Shaws Starlets

While the Golden Age of Hollywood seems so clear cut, being said to from the late 1920s to the late 1950s, the Golden Age of Chinese movies would perhaps confuse people who are not familiar with Chinese cinema. When talking about Chinese cinema, one perhaps need to emphasize first whether one is talking about Cinema of China, Cinema of Hong Kong or Cinema of Taiwan. In the Cinema of China for instance, there were supposed to be two golden ages, one which began in the 30s in Shanghai which produce the first big Chinese movie stars like Hu Die, Ruan Lingyu, Zhou Xuan, Zhao Dan and Jin Yan. The second Golden Age was in the late 40s and produced classics like Myriad of Lights (1948), The Spring River Flows East (1947), and Crows and Sparrows (1949). The Global Times reported that there is another golden age presently as from 2002 to 2008, the annual film production rose from less than 100 to 406, while box office takings exceeded 4.3 billion yuan (US$629.09 million) from less than one billion yuan (US$146.3 million) over the same period. Forget first about Taiwan, but in Hong Kong, one could probably talk about the Golden Age of the Cantonese movies, Mandarin movies and even the Amoy or Hokkien movies too; since there was actually a short-lived Amoy cinema industry in the island featuring the Hokkien Marilyn Monroe – Ding Lan and the Amoy Movie Queen, Zhuang Xue Fang who currently lives in Singapore. And all the while, I had thought that the Golden Age of Chinese Cinema belongs to that era when Shaws starlets shone...
Shaws stars of the 60s...

Li Li Hua

Lin Dai

Julie Yeh Fung

Ivy Ling Po

Betty Loh Ti

Li Ching

Tu Chien

Jenny Hu

Lily Ho

Cheng Pei Pei