpots, in most of her movies Han was cast as such, as women of easy virtue and strong desires who, regardless of social status, were not above a bit of the old slap-and-tickle when the opportunity arose. From the pictures here, one might assume she was convincing in such roles.
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Filmography (all as actress):
1923:
The Widow Wants to Remarry
Heaven's Book
1924:
The Divorcee (aka Discarded Wife)
1925:
Back Home From the City
Yanghua's Hate
A Stormy Night
1926:
Transparent Shanghai
Live on Love
Three Girls in Shanghai
1927:
A Romantic Young Lady
Seeking Love on the Field of Romance
1928:
Bloodshed in the Lion Chamber
1929:
Confessing her Sins
The Beauty Under the Blade
1930:
The Burning of Red Lotus Temple (parts 4 - 16)
