Bai Ying, born Bai Ying in Beijing in June 1941 and of Hui Muslim descent, moved to Taiwan with his family at the age of eight, served in the military after secondary school and left the service at twenty-one. He trained as an actor with the Union Film Company from 1966, undergoing about four months of martial-arts training, and made his name in its debut production Dragon Inn (1968), directed by King Hu, as the villainous eunuch Cao Shaoqin. He went on to star in Union's Iron Mistress (1969) and A Touch of Zen (1970), and in 1969, before his contract expired, left Taiwan for Hong Kong, appearing in Shaw Brothers' The Eunuch (1971) and in Golden Harvest's The Invincible Eight and The Angry River (both 1971). An independent actor in both the Hong Kong and Taiwanese industries in the 1970s, he was especially prolific in wuxia, in works such as King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) and The Valiant Ones (1975), the Taiwanese wuxia Assassin (1976) starring Hsu Feng, and The Venturer (1976) from Taiwan's Central Motion Pictures. His role in the 3D feature Super Dragon (1977) won him best supporting actor at the 14th Golden Horse Awards. He also appeared in Li Han-hsiang's The Legends of Cheating (1971) and Cheat to Cheat (1973). In the late 1970s he played upright cops in The System (1979) and The Saviour (1980), a triad boss in See-bar (1980) and a lead in the melodrama The Woman of Wrath (1986), showing his range. Through the 1980s and 90s he worked in Hong Kong and Taiwanese film and television, including Royal Warriors (1986), The Dragon from Russia (1990) and Born Wild (2001), appearing in more than a hundred films in all; he lived in Hong Kong in his later years and still took occasional television roles. He died in his sleep in the early hours of 27 May 2026.
Bai Ying's chilling eunuch Cao Shaoqin in Dragon Inn became an archetype of the Chinese wuxia villain; moving between King Hu's martial-arts films and contemporary Hong Kong and Taiwanese pictures, he proved a versatile character actor active in both cinemas through the 1970s.
Achievements
- 1968 · Rose to fame playing the eunuch Cao Shaoqin in Dragon Inn
- 1975 · Starred in King Hu's The Valiant Ones
- 1977 · Won best supporting actor at the 14th Golden Horse Awards for the 3D film Super Dragon