Qin Yi was an actress from China. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, she rose to prominence for her theater performances in the wartime city of Chongqing.

She became one of China’s most popular cinema actresses after the war, and was named one of the country’s top four actresses in the 1950s and 1960s.

Qin Yi returned to Shanghai after Japan’s surrender at the conclusion of WWII, and in 1946 she starred in her debut feature film, The Loyal Family.

The next year, she starred alongside Zhao Dan in Chen Liting’s Far Away Love, which catapulted her to stardom.

After that, she starred alongside her husband Jin Yan in Tang Xiaodan’s Lost Love.

The film was shot in the final year of the Chinese Civil War and premiered in May 1949, after the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) surrendered Shanghai to the Communists.

Following her appointment as deputy head of the Actors’ Theatre Troupe, Qin Yi became an actress with the newly founded Shanghai Film Studio.

She starred in a number of films, including Railway Guerrillas, Woman Basketball Player No. 5, Lin Zexu, Song of the Youth, and Loyal Overseas Chinese, among others.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she remained one of China’s most popular cinema actresses, and Premier Zhou Enlai referred to her as “China’s most beautiful woman.”

How Did Qin Yi Die?

Qin Yi died on 9 May 2022 at the age of 100 from old age. The family are yet to state her real cause of death