Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia film, conceived and directed by Ang Lee. It features an international cast of Chinese actors, including Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen. The film is based on a novel of the same name that is part of the Crane Iron Pentalogy, a wuxia series by Wang Dulu.
Guanyin or Guan Yin is the most commonly used Chinese translation of the bodhisattva known as Avalokiteśvara. In English usage, Guanyin refers to the Buddhist bodhisattva associated with compassion and venerated chiefly by followers of Mahayana Buddhist schools as practiced in the sinosphere. Guanyin also refers to the bodhisattva as adopted by other Eastern religions such as Taoism, where she is revered as an immortal, as well as Chinese folk religions, where the mythical accounts about Guanyin's origins do not associate with the Avalokiteśvara described in Buddhist sutras.. In English, she is often known as the "Goddess of Mercy" or the Mercy Goddess. The Chinese name Guanyin, is short for Guanshiyin, which means "[The One Who] Perceives the Sounds of the World".
Soong Mei-ling or Soong May-ling, also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek or Madame Chiang, was a Chinese political figure who was First Lady of the Republic of China, the wife of Generalissimo and President Chiang Kai-shek. Soong played a prominent role in the politics of the Republic of China and was the sister-in-law of Sun Yat-sen, the founder and the leader of the Republic of China. She was active in the civic life of her country and held many honorary and active positions, including chairwoman of Fu Jen Catholic University. During the Second Sino-Japanese War she rallied her people against the Japanese invasion and in 1943 conducted an eight month speaking tour of the United States of America to gain support. She was also the youngest and the last surviving of the three Soong sisters, and one of only two first ladies during World War II who lived into the 21st century. Her life traversed three centuries.
Gladys May Aylward was a British-born evangelical Christian missionary to China, whose story was told in the book The Small Woman, by Alan Burgess, published in 1957, and made into the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman, in 1958. The film was produced by Twentieth Century Fox, and filmed entirely in North Wales and England.
Hua Mulan is a legendary Chinese warrior from the Northern and Southern dynasties period (420–589) of Chinese history, originally described in the Ballad of Mulan. In the ballad, Hua Mulan, disguised as a man, takes her aged father's place in the army. Mulan fought for twelve years and gained high merit, but she refused any reward and retired to her hometown.
Zhang Ziyi is a Chinese actress and model.
Tan Sri Dato' Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng, better known by her stage name Michelle Yeoh, is a Malaysian actress who rose to fame with frequent roles in 1990s Hong Kong action films, and is best known internationally for her roles in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, and the Chinese-language martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).
Maggie Cheung Man-yuk is an actress from Hong Kong. Raised in both Hong Kong and England, she has over 80 films to her credit since starting her career in 1983. Some of her most commercially successful works were in the action genre, but Cheung once said in an interview that of all the work she has done, the films that really meant something to her are Song of Exile, Center Stage, Comrades: Almost a Love Story and In the Mood for Love. As Emily Wang in Clean, her last starring role to date, she became the first Asian actress to win a prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Gong Li is a Chinese-born Singaporean film actress. She achieved international prominence through her close collaborations with Chinese director Zhang Yimou and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at Venice for her performance in his 1992 film The Story of Qiu Ju. She has been credited with helping to bring Chinese cinema to prominence in Europe and the United States. In 2006, she was voted the most beautiful woman in China.
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces". She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Wu Zetian, alternatively named Wu Zhao, Wu Hou, during the later Tang dynasty as Tian Hou, in English as Empress Consort Wu or by the deprecated term "Empress Wu", was a Chinese sovereign who ruled unofficially as empress consort and empress dowager and officially as empress regnant (皇帝) during the brief Zhou dynasty, which interrupted the Tang dynasty. Wu was the sole officially recognized empress regnant of China in more than two millennia.
Soong Ching-ling was a Chinese political figure. As the third wife of Sun Yat-sen, one of the leaders of the 1911 revolution that established the Republic of China, she was often referred to as Madame Sun Yat-sen. She was a member of the Soong family and, together with her siblings, played a prominent role in China's politics prior to 1949.
Dream of the Red Chamber, also called The Story of the Stone, or Hongloumeng, composed by Cao Xueqin, is one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. It was written some time in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing dynasty. Long considered a masterpiece of Chinese literature, the novel is generally acknowledged to be the pinnacle of Chinese fiction. "Redology" is the field of study devoted exclusively to this work.
Empress Dowager Cixi, of the Manchu Yehe Nara clan, was a Chinese empress dowager and regent who effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years from 1861 until her death in 1908.
The Lantern Festival or the Spring Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar Chinese calendar. Usually falling in February or early March on the Gregorian calendar, it marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, it had become a festival with great significance. During the Lantern Festival, children go out at night carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns.
Anna May Wong was an American actress, considered to be the first Toisonese(Taishanese) Chinese American Hollywood movie star, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her long and varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Zhao Wei, also known as Vicky Zhao or Vicki Zhao, is a Chinese actress, film director, producer and pop singer. She is considered one of the most popular actresses in China and Chinese-speaking regions, and one of the highest paid actresses.
Fan Bingbing is a Chinese actress, model, television producer, and pop singer.
Saina Nehwal is an Indian professional badminton singles player. A former world no. 1, she has won over 24 international titles, which include eleven Superseries titles. Although she reached the world's 2nd in the 2009, it was only in 2015 that she was able to attain the world no. 1 ranking, thereby becoming the only female player from India and overall the second Indian player – after Prakash Padukone – to achieve this feat. She has represented India three times in the Olympics, winning a bronze medal in her second appearance.
China Anne McClain is an American actress and singer. She is a member of the sister girl group McClain. McClain's career began in 2005 when she was seven years old, acting in the film The Gospel (2005). She also played China James in Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls (2007), along with Idris Elba and her two sisters. However, she became nationally known after 2007, when she joined the cast of the series Tyler Perry's House of Payne as Jazmine Payne. In 2010, she co-starred in Grown Ups (2010) as Charlotte McKenzie. McClain became internationally known after starring in the Disney Channel original television series A.N.T. Farm, landing the role as Chyna Parks, from 2011 to 2014. Disney released the soundtrack of the television series A.N.T. Farm on October 11, 2011.
