Born in 1919 Bai Hong (白虹, Bái Hóng) entered the Bright Moon Song and Dance Troupe (明月歌舞團) at the age of 11. Directed by composer Li Jinhui (黎錦輝), who is said to have virtually invented Chinese popular music together with his younger brother Li Jinguang (黎錦光), the troupe had a great influence on the development of Mandarin pop. In 1934 Bai Hong was crowned Empress of Song (歌后) and one year later she married her mentor Li Jinhui. At that time Bai was 17 and he was 47. Their marriage lasted 13 years and produced 7 children. Besides raising a family Bai Hong had a busy schedule in the recording and motion picture studios, too. She appeared in musicals as well as in non-musical adaptations of Chinese and Western plays, for example in Cao Yu's (曹禺) "Sunrise" (日出, 1938) and "The young Lady's Fan" (少奶奶扇子, 1939). Bai Hong was capable of presenting traditional folk tunes as well as American-rooted jazz and blues, with the latter style taking precedence in the 1940s. With the communist take-over her former song repertoire was banned as representative of decadent American imperialist culture, but she nonetheless enjoyed a healthy career on stage acting in plays whose sentiments were keeping with the prevailing political lines. During the Cultural Revolution she was persecuted like many other representatives of the entertainment scene, but Bai survived experiencing the resumption of her own performing career until her retirement in 1979. She died in 1992.