[1] She was brought up in a family that was so poor that her mother sold her to a brothel in order that her elder siblings might eat.

Her stage name was devised by Zheng Zhengqiu who based it on the name she had adopted in the brothel and a transliteration of Lillian Gish into Shanghainese.

[3] She was not typecast, and she played a female gangster, an innocent country girl, a dancer and a poor widow in 1920s Mingxing films.

The backstage plot featured sound from a disc and was a musical with drama interspersed with songs.

Because of her important role in early Chinese cinema she has been included with Yang Naimei, Wang Hanlun and Zhang Zhiyun in China's "Four Famous Actresses".