Cheng Pei-pei (6 January 1946 – 17 July 2024) was a Hong Kong-American actress who was considered cinema's first female action hero. Popularly known as "Queen of Swords" and "Queen of Martial Arts Films", Cheng starred in numerous successful wuxia and martial arts films in Hong Kong, including the Shaw Brothers-produced Come Drink with Me (1966), which launched Cheng into stardom, Golden Swallow (1968), Lady Hermit (1971), Flirting Scholar (1993), and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). For the latter, she won a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In addition to her Chinese-language works, Cheng also appeared in English-language productions, including Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009), Lifting (2014), Meditation Park (2017) and Mulan (2020). In television, she appeared in the Wong Fei Hung Series (1996), Young Hero Fong Sai Yuk (1999), Legendary Fighter: Yang's Heroine (2001), Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge (2002), Chinese Paladin (2004), Li Wei Resigns from Office (2005), The Patriot Yue Fei (2012), and the reality show Divas Hit the Road (2014), among others.
Cheng died in the San Francisco Bay Area on 17 July 2024, at the age of 78. She was posthumously awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 61st Golden Horse Awards.
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Career
Cheng was born Jiang Pei-pei in Shanghai, with her ancestral home in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. She was the eldest of four siblings, with a brother and two sisters. Her father, Jiang Xuecheng, was a Kuomintang member who worked for the Shanghai Municipal Police in Shanghai International Settlement. After World War II, Jiang established China’s first ink factory. In 1952, when Cheng was 6, her father was labeled a counter-revolutionary and sent to a labor camp in Inner Mongolia; she never saw him again and he died in 1963 without his family knowing. Cheng's mother, who was initially her father's secretary and later his concubine, decided to change the children’s surname to her own to protect them from their father's political consequences.
