Lim Cho-cho

Florence Lim was born in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where her grandfather, an immigrant from Xinhui (now part of Jiangmen), Guangdong, China,[1] owned a rice shop.[2] Her father died when she was 3. She attended Chinese Public School in Victoria[2] which allowed her to be proficient in both English and Chinese.[3] When she was 9, her widowed mother went to Hong Kong to receive medical treatment, and at age 12 Lim joined her in Hong Kong, having completed primary school. In Hong Kong she enrolled in Ying Wa Girls' School. One of her classmates named Lai Hang-kau (who would later become known as Lai Cheuk-cheuk) introduced her to her uncle Lai Man-Wai. Even though he was 12 years her senior and already married, Lim married him as his second wife in 1920, when she was 15.[2]

Lim Cho-cho's acting career started in Hong Kong when she played the lead role in Rouge (1925), the first film produced by her husband's China Sun Motion Picture Company. In 1926, China Sun relocated to Shanghai, and there Lim continued to star in silent films such as A Poet from the Sea (1927) and Romance of the Western Chamber (1927). Her credits after China Sun became the Lianhua Film Company in 1930 included A Spray of Plum Blossoms (1931), Song of China (1935), National Customs (1935), and Song of a Kind Mother (1937). Lim particularly excelled in mother roles.[1] Her son Lai Hang also appeared in many films around this time. In 1931, she also acted in the Indian film Kamar-Al-Zaman, an adaptation of a tale from the Arabian Nights directed by Shah G. Agha, where she appeared in the role of princess Budur.[4]

During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), the Lais first returned to Hong Kong when Japan invaded Shanghai in 1937. In Hong Kong Lim continued to act in films, many patriotic and anti-Japanese in nature. Following Japan's invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, the family escaped to mainland China, first to Chikan, Kaiping, Guangdong, where at one point Lim had to peddle old clothes on the street to make ends meet.[5] When Japanese soldiers overran Kaiping in 1943, they fled again, this time to Guilin, Guangxi, where they ran a photographic studio. After the war ended, the family returned to Hong Kong,[1] and Lim acted again for another 8 years. She retired after her husband's 1953 death to raise their 9 children. She visited mainland China in the 1970s before her death in Hong Kong in 1979.[1]

Lim Cho-cho on the cover of The Young Companion, September 1926.

In the 1991 film Center Stage, Lim Cho-cho is portrayed by Cecilia Yip, who spoke Cantonese, Mandarin and English in her role.

• Meyer, Richard J. (2005). Ruan Ling-Yu: The Goddess of Shanghai. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 962-209-395-7.

• Cho-cho Lam at IMDb
• Lin Chu-Chu at the Hong Kong Movie DataBase