Yu So-chow


Yu So-chow is a former Chinese actress from Hong Kong. Yu has a star at Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong.

Early life

Yu was born in Beijing, China. Yu came from a Peking opera family. Her father was Yu Jim-yuen, who ran the China Drama Academy, a Peking Opera School in Hong Kong.

Career

Yu learned Peking Opera at the age of eight and made her stage debut at the age of nine. She specialized in playing female warrior roles in which she could skillfully demonstrate her footwork by continuously juggling and kicking back twelve red-tasselled tuo shou spears, as seen in one of her famous stage Peking operas, The White Snake, and in the 1951 film Amazon on the Sea.
Yu started her acting career in 1948. Yu made over 240 films in the wuxia, kung fu, action, detective and Cantonese opera genres. Her films were successful at the box-office and she was one of the most popular superstars of the 1960 in Asia and Hong Kong.
Her first movie was made in 1948. She was one of the three actresses in the 1950s who really knew martial arts. Off the screen, she was virtually a heroine: at the age of sixteen, she alone successfully fought off a group of gangsters with only a silky belt on the streets of Shanghai.
Her early wuxia pictures from 1948 to 1957 were in both Mandarin and Cantonese dialogue, with stories intended to increase cooperation of the Northern Style and Southern Style of martial arts, as seen in The heroine of deadly darts in 1956. These remarkable wuxia films were mostly based on kung fu novels, e.g. Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery Pt 1 & Pt 2 in 1950, The Golden Hairpin Pt 1 & Pt 3 in 1963, Buddha’s Palm, a four-part film, in 1964 and The Burning of Pingyang City in 1965.
Her performances in Cantonese opera were quite different; she brought in a mixture of Peking Opera, in which she performed a lot of footwork, as in Suet Ting Shan and Fan Lai Hua - Meeting on the Weedy River in 1961, Giving birth on the bridge – the White serpent in 1962 and How Zhong Wuyan Conquered the West in 1962. She also played a male lead as seen in movies Execution of Lui Po at Pak Moon Lau in 1961, Two hunters in a pursuit in 1962 and The beauties in 1964.
Apart from action films, she did a few rare contemporary and melodrama films, for example Midsummer night’s romance in 1953, Bachelors beware in 1960 and Two mouthy ladies from the north and south in 1965. Her golden age of filming was between 1963 and 1966, when she made at least thirty movies in a year. Her surprise roles in The big revenge part 1 and 2 and Heaven, Hell and Crystal Palace did not destroy her popularity nor upset her fans; instead they won the hearts of the audience. Her last major movie was filmed in Taiwan and she made a guest appearance in Secret agent no.1 in 1970.
In 2004, Yu was one of the celebrities honoured on the Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong. To date, Yu still holds the record among actresses of making more than 170 wuxia movies.

Personal life

Yu ended her acting career after she married, in 1966, Mak Bing-wing, a Chinese actor active in Cantonese opera. Mak Bing-wing began his acting career in the 1930s. He left Hong Kong in 1941 for a tour of the United States, returning in 1947 after the Pacific War had ended.
While in the United States, Mak appeared in numerous Grandview Film Company productions.
Yu So-chow was his second wife. They had three children and later moved to the United States.
On May 12, 2017. Yu died of pneumonia in San Francisco, California. She was 86 years old.

Filmography

Films

This is a partial list of films.
  • 1949 The revenge of the great swordsman Assassin Zhang Wenxiang
  • 1951 The five heroes'deadly spears
  • 1952 A story of three lovers, pt 1 & 2
  • 1952 A heroine from Mount Emei
  • 1957 The dragon-phoenix swordsmen
  • 1960 The strange hero conquered the dragon
  • 1961 Conqueress
  • 1961 Secret Book - So Fei Fung
  • 1962 The village militia, pt 1 & 2
  • 1962 The blonde hair monster
  • 1962 The birth of the Monkey King
  • 1962 The Road to the west
  • 1962 Ingentious swords, pt 1 & 2
  • 1963 Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery pt 1 & 2
  • 1963 Valiant Pan An
  • 1963 The iron wild goose pt 1 & 2
  • 1963 The tiger in hunting
  • 1963 Pat cham lau lan sai pat wan
  • 1964 Spring blossoms
  • 1964 The Flying Fox - Tik Siu-ching
  • 1965 The invincible kid Fang Shiyu
  • 1965 The all-powerful flute pt 1 & 2
  • 1966 Hero of midland
  • 1966 Fire dragon and the mythical pearl
  • 1966 Heroic days of the Great Ming Dynasty
  • 1966 The avengers' tale pt 1 & 2
  • 1967 ''The Three Swordsmen''

Awards