[1] Cai Chusheng initially worked in low-level positions in several small studios during the 1920s, before eventually joining Mingxing Film Company as a director's assistant to Zheng Zhengqiu, another Chaoyang-native.

[1] This shift can be seen in output after 1932, including the class-struggle dramas Dawn Over the Metropolis (1933), Song of the Fishermen (1934), and the proto-feminist New Women (1934), which starred Ruan Lingyu.

When Hong Kong fell to the Japanese, Cai fled to Chongqing, China's wartime capital, where he joined the government-run Nationalist Central Film Studio.

[6] His collaboration with Zheng Junli The Spring River Flows East (1947) also proved to be a major film and popular success in the brief "Second Golden Age" of Cinema that followed the end of the Second World War.

[6] As the Cultural Revolution began to gain momentum in the late 1960s, Cai Chusheng, like many artists and intellectuals, became the target of persecution.

In Stanley Kwan's 1991 biopic of Ruan Lingyu, Center Stage, Cai Chusheng is portrayed by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai.