RUAN LINGYU

International Women’s Day has a special significance for film fans, 
for March 8 also marks the anniversary of the suicide of Ruan Lingyu 
in 1935. Ruan (whose English name was Lily Yuen) was screen queen 
Butterfly Wu’s main rival to the crown of Shanghai cinemadom. An 
extremely gifted pantomime whose subtle expression of tragedy and 
joy marked her as perhaps the supreme thespian in Shanghai silent 
movies, Lily also led an emotionally tumultuous off-screen life that, 
combined with career pressures, led to her demise a month before her 
twenty-fifth birthday.

A Cantonese 广东中山 born in Shanghai on April 16, 1910, Ruan 
made her motion picture debut at age 16 in 1926 and quickly became 
a celebrity. But it wasn’t until she signed with the newly founded 
UPS (United Photoplay Service “Lianhua”联华) in 1930 that she 
reached the pinnacle of Shanghai stardom. Over the next five years 
she appeared in a series of socially relevant dramas that were 
critical and box office successes and are now acknowledged as 
classics, movies like Three Modern Girls三个摩登女性 (1932), Toys 
小玩意 (1933), and The Goddess 神女 (1934).

Though the films from the first half of her career have not been 
preserved, many of her UPS pictures still exist, and there are 
occasional surprises. A complete print of the presumably lost Love 
and Duty 恋爱与义务 (1930) was discovered in the 1990s in, of all 
places, Uruguay among the possessions of a late KMT general who had 
emigrated to Latin America. It is the earliest Ruan feature known 
to survive, and shows that at 20 she already possessed a mature 
talent. An unhappy love life, the sting of the gossip-mongering 
press, and the stress facing an actress less-than-fluent in Mandarin 
and unconfident in making the transition to talking pictures took 
their toll. Ruan’s death sent shockwaves through the movie c
ommunity and led to much soul searching in artistic and literary 
circles. More than ten thousand fans attended her funeral and there 
were many declarations that the name “Ruan Lingyu” would never 
be forgotten. 

Forgotten she was, though, for her films were not shown for many 
decades. The situation changed with the post-Cultural Revolution 
revival of interest in old Chinese cinema in the 1980s, and Ruan 
became a pop icon in 1991 thanks to a shallow but award-winning 
film biography, Center Stage, starring Maggie Cheung. The movie 
might not have done Ruan Lingyu justice, but it is to be credited 
with making new generations aware of the triumphs and tragedy of 
one of the true goddesses of the Chinese screen.

**The sunny smile of Ruan Lingyu in 1934, a year before her suicide.