page_title: Huang Zongying
section_title: Early Communist China: acting and writing
hierarchical_section_title: Huang Zongying / Career / Early Communist China: acting and writing
caption_attribution_description: English: Original poster of 1949 film Three Women, directed 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: After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Huang switched to writing as her main career, which was also her childhood passion. She published her first prose collection, Onward Moves the Peace Train, in 1951, followed by two more collections, Stories of Love and A Girl. She did not play a major role after the 1953 film Bless the Children. Under Mao Zedong's directive that "the arts must serve the workers, peasants and soldiers", Chinese films became dominated by stereotypical proletarian "heroes" with few roles suitable for her. Beginning in 1954 she wrote the film scripts for An Everyday Occupation (1955) and The First Spring of the 60s.
caption: Poster of the 1949 film Women Side by Side. From left: Huang Zongying, Sha Li, and Shangguan Yunzhu
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "90", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "589", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "856"}