A scene from the 1937 classic Street Angel

In 1937 the film Street Angel caused an upheaval in China. It was one of the earliest sound films and its soundtrack featured two songs that became instant hits and came to reflect the era: "Song of the Four Seasons" and "The Wandering Songstress" (which reappeared in Ang Lee's 2007 film Lust, Caution).

The film, about two young sisters who flee to Shanghai to escape the war in the northeast of China but then suffer at the hands of cruel and brutal guardians, was a mixture of music, comedy and pathos. It was listed as number 11 in the top 100 Chinese films of all time by the 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards. It confirmed the reputation of the director Yuan Muzhi and made a star of the young singer Zhou Xuan.

The 1930s was the time when Shanghai embraced the cinema and welcomed stars like Zhou along with others such as Ruan Lingyu and Hu Die. The passion and dramas they reveled in on screen, however, were often shaded by their real lives. They became an essential part of Shanghai's life just as much as the Bund, the Paramount Ballroom or Nanjing Road.

A clear voice

In the winter of 1931, 11-year-old Zhou Xiaohong stood in front of a Shanghai fruit stall singing along to the music on a gramophone. Her shimmering clear baby-like voice attracted a passer-by, Zhang Jinwen, who was the pianist for the Bright Moon Music Troupe (another member of the troupe was the young composer Nie Er who went on to write the Chinese national anthem before drowning tragically in Japan).

Zhang brought the homeless girl back to the troupe, which had been founded by Li Jinhui, often described as the father of popular music in China.

People who saw her in the early days remember her being small, slim and speaking Shanghai dialect with a Ningbo accent. She was given a new name, Zhou Xuan, and began working enthusiastically at her new job.

It was a simple performing troupe - there was nothing but a piano in the rehearsal room. But the little Zhou was eager to succeed. While the others slept, she would sneak into the cold rehearsal room and practice dancing and moving on the cold concrete floor. If there was no one playing the piano, she would sit down and practice.

The troupe's tall good-looking singer Yan Hua (called the Prince of Peach Blossom because he sang "On the Peach Blossom River") began coaching her in Putonghua. And the young woman fell in love with this man who paid her so much attention and cared for her. She was then aged 15 and he was nine years older.

In the spring of 1934, 14-year-old Zhou Xuan had been the runner-up in a talent contest in Shanghai, just 27 votes behind the winner, the veteran performer Bai Hong. She became know as "Golden Voice" and her fame spread across the city.

Zhou Xuan's success attracted interest from film producers. In May 1935, Zhou Xuan was seen in her first film Children of Troubled Times although she was just a dancer in the chorus then. Over the next year, Zhou Xuan appeared in five films, becoming one of the most popular stars for the Yihua Film Studio in Shanghai.

The turning point

The turning point for her film career came in the spring of 1937 when the Shanghai Mingxing Film Company decided to film Street Angel with Zhou Xuan playing the singer heroine Xiaohong. The director was Yuan Muzhi who had established his reputation in the theater.

As a child in Ningbo, Yuan had invented stories and performed them before family and friends, playing all the characters himself. His early films Plunder of Peach and Plum, in which he also appeared as a star, and Scenes of City Life (China's first musical comedy) established his reputation as a major director, screenwriter and actor.

Then came Street Angel in 1937. A leading Italian film critic who saw the film first in the 1980s described the work as a miracle. "The neorealism the film presented arrived much earlier than that in Italy. We could imagine how huge the influence this work had exerted in the world film industry back then."

On the set of Street Angel was the star Zhao Dan, who wrote in his memoirs about watching Yuan Muzhi and Zhou Xuan working together. He said that when Yuan was explaining the plot, Zhou would be sitting in a corner, listening intently, her eyes wide-open and blinking. She was like a 5-year-old girl in a lane listening to a story told by an adult, he wrote.

On another occasion when the electricians were setting up the lighting for a scene, Zhao recalled that he found two children playing marbles at the back of the set. "Coming closer I saw one of them was Zhou Xuan. They were concentrating completely on the game. She had the ability to be relaxed completely even when she was a 17-year-old girl among some of the biggest stars in the film world at the time."

Once filming began, Zhou Xuan immediately became her character. Some of the great actors who worked with her, Zhao Dan, Wei Helin and Qian Qianli, were amazed at her skill and natural performance. For many, it seemed she really was the girl singer Xiaohong.

At the age of 17, Zhou Xuan traveled overseas with her then lover Yan Hua. She was feted in Hong Kong and the Philippines. But with her fame came more earnings and she was being paid more than four times the amount of her lover and one-time mentor Yan Hua. He grew suspicious and jealous and their relationship broke up after nine years.

Zhou Xuan was then a household name throughout China. Her films and her recordings were guaranteed hits. It was a rule that whatever film she appeared in, she would sing.

