China: Zhou Xuan (周璇, August 1, 1918 or 1920 – September 22, 1957) was a popular Chinese singer and film actress. By the 1940s, she had become one of Republican China's 'seven great singing stars'

Zhou was born Su Pu (蘇璞), but was separated from her natural parents at a young age and raised by adoptive parents. She spent her entire life searching for her biological parents but her parentage was never established until after her death.

According to later family research, a relative who was an opium addict took her at the age of 3 to another city and sold her to a family named Wang, who named her Wang Xiaohong. She was later adopted by a family named Zhou, changing her name to Zhou Xiaohong.

At the age of 13 she took Zhou Xuan as her stage name, 'Xuan' (璇) meaning 'beautiful jade' in Chinese. Zhou started acting in 1935, but she achieved stardom in 1937 in Street Angel, when director Yuan Muzhi cast her as one of the leads as a singing girl.

'Golden Voice' (金嗓子) was Zhou's nickname to commend her singing talents after a singing competition in Shanghai, where she came in second. Zhou rapidly became the most famous and marketable popular singer in the gramophone era up to her death, singing many famous tunes from her own movies. Her light but eminently musical voice captured the hearts of millions of Chinese of her time.

After introducing 'Shanghai Nights' (夜上海) in 1949, Zhou returned to Shanghai. She spent the next few years in and out of mental institutions owing to frequent breakdowns. Through the years, Zhou led a complicated and unhappy life marked by her failed marriages, illegitimate children, and suicide attempts. In 1957 she died in Shanghai in a mental asylum at the age of 39 during an Anti-Rightist Movement.

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