page_title: Xu Lai (actress)
section_title: Secret agent
hierarchical_section_title: Xu Lai (actress) / Secret agent
caption_attribution_description: English: 1930s Shanghai actress Xu Lai 中文: 30年代上海影星徐来
context_page_description: Xu Lai was a Chinese film actress, socialite, and World War II secret agent. Known as the "Standard Beauty", she was active in the film industry for only three years, and quit acting after the suicide of the great star Ruan Lingyu in 1935. Her first husband was Li Jinhui, the "Father of Chinese pop music".
  During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Xu and her second husband, Lieutenant General Tang Shengming, ostensibly served under the Japanese-controlled Nanking puppet regime, but secretly worked as agents for the Republic of China resistance based in Chungking.
  With the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, Xu and Tang defected to the People's Republic of China, but were severely persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Xu Lai died in prison in 1973; her husband survived and lived until 1987.
context_section_description: In 1936, Xu Lai married Tang Shengming (唐生明), a Kuomintang Lieutenant General from a prominent Hunanese family. Tang was a notorious playboy and a close friend of Dai Li, chief of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (Juntong), the secret service of the Republic of China. Xu's assistant Zhang Suzhen (张素贞), a Juntong secret agent, became Tang's concubine, and Shanghai tabloids often reported salacious stories of the three sharing the same bed. Tang made sure that Xu Lai introduced Dai Li to the "movie queen" Hu Die, who later became the spy chief's mistress.
  A year after her wedding, the Second Sino-Japanese War erupted. The Imperial Japanese Army attacked Shanghai in August 1937, and the national capital Nanking in December. Tang's older brother, General Tang Shengzhi, was the chief commander of the doomed defense of Nanking, which resulted in the Nanking Massacre. Tang Shengming, meanwhile, was the deputy commander of Changsha and chief commander of Changde, both in Hunan province.
  In 1940, Tang Shengming surrendered to the Japanese and was recruited to serve in the Reorganized National Government of China (the Wang Jingwei regime), a puppet government established by Japan in occupied Nanking. Tang was appointed the commander of public security of Jiangsu province, while Xu was his socialite wife who became a close friend with the wives of Wang Jingwei, Chen Gongbo, and Zhou Fohai, the top leaders of the puppet regime. They were widely condemned by the Chinese public as traitors, and Tang Shengzhi publicly renounced all relationship with his brother and sister-in-law.
  After the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, the Kuomintang government revealed that Tang Shengming and Xu Lai had been sent by Dai Li to serve as secret agents in the Wang Jingwei regime. The couple took great personal risks to obtain intelligence about Japanese spies and troop movements and pass it to the resistance. Xu Lai reportedly discovered the identity of a Japanese spy while playing mahjong with Zhou Fohai's wife, and personally delivered messages to Chinese agents in Shanghai in urgent situations.
caption: Xu Lai
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