My Family History

              Bai Hong - White Light  白虹  1919 - 1992

Bai was born Bai Lizhu in Beiijing on Feb 24,1919. Her stage name, Bai Hong, means 'White Rainbow'. Her music career began at the age of 12 when the Bright Moonlight Song and Dance Troupe came to Beijing to recruit performers. The director was composer Li Jinhui (黎錦輝), who is said to have virtually invented Chinese popular music together with his younger brother Li Jinguang (黎錦光). The troupe had a great influence on the development of Mandarin pop. In 1934, after winning a big singing contest in Shanghai, Bai Hong was crowned Empress of Song. In 1936, she married her mentor Li Jinguang. At that time Bai was 17 and he was 47. Their marriage lasted 13 years and they had 7 children.

Besides raising a family, Bai Hong had a busy schedule in the recording and movie studios, too. She appeared in musicals as well as in non-musical adaptations of Chinese and Western plays, for example in Cao Yu’s (曹禺) “Sunrise” (日出, 1938) and “The young Lady’s Fan” (少奶奶扇子, 1939). Bai Hong was capable of presenting traditional folk tunes as well as American-rooted jazz and blues, with the latter style taking precedence in the 1940s. She became one of China's Seven Great Singing Stars.

There was no more popular singer than Bai with her magnetic presence and her vocal prowess. "Intoxicating Lip Rouge" ( listen to it below) perfectly demonstrates her vocal range and skill. Almost 'pop' opera, if such a genre exists. She was one of the 'Three Whites' along with Bai Guong (White Light) and Bai Yun (White Cloud) Her concert at the Lyceum Theatre, Shanghai in 1945, is considered to be the first concert of Chinese Pop Music. 

With the communist take-over in 1949, her former song repertoire was banned as representative of decadent American imperialist culture, but she still enjoyed a healthy career on stage acting in plays whose sentiments were in keeping with the prevailing political lines. During the Cultural Revolution, she was persecuted like many other representatives of the entertainment scene, but Bai survived experiencing the resumption of her own performing career. She divorced Li Jinguang in 1953, and eventually married actor Mao Yanhua.

She officially retired in 1979. She died on May 28,1992 in Beijing at the age of 73. She had cancer, but after a mis-diagnosis, the delay in her treatment proved fatal. She was a great singer of uptempo pop and jazz songs, but if you listen to "Midnight Line" or "The Great Wall Love Song" below, you will hear the most beautiful, clear voice which will haunt you with its poignancy. Her popularity and fame today is less than that enjoyed by Zhou Xuan, Li Xianglang and others. However, in her day, she was the most popular singer of all her contemporaries.