Xiao Wen (12 October 1935 - 21 February 1997), born Cai Huifang, was a native of Xiamen in Fujian. Her father was in the leather-shoe business, and she moved to Hong Kong with her mother and brother after the change of government on the mainland. In the early 1950s she joined Yi Zhong Film Company as a studio actress, making her debut in the Amoy-dialect film Tang Bohu's Seduction of Qiuxiang (1952) as Xia Xiang, one of the genre's early box-office successes. She went on to work for several Amoy-dialect companies, including Nan Feng and Liangyou, and starred in more than thirty Amoy-dialect films, among them The White and Black Snake (parts one and two, 1954), a three-part adaptation of the Lychee Mirror (1953-54), and a run of 1955 titles such as Xue Mei Teaches Her Son, Lotus Nunnery, Lovers After the Calamity and Judge Bao Tries Yue Ying; drawing mostly on folk legend and family morality — The White and Black Snake on the legend of the white snake, the Lychee Mirror on the Hokkien tale of Chen San and Fifth Lady — the films cast her above all as women of hard fortune in tragic roles. Amoy-dialect cinema served Hokkien-speaking communities and overseas Chinese audiences, and 1950s Hong Kong was the production centre for such dialect pictures, shipped to Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaya; Xiao Wen was one of its leading faces. Two 1956 pictures for Liangyou Film, Zhan Dian's Widow Appeals to the Emperor and Lianli Gives Birth to Han Qi, did strong business in Taiwan and the Philippines, and in 1957 she travelled to Taiwan with Liangyou's founder Zhang Guoliang to shoot Tang Sanzang Saves His Mother. Entering the 1960s, Amoy-dialect production dwindled with the market. Fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, she also appeared in the Mandarin film The Bewitched Girl (1956). Twice married, her first husband was the Amoy-dialect actor Hu Tong, with whom she often worked; her younger brother Cai Jinguo, billed as Jin Gu, was a child star. She died in Hong Kong in 1997.
One of the leading actresses of 1950s Amoy-dialect cinema, Xiao Wen starred in more than thirty films that reached Taiwan and overseas Chinese audiences in Southeast Asia, sustaining the genre's tradition of tragic melodrama and leaving an important record of Hong Kong's post-war multi-dialect film industry.
Achievements
- 1952 · Made her screen debut in the Amoy-dialect film Tang Bohu's Seduction of Qiuxiang
- 1956 · Her two 1956 films for Liangyou Film proved hits in Taiwan and the Philippines
- 1957 · Travelled to Taiwan with Liangyou founder Zhang Guoliang to shoot the Amoy-dialect film Tang Sanzang Saves His Mother