Annie Yi
Wu Chin-yi, professionally known as Annie Yi or Annie Shizuka Inoh, is a Taiwanese singer, actress, and writer.
Early life
Wu Chin-yi was born on March 4, 1968, in Taipei, Taiwan, the youngest of seven daughters of Yang Shu-wan and Wu Min. Her mother is from Keelung and her father is from Shandong. Her father divorced her mother to marry another woman who gave him a boy, her half-brother Wu Pu-hui.During her childhood, she was sent to study in an English-language primary school at Hong Kong. Then, she moved to Japan to live with her mother and her step-father, Yoshimitsu Inoh, a Japanese man from the Ryukyu Islands. She took her step-father's surname and took a Japanese name "Shizuka Inoh". She lived in Tokyo, Japan for six years and studied at Tokyo Chinese School.
Career
At the age of 17, she returned to Taiwan from Japan and became a singer under Liu Wen-cheng’s Flying Eagle Production. She took the stage name "Yi Nengjing", by simplifying her Japanese name dropping the last character. She debuted alongside her labelmates Donna Chiu and Fang Wen-lin, becoming a popular teen idol in the late 1980s and 1990s, and also expanded her singing career to Hong Kong and Japan.Since 1995, Yi successfully transitioned from music to film, working with Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien on three films, including her debut Good Men, Good Women, followed by Goodbye South, Goodbye, and a cameo in Flowers of Shanghai. In 1999, Yi starred in 8 ½ Women, a film by British director Peter Greenaway. Yi is also a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, known for her self-help books on relationships.
Since the early 2000s, Yi shifted her career focus to mainland China. In addition to acting, she was a regular judge on talent shows, notably serving as a four-time judge from 2010 to 2013 on China's Got Talent. In 2020, Yi participated in the reality show ''Sisters Who Make Waves.''
Personal life
Relationships
On 14 February 2000, after a relationship of 14 years, Yi married Taiwanese singer Harlem Yu in the United States. They have a son Harrison Yu Enli, originally named Yu Hanrui, who was born on 16 March 2002 in the United States. On November 10, 2008, photos of Yi holding hands with Taiwanese actor Victor Huang during a date in Beijing were exposed, with further allegations that they had been having a three-year affair since co-starring in the TV series Concubines of Qing Emperor, while Yi was married and Huang was in a relationship. In March 2009, Yi and Yu issued a divorce statement.On 21 March 2015, Yi married Chinese actor Qin Hao in Phuket, Thailand. Yi gave birth to their daughter Cindy Qin in 2016 in the United States.