A Bai-Lingual Rule 5 Saturday

The star of this week's  Rule 5 post is Bai Ling, or is it Ling Bai?

Bai Ling (Chinese: 白灵, born October 10, 1966) is a Chinese-born American actress known for her work in films such as The Crow, Red Corner,Crank: High Voltage, Three... Extremes, Wild Wild West, and Anna and the King, and TV shows including Entourage and Lost.

(In Chinese names, the family name is given first)

Bai was born in Chengdu, People's Republic of China in 1966. Her father, Bai Yuxiang (白玉祥), was a musician in the People's Liberation Army, and later a music teacher. Her mother, Chen Binbin (陈彬彬), 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.

Bai has described herself as a very shy child who found that she best expressed herself through acting and performing. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), she learned how to perform by participating in Eight model plays, at her elementary school shows. After her graduation from middle school, Bai was sent to do labor work at Shuangliu (双流), a county near Chengdu, where the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport is located.

She soon passed the People's Liberation Army's exams, and became an artist soldier in Nyingchi Prefecture, Tibet, where she served from age 14 to 17. Her main activity there was entertaining in the musical theater. She also served briefly as an Army nurse. Ling later stated that during her time in Tibet she, along with other female performers, was regularly plied with alcohol and sexually abused by older male Chinese officers, including one instance of rape that led to a pregnancy, which she was forced to terminate with an abortion. She cites this period of sexual abuse for her subsequent struggles with alcohol addiction. Subsequently, Bai spent some time in a mental hospital.

Soon after her release from the hospital, Bai joined People's Art Theater of Chengdu, and became a professional actress. Her performance as a young man in the stage play Yueqin and Little Tiger drew the attention of movie director Teng Wenji (滕文骥), which gained her her first movie role in On The Beach (1985), as a village girl who becomes a factory worker and struggled against her father's will for her to marry her cousin.

In later years, she appeared in several movies. She temporarily moved to New York in 1991 to attend New York University's film department as a visiting scholar, but later obtained a special visa that allowed her to remain in the United States until she became a citizen in 1999.

Wow, just wow. She has a blog site here. Some NSFW material here, here, here, and here.

GOODSTUFF is featuring Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter in the 183d issue of his blogging magazine. Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday" and links. Wombat-socho celebrates his week of absence with a double dose "Rule 5 Monday: Easter Weekend Double-Dip Edition."