"If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
This was the motto of the old City News Bureau of Chicago, and it's too bad it wasn't said at some time by Confucius; if it had been, generations of Chinese historians might have taken it to heart, and saved many others a lot of trouble. Too often, someone with a respected reputation has written something erroneous, and subsequent researchers on the topic will just accept the mistake as fact, without checking it out. Take, for example, the eventual fate of 1920s silent actress Li Dandan 李旦旦, who created a sensation among Chinese filmgoers as the mischievous young maid in "Romance of the West Chamber" (1927), and as one of the first actresses to portray Hua Mulan on screen. The standard reference Chinese Cinema Encyclopaedia (Shanghai, 1995) says she tragically died young, killed in a "1940s" airplane crash. The China Movie DataBase says the fatal crash occurred in 1946, as does Google China. But the real muddle comes when searching Baidu (sometimes called "The Chinese Google,"). In its encyclopedia section article on Li Dandan the usually reliable resource states flatly that her fatal crash happened in 1940, but in another article about her under her real name Li Xiaqing 李霞卿 [aka Lee Ya-Ching] Baidu gets it right: she made the U.S. her permanent home, survived well into old age, and died in Oakland, California in 1998, age 88.
I must admit I initially had it wrong as well: three years ago, in captioning an illustration for an article about China's earliest film schools, the sources I used stated she had died in a plane crash during World War II, and I just repeated the error. I have corrected the mistake, and that's one of the things I love about internet publishing: nothing has to be permanent unless you do it on camera or speak it into a microphone.
In that earlier post tracing the history of Hua Mulan on Chinese screens, I mentioned that I planned a full profile of Li Dandan, but another blogger has already written that profile, and done it so well there is nothing I can add. So I will just link here to that post. Apologies to dariandave at Soft Film: Vintage Chinese Cinema for my having missed it the first time around. His principal resource is a recent book on Li and two other pioneer Chinese women aviators, and I recommend it as well.
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Li Dandan Filmography (all as actress):
1926:
Why Not Her? ... Kong Qiongxian
The God of Peace ... Lin Cuiwei
1927:
The Cape Poet ... Liang Cuiying
The Wandering Songstress ... Li Lingxiao
The Romance of the West Chamber ... Hongniang
1928:
Five Avenging Women ...
Hua Mulan Joins the Army ... Hua Mulan
1939:
Disputed Passage --- Aviatrix (as Ya-Ching Lee)
