Bai Ling
Bai Ling was born on October 10, 1966 in Chengdu, People’s Republic of China; “Bai”, her family name, literally means “white”. Ling, a common Chinese given name, means clever. Her father, Bai Yuxiang , was a musician in the People’s Liberation Army, and later a music teacher. Her mother, Chen Binbin , was a dancer, stage actress, and a literature teacher in Sichuan University; Bai’s maternal grandfather was a military officer of the Kuomintang army, and thus was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. In the early 1980s, Bai Ling’s parents divorced, and later remarried. Her mother remarried to the writer Xu Chi, renowned for his report titled Goldbach’s Conjecture, about Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun. Bai Ling has one older sister Bai Jie , who works for the Chinese tax bureau, and a younger brother Bai Chen , who emigrated to Japan and works for an American company.
Bai has described herself as a very shy child who found that she best expressed herself through acting and performing. She has said that acting allows one to ignore how society tells one to behave and allows other parts within oneself to be expressed. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), she learned how to perform by participating in Eight model plays her elementary school shows. After her graduation from middle school, she was sent to do labor work at Shuangliu, a suburb county of Chengdu, where the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport is located.
Before long, she managed to pass the People’s Liberation Army’s exams, and became an “artist soldier” at Linzhi, Tibet. Her main activity there was entertaining in the musical theater. She also served shortly as an Army nurse. Three years later, she was discharged from the army.
On Thursday, February 14, 2008 Bai Ling was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for shoplifting two magazines and a package of batteries. It was an “emotionally crazy” day, Ling explained to E! News. She was coping with the “huge problem of breaking up Valentine’s Day…wrong boyfriend.” She also wrote on her blog after the incident: “Life happens to you either you liked it or not, sometimes I feel you have to be so brave to stand in front of the World, and just hope that people will have a tender heart toward you.” On March 5, 2008 she pled guilty to the charge of disturbing the peace. She was then fined US$200 (US$700 when totaling the fine and penalties) for the action at the airport.
