Who is lee xiang lan

Suzhou Nocturne. Li sang the song by Japanese composer Ryoichi Hattori for China Nights, her film that came to be seen as pro-Japanese propaganda. She also came to regret making the movie, and reported having sleepless nights about it late in life. However, the song seems to have been rehabiliated. San Nian Three Years. The song has been covered by Tsai Chin and Fei Yu-ching, but the tender heartache of Li's version is fresh even today.

Li Xianglan. Okay, so the song is not by her. It just bears her name. But Jacky Cheung's haunting song of lost love, which is his cover of a J-pop hit, is a fitting tribute to Li. If you have to be literal about it, the connection of the song to Li's story has been spelled out by Stephen Chow in the film From Beijing With Love, where he sings the song to Anita Yuen's double agent, a woman with loyalties as divided as Li's might have been long ago.

About Li Xianglan. Similar Artists. Woo Ing Ing. Li Lihua. We have been experiencing some problems with subscriber log-ins and apologise for the inconvenience caused. Until we resolve the issues, subscribers need not log in to access ST Digital articles. But a log-in is still required for our PDFs. Skip to main content. China-born Japanese actress and singer Yoshiko "Shirley" Yamaguchi, who was known under her stage name Li Xianglan, has died at the age of 94 after a life as dramatic as any of her films.

Share gift link below with your friends and family. Link Copied! Copy gift link. Perhaps because you were young at the time, you ended up playing roles on screen that were quite difficult for Chinese people to bear.

To put it harshly, you were used as a "handmaiden of Japanese imperialism. However, while this film served as a spearhead for the Japanese invasion, that wasn't all it did. Can't we say -- thinking for example of the fact that so many people fell in love with its title song, Suzhou Serenade -- that it also had a certain brightness that filled the hearts of many people?

Even now, when I think back, I feel a mixture of emotions, embarrassment about the movie and fondness for the music. Thinking about it now, if citizenship had been granted by place of birth, as is the case in America today, as someone born in Manchuria, I could have held Manchurian citizenship, and I think I likely would have gone about things a bit differently.

But the rigidity of the situation was such that Japan was my homeland, and I was a Japanese. In addition, Japan and China, two countries that should be the closest of friends, were at war. In the midst of all this, I too simply believed in the slogan of "Goodwill between Japan and Manchuria.

When you visited China again much later, you felt a need to make amends for the Ri Koran of your youth, is that right? Otaka I hadn't been in Beijing for twenty or so years.

I began to feel really uneasy even when we were just flying over Beijing, and when we landed at the airport, I couldn't get off for quite a while.

Sun looked at me with a very severe expression and I felt that he was saying, "We haven't forgotten for a moment what you did during the war, you know. Sun said that he had something that he wanted to ask me and that he would come to my room later.

A number of Chinese from the association joined us and we stayed up talking until four in the morning. That was the first time I ever had a thorough conversation with Chinese people about the era when I was Ri Koran. Sun is from the northeast, so he knew all about me from the time that I began working as Ri Koran. He had looked up a good deal, so much so that he seemed to know more than I did. Talking with them until dawn made me feel a little bit better. I felt that Mr.

Sun and I were really able to communicate our feelings to one another. Of course, I don't think that means that I am done making amends, but When Japanese [in China] who supported the war effort came to know after the war of the wrongs that had been done, what sort of stance did they take?

Did they keep silent about their participation in the war, keeping their past buried forever? Or, although extremely painful, did they reveal their past and look closely at what they had done? Otaka The year the war ended, I witnessed the killing of a great many people in Shanghai in American air raids.

It was a truly miserable experience. FEN news reported on the 10th of August that Japan was about to lose the war, and a good number of people there realized this. When the war ended, the situation changed completely and the Chinese began going after those who had collaborated with the Japanese under suspicion of being Chinese traitors. Lots of people investigated the Chinese actors and directors that I had worked with.