Zhou Xuan

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This is a Chinese name; the family name is 周 (Zhou)

Zhou Xuan

Zhou Xuan (周璇, Wades-Giles: Chow Hsuan) (1 August 1918 - 22 September 1957, Shanghai) was a popular Chinese singer and film actress.

Zhou was born as Su Pu and was separated from her natural parents at a young age; she was raised by adoptive parents. She spent her entire life searching for her biological parents and her parentage was never established until after her death. At 13 she took Zhou Xuan as her stage name, 'Xuan', which means beautiful jade in Chinese.

Zhou started acting 1935, but she achieved stardom in 1937 in Street Angel, when director Yuan Muzhi cast her as one of the leads as a singing girl.

She became known as "The Golden Voice" and was a popular singing star in the late 1930s and 1940s. "Golden Voice" was Zhou's nickname to commend her singing talents after a competition for the most popular singers in Shanghai, where she came in second. Zhou rapidly became the most famous and marketable popular singer in the gramophone era up to her death, singing many famous tunes from her own movies. Her frail but eminently musical voice captured the hearts of millions of Chinese of her time.

After introducing Shanghai Night (夜上海), Zhou returned to Shanghai. She spent the next few years in and out of mental institutions. Through the years, Zhou led a complicated and unhappy life marked by her failed marriages, illegitimate children and suicide attempts.

She died in Shanghai of encephalitis following a nervous breakdown, at the age of only 39, having made a total of 43 movies. Her favourite film was always Street Angel (馬路天使). This contained two theme songs: "Four Seasons Song" (四季歌) and "The Wandering Songstress" (天涯歌女) which enjoyed long-lasting popularity. To this day, Zhou Xuan's songs still remain a staple in many Golden Oldies collections in Mandarin popular music.

Her biography is told in adapted materials. One of them is TVB's Song Bird (天涯歌女) in 1989, starring Nnadia Chan as Zhou Xuan and Leon Lai as her lover. In this series, Xuan's songs were re-written in Cantonese, sung by her in solo. In duets, she sang with him in the serial while (under the limits of Crown Records) Deric Wan replaced Lai's vocals in the soundtrack album.