page_title: Huang Zongying
section_title: 1940s: acting career
hierarchical_section_title: Huang Zongying / Career / 1940s: acting career
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster for Rhapsody of Happiness, a 1947 film by Chen Liting
context_page_description: Huang Zongying is a Chinese retired actress and writer. She starred in many black-and-white films such as Rhapsody of Happiness, Crows and Sparrows, Women Side by Side, and The Life of Wu Xun, all co-starring her third husband Zhao Dan.
  She began writing film scripts in the mid-1950s, and later became an acclaimed writer of reportage literature. She is a three-time winner of the National Award for Outstanding Reportage Literature, for "The Flight of the Wild-Geese", "Mandarin Oranges", and "The Wooden Cabin".
  Huang has married four times. Her marriage with actor Zhao Dan lasted 32 years until his death in 1980. In her later years she married writer Feng Yidai. She had two stepchildren from Zhao's previous marriage, and adopted the two orphaned sons of singer-actress Zhou Xuan.
  In 2005, Huang Zongying and Zhao Dan were both named among the "100 best actors of the 100 years of Chinese cinema". Their love story was adapted by Peng Xiaolian into two feature films including Shanghai Rumba.
  Huang Zongying's younger brother Huang Zongluo is also a famous actor.
context_section_description: In 1941, Huang followed her brother Zongjiang to Shanghai where she became a stage actress in Huang Zuolin's theatre company. She debuted in Cao Yu's play Metamorphosis and rose to fame in the comedy Sweet Child.
  In 1947, she made her screen debut in Shen Fu's film Pursuit before starring in her breakthrough film Rhapsody of Happiness, by the famous director Chen Liting and writer Chen Baichen. In the film she portrayed the heroine, a woman forced into prostitution and drug dealing in war-torn China. Her performance was said to be "of unprecedented artistic quality, capturing with authenticity, naturalness, and control" both the degeneracy and kindness of the character's complex nature. The male lead was her future husband Zhao Dan, China's most celebrated male actor of the time.
  Soon after their marriage in 1948, Huang and Zhao both joined the Kunlun Film Studio, run by the underground Communist Party of China. In less than two years, she acted in several acclaimed films including Women Side by Side and Crows and Sparrows, portraying a diverse range of roles including a revolutionary, a teacher, a prostitute, and a mistress of a government official. Huang and her husband were at the forefront of an era that has been recognized as the  Second Golden Age of Chinese cinema.
caption: Poster of the 1947 film Rhapsody of Happiness
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