Ruan Lingyu: Her Life and Career is a detailed biography of the life on and off the screen of one of China’s most important silent movie actresses. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I’ve been fascinated by Ruan Lingyu since 2018, when I saw her in Wu Yonggang’s 1934 masterpiece The Goddess. I was awestruck by her beauty and incredible talent (she was one of those people who made great acting look easy), and was saddened to learn that she’d died, at the age of twenty-four, by her own hand. Caught in one of those moments where moviegoers briefly forget celebrities themselves are only human, I wondered why someone who seemingly had everything—fame, success, etc.—was so unhappy with her life that she chose to end it. So I started researching her.

Initially, I had no plans of writing a biography, my only desire being to learn more about Ruan and her films. But within a year, I felt the desire to tell her story in the form of a book. As I continued learning, I used my research in articles on this woman who’d captivated me, but the actual writing of the biography did not begin until autumn 2021. By then, a book also seemed a great way to utilize my time in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.

How much research did you undertake for this book and how much time did it take to put it all together?

I had three years of research under my belt when I started writing, and continued educating myself as I wrote over nine months. In addition to studying Ruan Lingyu’s life, I read up on Chinese film history and the history of China in the early twentieth-century. It was important to have an understanding of all three of these things, as they not only ran concurrently but often influenced one another. (Very often, Chinese film content of this time was tailored to—or against—major sociopolitical events and movements.) To gain this knowledge, I collected more than forty books (in English, Chinese, and French—huge thanks to my translators Zhang Le and François Coulombe) as well as a plethora of journals, newspaper articles, etc. I also benefited greatly from the efforts of Christopher Rea, professor of Chinese at the University of British Columbia, and his Modern Chinese Cultural Studies project, which includes a YouTube channel of the same name; he and his team have posted several Ruan Lingyu movies with new and complete English subtitles!

Did you find anything in your research of this story that surprised you?

Because of the handful of her films known to survive, Ruan Lingyu is perceived as a cinematic embodiment of suffering—someone victimized by war, sexism, and social prejudice. Even when she wants to push back—as in 1935’s New Woman—she proves weak and helpless. As I discovered in researching her lost movies, however, there were several instances where Ruan played against this image. There’s a lost picture directed by Bu Wancang called Three Modern Women (1932), which cast her as a take-charge, strong-willed heroine. I also learned of cases where she played outright villainesses—someone who inflicted suffering upon others. I wish someone somewhere would find prints of these pictures—so we can see her play against type. And maybe they will. After all, Love and Duty (1931) was believed lost until a copy was unearthed in Uruguay in 1994; it’s since been beautifully restored and released on Blu-ray in China. So maybe there’s hope for Three Modern Women, White Cloud Pagoda (1928), Spring Dream in the Old Capital (1930), etc.

What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Ruan Lingyu: Her Life and Career?

Part of Ruan Lingyu’s legacy stems from the fact that she died so young—it was, after all, this tragic fact that pushed me to research her so intensely. But in addition to contextualizing what pushed her to self-destruction, I hope my book demonstrates she was more than a famous person who committed suicide. This was an actress of exceptional talent, revered by her colleagues, whose career offers vivid glimpses into what China was like at the time. Early Chinese film history may not be as famous as what’s been produced in Hong Kong, but it’s a fascinating cinematic landscape—and Ruan Lingyu was one of its key figures.

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