DIANA CHANG CHUNG-WEN

Known as “The Most Beautiful Creature in Free China,” 
自由中华最美丽的动物 Diana Chang’s voluptuous figure 
and sexy demeanor helped make her a Mandarin Marilyn 
Monroe of the late 1950s and early 1960s. 

Her teenage years were certainly filled with more drama 
and romance than even a Douglas Sirk opus. The daughter 
of a Hebei (North China) military man, Diana (b. 1936) 
eloped at age 15 and fled to Taiwan. A divorcee at 17, she 
entered the movie world in 1954 under contract to Taiwan’s
newly founded Central Motion Picture Corporation 中影. 
She starred in the studio’s initial production, Spring Returns 
to Plum Hill 梅岗春回 (1954), and was briefly married to 
leading man Huang Chung-hsin 黄宗迅.

Diana made her Hong Kong debut in Three Sisters 三姊妹 
(1957), notable for Chang’s rendition of Chop Suey Roll 
叉烧包, sung to the tune of Mambo Italiano but with 
Chinese lyrics in which the amply endowed starlet invited 
listeners to partake of her cha shao bao (“roast pork buns”).  
Her passionate kiss in the Hong Kong-Thai co-production 
Flame in Ash 地下火花 (1958) caused a sensation, and she 
proved even more photogenic when filmed in Eastmancolor 
for Calendar Girl 龙翔凤舞 (1959). 

Diana was one of the busiest actresses in Mandarin pictures 
in the late 1950s, her credits including such escapist fare as 
Wild Fantasies 想入非非 (1958), Loves of a Model 模特儿
之恋 (1959), and Fire-Breathing Lass 喷火女郎 (1959) 
(which was also one of her nicknames). 

Flames of Passion 欲火焚身 (1960) was the first of many 
Shaw Brothers features. In 1964 the studio handed her the 
role many fans considered uniquely hers, the title character 
in The Amorous Lotus Pan 潘金莲. Upon its release, Diana 
went on a personal appearance tour of the American west 
coast including Seattle, where a former child star turned 
martial arts instructor named Bruce Lee was assigned as her 
bodyguard.

Diana’s final Shaw Brothers picture was the spy thriller Kiss 
and Kill 风流铁汉 (1967). By now she was married to a 
German lad four years her junior (not much of an age 
difference, but the press had a field day). She retired from 
the entertainment scene and moved to Germany, a uniquely 
domestic fade-out for one of Hong Kong’s most alluring 
stars.

*A year after her sensational Hong Kong debut, 22-year-old 
Diana Chang Chung-wen displays some of the reasons why 
she was Hong Kong’s top pin-up girl of 1958.