Wang Renmei

In 1926, Wang entered the Changsha No. 1 Normal School.

However, her father died that year after a wasp Sting developed into a fatal infection.

Without financial support from their father, the Wang children left their hometown to seek a living elsewhere.

They first went to Wuhan, but after the fall of Wang Jingwei's government in 1927, they fled east to Wuxi near Shanghai.

In early 1928, Wang Renmei's second oldest brother Wang Renlu brought Renmei and her third oldest brother Renyi to Shanghai.

Renlu's former colleague Li Jinhui, another Hunan native who is now considered the "Father of Chinese pop music", had founded the Meimei School in Shanghai.

Meimei was a special school for singing and dancing which became the famous China Song and Dance Troupe, later renamed Bright Moon Song and Dance Troupe.

Renmei and Renyi both enrolled at the school, with Renmei focusing on singing and dancing, while her brother studied mandolin.

Wang Renmei proved to be a talented singer and became one of the "Four Divas" of the troupe, along with Li Lili, Xue Lingxian (薛玲仙), and Hu Jia (胡笳).

Starting in May 1928, the troupe spent ten months touring southeastern Asian cities including Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, and Jakarta.

They also toured and performed in Beijing, Tianjin, and Manchuria.

She was mainly active during the 1930s, and her most notable film was the 1934 Song of the Fishermen (available online with English subtitles ) directed by Cai Chusheng, which was the first Chinese film to win an international prize.

In 1931, with the advent of sound film, the Bright Moon Song and Dance Troupe was acquired by the Lianhua Film Company, which needed the skills of the troupe's singers for the new era.

In 1932 she starred in her first film Wild Rose (available online with English subtitles ), which was written by director Sun Yu specifically for the 17-year-old Wang Renmei.

Playing opposite the famous star Jin Yan, her debut was well received by critics and audiences alike, and she was hailed as the newest star in the Hollywood of Asia.

In 1934, Wang starred in her most famous film Song of the Fishermen, directed by Cai Chusheng.

She also sang the film's eponymous theme song.

The film was a runaway success: it was played in Shanghai for a record 84 days and seen by almost a million people.

On January 1, 1934, while still shooting the film, Wang suddenly announced her marriage with her Wild Rose costar Jin Yan, who was then the "Emperor of Cinema" in China.

Despite the great success of Song of the Fishermen, Lianhua did not renew her contract because its owner believed that a married female star would lose her appeal to male audiences.

In 1935 it became the first Chinese film to win an international award, at the inaugural Moscow International Film Festival.

Wang Renmei acquired the nickname "Wildcat" from her unrestrained performance as the girl named "Little Cat" in the film.

Wang Renmei, together with Li Lili and Xu Lai, her former colleagues at the Bright Moon Troupe, were the earliest stars to portray the energetic, wholesome, and sexy "country girl" prototype, which became one of the most popular figures in Chinese cinema, and later inherited by the cinema of Hong Kong.

However, Wang Renmei's career started to go downhill after Song of the Fishermen.

She joined the Diantong Film Company in 1935 and acted in more films including the patriotic Sons and Daughters in a Time of Storm, but was not as successful as her husband.

After Japan invaded China and occupied Shanghai in 1937, Wang Renmei and Jin Yan fled to Hong Kong, and then to remote Kunming when Hong Kong also fell to the Japanese.

Like other war refugees, they struggled for survival.

Because of her knowledge of English, she found a job as a typist at the U.S. army base in Kunming.

In the last few years of the war Wang Renmei and Jin Yan were often separated for months at a time, and the couple divorced in 1945.

The divorce was amicable and they remained friendly for the rest of their lives.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Wang returned to Shanghai.

Wang Renmei (December 1914 – 2 April 1987) was a famous Chinese actress and singer nicknamed the "Wildcat of Shanghai".

In 2005, she was chosen as one of the 100 best actors of the 100 years of Chinese cinema.

Wang was married to Jin Yan, the Korean-born "Emperor of Chinese Cinema", and later to Ye Qianyu, a prominent artist.

Wang Renmei was born and grew up in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, where her father Wang Zhengquan (王正权) was a mathematics teacher at the Changsha No. 1 Normal School.

Born Wang Shuxi (王庶熙), she was the youngest of seven children.

One of her father's students was Mao Zedong, a fellow Hunan native who would become China's top leader.

As a young man, Mao lived in Wang's house and saw the child Renmei on a daily basis.

Later Mao was director of the school that Wang Renmei attended.

When Wang Renmei was seven, her mother died of a stroke.