Shanghai's golden-voiced girl heads to Broadway

• Source: Global Times
• [09:44 August 11 2010]
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Zhou Xuan

By Hu Bei

Just as Edith Piaf is known as "the Queen of the French chanson" with the most distinctive voice in France, Zhou Xuan could also be called "the Queen of the Shanghai chanson."

Zhou was one of the great singers of China, a Shanghai girl who made it big in the late 1930s and 40s.

Nicknamed the "Voice of Gold," Zhou was recognized as an exceptional performer at an early age, and rapidly became the most famous and marketable popular singer in Shanghai.

Zhou was also a film star and began working in movies in 1935, when she was 17, achieving stardom in 1937 with her appearance in Street Angel, a Chinese black-and-white film about two sisters leading a bitter and oppressive life in Shanghai after fleeing from the war.

From then on Zhou made more than 40 movies but she always regarded Street Angel as her favorite.

And her most popular songs, "The Four Seasons Song," and "The Wandering Songstress," were created for this film.

Some of her other song hits included "Nighttime Shanghai," "When Will My Gentleman Return," "Songstress at the Ends of the Earth," "Daughter of a Fishing Family," and "A Lovely Morning."

Zhou's delicate lilting voice captured the hearts of millions of Chinese in her day.

While her professional career was glorious and successful Zhou's private life was steeped in tragedy.

Her actual birth date is unknown because she was adopted by a Shanghai couple surnamed Zhou when she was a toddler. The couple named her Zhou Xiaohong.

At the age of 13, already a proven talent, she took Zhou Xuan as her stage name - xuan means beautiful jade in Chinese.

Her life was crowded with failed love affairs and marriages, which left her two sons born to different fathers.

Zhou spent several years in and out of mental institutions, and in 1957 she died in a Shanghai mental hospital, aged just 39.

From August 13 to 15, Zhou Xuan returns, in spirit at least, to the stage in an original Shanghai-style musical dance drama.

Zhou Xuan will be performed at the Shanghai Grand Theater before it tours the US, taking in Broadway, Houston and Atlanta at the end of this year - a rare thing for a show from China.