Chiang Ching (dancer)

Chiang Ching (Chinese: 江青; born 26 January 1946 (1946-01-26)), occasionally spelled as Jiang Qing, birth name Jiang Duqing, is a Chinese-born American dancer and film actress based in New York, United States, and Sweden. With an ancestral root in Puning, Guangdong, she was born in Beijing and attended primary school in Shanghai. She was selected to study ballet and folk dance at the Beijing Dance School. Shortly before graduation, during a visit to Hong Kong to see her parents, she was detained by her father and subsequently joined the Southern Experimental Theatre of Shaw Brothers Studio. She rose to fame in Taiwan as the lead actress in director Li Han-hsiang's film Seven Fairies (1963). She won the Best Leading Actress of the Golden Horse Awards in 1967 due to her performance in the film How Many Enchanting Nights (1966), adapted from Chiung Yao's novel. In 1966, she married musician Liu Chia-chang but divorced in 1970 and moved to the United States. In 1973, she became a U.S. citizen and founded the Chiang Ching Dance Company, gaining renown for her contributions to modern dance and mentoring notable dancers such as Lin Hwai-min. Influenced by the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, she began writing and published several memoirs in Chinese since 1991.