Ching Li was born in October 1945 with ancestral roots in Jinan, Shandong, and moved from Shanghai to Taiwan as a child; her father was the well-known actor Ching Miao. After finishing secondary school in Taiwan she settled in Hong Kong and studied at Chu Hai College. She joined Shaw Brothers in 1967, making her screen debut in a supporting part in The Sword and the Lute (1967), then took a major role in the literary drama The Boat (1967) and rose to leading status in Tropicana Interlude (1968) and The Enchanted Chamber (1968), winning a Special Award at the 7th Golden Horse Awards for the latter. Having made her name in literary films, she also took martial-arts roles, including Joseph Kuo's The Ghostly Sword (1971) and Chang Cheh's The Anonymous Heroes (1971), her first pairing with David Chiang and Ti Lung; they went on to make The Boxer (1971), The Angry Guest (1972), Four Riders (1972) and the celebrated The Blood Brothers (1973), and she starred with Chen Kuan-tai in Chang Cheh and Pao Hsueh-li's The Boxer from Shantung (1972) and Man of Iron (1972). She appeared among the ensemble of Chor Yuen's House of 72 Tenants (1973) and then Dance of Death (1974), and became a Chor Yuen regular, playing ethereal beauties in his new-style romantic swordplay films including Killer Clans (1976), The Magic Blade (1976), Swordsman and Enchantress (1978) and The Sword Stained with Royal Blood (1981), as well as his dramas such as The Lost Generation (1979). Her range was wide, moving between period and modern roles; she appeared in Kuei Chih-hung's comedy The Sugar Daddies (1972) and played a boat-dwelling fisher girl in Lo Chen's A Spring Pool (1970). In the early 1980s she was loaned out to Taiwan for the gambling films The King of Gambler (1981) and The Gambling Syndicate (1982), her last released picture being The Shaolin and the Wu-Tang (1983). With Shaw Brothers throughout almost fourteen years, she made more than fifty films. In the mid-1980s she acted in the Taiwanese television series The Jade Buddha and The Legend of Chu Liu-hsiang, then retired from acting. She died on 9 December 2017.
Over almost fourteen years at Shaw Brothers, Ching Li starred in more than fifty films, moving between literary drama, martial arts and comedy. One of the few Shaw actresses to work across the swordplay worlds of both Chang Cheh and Chor Yuen, she won a Golden Horse Special Award for The Enchanted Chamber, and her refined screen image became a mark of 1970s Shaw cinema.
Achievements
- 1967 · Joined Shaw Brothers and made her screen debut in The Sword and the Lute.
- 1969 · Won a Special Award at the 7th Golden Horse Awards for The Enchanted Chamber.
- 1973 · Appeared with David Chiang and Ti Lung in Chang Cheh's The Blood Brothers.