Annie Yi

Biography

Wu Chin-yi (Chinese: 吳靜怡; pinyin: Wú Jìngyí; born 4 March 1968), professionally known as Annie Yi (Chinese: 伊能靜; pinyin: Yī Néngjìng) or Annie Shizuka Inoh (Japanese: 伊能 静, romanized: Inō Shizuka), is a Taiwanese singer, actress, and writer.

Early life

Wu Chin-yi was born on March 4, 1968, in Taipei, Taiwan, the youngest of seven daughters of Yang Shu-wan and Wu Min. Her mother is from Keelung and her father is from Shandong. Her father divorced her mother to marry another woman who gave him a boy, her half-brother Wu Pu-hui.
During her childhood, she was sent to study in an English-language primary school at Hong Kong. Then, she moved to Japan to live with her mother and her step-father, Yoshimitsu Inoh, a Japanese man from the Ryukyu Islands. She took her step-father's surname and took a Japanese name "Shizuka Inoh". She lived in Tokyo, Japan for six years and studied at Tokyo Chinese School.

Career

At the age of 17, she returned to Taiwan from Japan and became a singer under Liu Wen-cheng’s Flying Eagle Production. She took the stage name "Yi Nengjing", by simplifying her Japanese name dropping the last character. She debuted alongside her labelmates Donna Chiu and Fang Wen-lin, becoming a popular teen idol in the late 1980s and 1990s, and also expanded her singing career to Hong Kong and Japan.
Since 1995, Yi successfully transitioned from music to film, working with Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien on three films, including her debut Good Men, Good Women (1995), followed by Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996), and a cameo in Flowers of Shanghai (1998). In 1999, Yi starred in 8 ½ Women, a film by British director Peter Greenaway. Yi is also a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, known for her self-help books on relationships.
Since the early 2000s, Yi shifted her career focus to mainland China. In addition to acting, she was a regular judge on talent shows, notably serving as a four-time judge from 2010 to 2013 on China's Got Talent. In 2020, Yi participated in the reality show Sisters Who Make Waves.

Relationships

On 14 February 2000, after a relationship of 14 years, Yi married Taiwanese singer Harlem Yu in the United States. They have a son Harrison Yu Enli (Chinese: 庾恩利; pinyin: Yǔ Ēnlì), originally named Yu Hanrui (Chinese: 庾翰睿; pinyin: Yǔ Hànruì), who was born on 16 March 2002 in the United States. On November 10, 2008, photos of Yi holding hands with Taiwanese actor Victor Huang during a date in Beijing were exposed, with further allegations that they had been having a three-year affair since co-starring in the TV series Concubines of Qing Emperor (2006), while Yi was married and Huang was in a relationship. In March 2009, Yi and Yu issued a divorce statement.
On 21 March 2015, Yi married Chinese actor Qin Hao in Phuket, Thailand. Yi gave birth to their daughter Cindy Qin in 2016 in the United States.

Political views

In the early 2010s, Yi was actively engaged in public discussions on Weibo, such as in the 2011 Wenzhou train collision, cultivating a civic-minded, pro-democracy image, sometimes referred to as a public intellectual. However, her career was derailed due to her criticism of the Chinese government's censorship and her support for press freedom during the 2013 Southern Weekly incident, which resulted in a brief Weibo ban and a year-long TV ban. Since her return, Yi has shifted her public stance towards a pro-CCP and pro-unification position, which has sparked controversy in her native Taiwan. In 2024, she was invited to attend the reception celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Religion

In 2019, Yi raised controversy on Weibo for promoting the teachings of Indian godman Kalki Bhagwan, the founder of a spiritual organization Oneness. After the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and China Anti-Cult Association (CACA) issued a warning about the Oneness cult's activities, she removed the related Weibo posts.

Adoption

On 25 September 2013, Yi announced that she adopted Xia Junfeng's son Xia Jianqiang as her godson and his wife Zhang Jing as her blood sister.