In the late 1940s, businessmen in Shanghai began to move to Hong Kong. Major film production companies, actors and actresses were among the migrants. Zhou Xuan found herself in Hong Kong and she achieved the same sort of adulation there.

In 1947, the film industry in Hong Kong celebrated the "Year of Zhou Xuan." By the end of 1948, Zhou Xuan had made nine films in Hong Kong and recorded 40 songs. She was being paid up to 100 taels of gold for a film.

In 1950, the Shanghai government began to emphasize the importance of art and culture, and asked some of the leadings stars to return to the mainland from Hong Kong. Zhou Xuan was one of those on top of the list.

In July that year, Zhou Xuan returned to Shanghai. But she remained troubled by depression and eventually died, aged 37, in a mental hospital here after suffering a nervous breakdown. The little girl, who reportedly had been sold to a family by an opium-addicted relative when she was 3, had achieved stardom but not serenity.

From the silent era

Before Zhou Xuan, another Shanghai actress was the super star of the day. Ruan Lingyu was regarded as as one of the four beauties of China during the Republic of China period (1912-49). She was the leading actress of the silent film era. Her life was spectacular but tragically brief. She committed suicide when she was just 25 in 1935 and some 300,000 people came to mourn her at her funeral in Shanghai.

Her fame was fleeting. Today only eight copies of her films remain in existence and few know her name or have ever seen her on film.

In her suicide letter Ruan wrote, "I never dreamed that the end would come so fast. I have to bid farewell to you. But don't be sorrowful. All good things must come to an end. Please restrain your grief. I'm so sorry to make you suffer for me … gossip is a fearful thing."

Film scholars have probed the relationship between the people she played on screen with her own life where she moved from being a serving girl to a great star. Over the 10 years of her film career, Ruan Lingyu created many characters - a farm girl, a shepherdess, a flower girl, a city worker, a party girl, a prostitute, a dancer, a singer, a teacher, a company worker and even a nun.

Her film Goddess is regarded as one of the highlights of the silent era. Ruan played a prostitute struggling to bring up her son properly but constantly being thwarted by prejudice, greed and antagonism. At the end when she is sentenced to prison for killing a man who had stolen her life savings, she pleads with a teacher that he tell her son she has died.

Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan said that when he watched films starring Ruan, it was only for the first 10 minutes that he remembered he was watching a star. "But a few minutes later, you forget that it's Ruan Lingyu. You're deeply attracted to her. What you see is a worker, a dancing girl or a prostitute. Without dialogue or sound, I think it's amazing that she can deliver messages simply with her body language and facial expressions."

Ruan's tragic personal life had everything to do with two men, Zhang Damin, whose family Ruan's mother worked for, and Tang Jishan, a tea tycoon. She met Zhang when she was 16, but Zhang was expelled by his wealthy family because of his spendthrift playboy ways. He became addicted to gambling and was financially supported by Ruan.

She left Zhang in 1933 and later moved in with the already married Tang. In 1935, Zhang filed a lawsuit demanding money from her and the city tabloid newspapers used this as an excuse to invade her private life, putting her under immense stress.

And the 1934 film New Women increased her stress with people attacking the star, accusing her of being immoral in her private life and that she should not be seen as one of the "new women."

On her last night on Earth on March 8, 1935, Ruan asked Tang Jishan to come to the Yangzi Ballroom with her to dance. She spent the night there dancing, reportedly happy. Back home she took an overdose of sleeping pills.

The empress

Also flourishing in the 1930s and 40s on the big screen was the actress Hu Die (1907-89), who was crowned China's film empress of the day. Her film career ran from the late 1920s to the 1960s and she created many memorable roles: teachers, mothers, servants, rich girls, poor girls and workers.

She was adored by her fans for her unconventional, gentle, and refined performances. Unlike Ruan and Zhou, she spanned the silent and sound eras of film.

Another famous actor was Jin Shan (1911-82). Born Zhao Mo, he found fame with the film Song at Midnight, a reworking of The Phantom of the Opera. It has become a classic of Chinese film and has been remade several times. People who have seen the film felt that even his back could tell a story. "He's not simply relying on his facial expressions. It's not about monologues, either. When he turns his back on the audience, people still read things from his back. That's really unsettling," said film researcher Zhao Shihui.

Jin Shan was born into a merchants' family in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. At the age of 16, he left home to join the Northern Expeditionary Army and later joined theater companies.

Song at Midnight made Jin Shan a star but few knew much about his personal life. While he was making Song at Midnight, he was also appearing on stage in a play - fans came to know him as the king of theater.

After the September 18 Incident in 1931 when Japanese troops faked an attack to excuse the invasion of Manchuria, many amateur troupes revitalized the theater scene in Shanghai. Workers then usually wore blue shirts and these amateur theater companies were known as the blue shirt actors. In 1932, the 21-year-old Jin Shan was a director for the blue shirt actors of the Shanghai-Wusong Railway.