Hu Die (; 1907 or 1908 – April 23, 1989), also known by her English name Butterfly Wu, was a popular Chinese actress during the 1920s and 1930s. She was voted China's first "Movie Queen" in 1933, and won the Best Actress Award at the 1960 Asian Film Festival for her performance in Rear Door.
Biography
Early life
Hu Die was born Hu Ruihua () in Shanghai in 1907 or 1908, and moved to Guangzhou (Canton) when she was nine. Her father then became the general inspector of the Beijing–Fengtian Railway, and she spent much of her adolescence in northern cities including Beijing, Tianjin and Yingkou, and learned to speak perfect Mandarin, which later proved to be a great advantage when the cinema of China transitioned from silent films to talkies.
In 1924, Hu Ruihua moved back to Shanghai with her family. When China (Zhonghua) Film School, the country's first film actor training school, opened, she was the first student to enroll. She adopted the professional name "Hu Die", meaning "butterfly", and Butterfly Wu in English (Wu is the Shanghainese pronunciation of Hu).
Early career
Hu Die played her first role in the film Success, as a supporting actress. She played her first major role in the film Autumn Stirs Resentments (Qiu Shan Yuan), and fell in love with her co-star Lin Xuehuai. The relationship did not work out, and the local newspapers were filled with rumours when they broke off their engagement.
In 1926, Hu Die had her big break when she was signed by Tianyi (Unique) Film Company, one of the major studios of Shanghai, headed by Runje Shaw (Shao Zuiweng). Tianyi catered to the tastes of the common people with rapid production of films. Hu Die starred in 15 films within the two years she worked for Tianyi. Many of them, such as The Traumatic Romance of Liang and Zhu (1926) and Lady Meng Jiang (1927), were popular, but not considered artistically worthy.
Mingxing Studio
In 1928, Hu Die declined to renew her contract with Tianyi, and signed with the rival Mingxing (Star) Film Company, led by the businessman and director Zhang Shichuan, and the writer Zheng Zhengqiu. She had a salary of $1,000 a month, a large sum at the time. Her first film with Mingxing was Tower in the White Clouds (1928). She befriended her co-star Ruan Lingyu; the two women would become China's biggest film stars of the 1930s. Her role as Red Girl in the film The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple (1928) propelled her to stardom. The film was such a success that the studio made 17 sequels of the same name between 1928 and 1931. It started a craze for martial arts films, but also attracted criticism from intellectuals when children neglected their schoolwork to study martial arts or devote themselves to martial arts fiction.
In 1931, Hu Die starred in Sing-Song Girl Red Peony (dir. Zhang Shichuan), the first Chinese sound film (although it was sound-on-disc, not sound-on-film). Compared with other silent-era film stars, who were mostly southerners with poor Mandarin, Hu Die made the transition to sound with ease. She appeared in more sound films and was able to sing in The Flower of Freedom, a real sound film of much higher quality.
Hu Die starred in Twin Sisters (Zimei Hua, dir. Zheng Zhengqiu) in 1934, in which she skilfully played the double role of twin sisters with very different personalities. The film was not only extremely popular but also won critical acclaim. It is generally considered her best film.
Mukden Incident
On 18 September 1931, Hu Die arrived in Tianjin en route to Beijing, where Mingxing was planning to shoot the film Marriage of Tears and Laughter, an adaptation of the novel by Zhang Henshui. On the same day, the Japanese engineered the Mukden Incident, and used it as pretext to launch an invasion of Manchuria. Zhang Xueliang, the "young marshal" who was the head of the northeastern army, ordered his soldiers to retreat rather than fight the Japanese. There was rumour that on the evening that the Japanese took Mukden, Marshal Zhang was dancing with Hu Die in Beijing, a serious charge which threatened to damage her reputation. Hu Die had to purchase space on Shen Bao, Shanghai's biggest newspaper, to dispel the rumour, which she believed was started by the Japanese media in order to discredit Zhang Xueliang. Her account was corroborated by other Mingxing actors and employees. Years later, memoirs of people close to Zhang Xueliang indicated that he had never met Hu Die in his life, and Zhang was ordered by Chiang Kai-shek not to resist the much stronger enemy.