Pai Bing-bing

Born to an impoverished family in Keelung, Pai dropped out of formal education in her teenage years. In 1973 she won a prize in a singing contest held by Taiwan Television and following this success she pursued a career in the local entertainment business. In 1975 she moved to Japan to study singing and acting. At this time she had a relationship with Japanese comics writer Ikki Kajiwara and they later married. Their daughter Pai Hsiao-yen was born in 1980 but their marriage was quickly dissolved the next year after Kajiwara engaged in an extramarital affair and committed domestic violence. Pai Bing-bing had to return to Taiwan and raised Hsiao-yen as a single mother. Since mid-1980s, Pai has been gaining popularity for her bantering style, becoming one of the best-known Taiwanese entertainers. Richard Lloyd-Parry of The Independent described Pai as the "Cilla Black of Taiwan".[1] Besides her entertainment career, Pai also had significant investments in local catering service industry.

In 1997 Pai Hsiao-yen, then 16 years old, was kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered. This event subsequently made the elder Pai into a social activist to advocate the use of death penalty; Pai founded the Swallow Foundation and chaired it to date to advocate capital punishment as well as provide legal support to local crime victims. Lloyd-Parry described the attention around the murder of Pai's daughter as giving Pai "a greater, though more terrible, fame than she had as an entertainer."[1] In 2010, in the wake of the global anti-capital punishment movement, Pai successfully held a protest against former ROC Minister of Justice Wang Ching-feng, resulting in Wang's resignation and the resumption of executions in the Republic of China.[2]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pai Bing-bing.

• Bing-Bing Pai at IMDb
• The Swallow Foundation (in Traditional Chinese)
• Pai Bing-bing Official blog (Traditional Chinese)