She starred in the highly popular films Liu Qiao'er (1956) and Flowers as Matchmakers (1964), both adapted from her operas.

Xin was married to Wu Zuguang, a prominent playwright and an outspoken critic of government policies.

When she was a toddler she was sold by human smugglers to Tianjin in northern China, and was given the name Yang Shumin (杨淑敏).

[2] She originally trained for Peking opera under her "older sister" Yang Jinxiang, but later changed to pingju.

[1] She toured extensively, and by the 1940s, her fame had rivalled well known female stars such as Liu Cuixia, Bai Yushuang, and Fu Ronghua.

Her first performance, in the modern pingju Little Erhei's Marriage, was well liked and attracted the attention of the original novelist Zhao Shuli and the well known writer Lao She.

Like many intellectuals at the time, Wu held high hopes for the new People's Republic and returned to China from British Hong Kong.

They married that year, despite the fact that they were from differing socioeconomic backgrounds; she had no formal education and was nearly illiterate, while he was from a prominent family of scholars.

[3] Wu Zuguang, an outspoken critic of government cultural policies, was denounced in 1957 as a "rightist" in Mao Zedong's Anti-Rightist Campaign, and was sent to the Great Northern Wilderness in Heilongjiang to be "reformed through labour."

She was severely beaten by a junior actor of the China Pingju Institute; her left knee was broken and she never fully recovered from the injury.

[2] After the Cultural Revolution, Xin Fengxia was politically rehabilitated in 1979,[1] but was unable to return to the stage because of her disability.

[4] Her paintings, which were decorated with her husband's calligraphy, were also popular,[2] and an exhibition of them was held at the China Military Museum in 1994.