Chin Han

Chin Han (秦漢; born 24 April 1946), is a Taiwanese actor whose birth name is Sun Siang-chong (孫祥鐘), and got his first stage name Kang Kai (康凱) from Li Han-Hsiang (李翰祥) at the beginning of his acting career. He changed his stage name to Sun Ge (孫戈) during the shooting of Five Brothers from Tangshan (唐山五兄弟; 1972). It was director Yao Feng-Pan (姚鳳磐) who gave him the stage name Chin Han, which he kept ever since. In Chin’s long acting career, he is best known for starring in literary romantic (愛情文藝) films and TV series, adaptations from novels by Qiong Yao (瓊瑤) and other writers in the 1970s and 1980s. With Charlie Chin(秦祥林), Brigitte Lin and Joan Lin (林鳳嬌), the four eventually became known as the "Two Chins, Two Lins" (二秦二林) for their extensive roles in the genre of literary romantic film.

Chin’s father is Sun Yuan-liang (孫元良), a general who fought against the Japanese in WWII. Chin completed the training program of CMPC Film Academy (中影訓練班) in 1966 and joined Grand Motion Pictures Co., Ltd. (國聯) as a basic actor. He had to serve in the army after making his first film, Smiles from the Distant Mountains. After he completed his military service three years later, Grand Motion Pictures Co., Ltd. was already closed for business. He turned to TTV (台視) to act in a TV drama.

Chin's gentle and elegant appearance with a scholarly temperament has always been the best interpretation of the leading actor in literary films. After he role in Sung Tsun-Shou's (宋存壽) Story of a Mother (母親三十歲) and Outside the Window (窗外), both released in 1973, Chin was acclaimed as a promising star. When director Li Hsing (李行) was casting for his adaptation of Qiong Yao’s novel The Heart with a Million Knots (心有千千結), he approached Chin for the lead role. Due to his contract to star in Sung Tsun-Shou’s Where Have the Lovers (晨星) Chin had to turn down Li’s invitation and work in Hong Kong. Li Hsing instead cast Charlie Chin (秦祥林) for his film, which made Charlie Chin an overnight star. Chin Han and Charlie Chin became the two household names for the extremely popular genre of Literary Romantic Film (愛情文藝片) , which mainly are adaptations of Qiong Yao’s novels. Together with two other female stars of the genre, Brigitte Lin (林青霞) and Joan Lin (林鳳嬌), they are called “Two Chins and Two Lins” (二秦二林). Li Hsing once jokingly said, "If Chin Han had come to play The Heart with a Million Knots, there would not have been ‘Two Chins and Two Lins’ later.”

Chin Han later starred in quite a few films directed by Li Hsing, among them the biographical film adapted from the best-selling autobiography of Zheng Fengxi (鄭豐喜), He Never Gives Up (汪洋中的一條船; 1978), which won Chin the Best Actor award at the 15th Golden Horse Awards.

After Literary Romantic Film lost its audience In the early 80's, Qiong Yao turned to the small screen of TV to produce popular dramas adapted from her films and novels. In the TV series You Can’t Tell Him (庭院深深), originally a film directed by Sung Tsun-shou in 1971, Chin Han was paired with Leanne Liu (劉雪華). The series was an instant hit.

Chin Han has continued to act in the 1990s and afterwards both in films and on TV.

Sun married Shao Chiao-ying in 1971 and has a daughter Sun Shi-wen (孫詩雯) and a son Richard Sun (孫國豪). The marriage ended in 1984.

The triangle relationships in life among Chin Han, Brigitte Lin, and Charlie Chin is similar to their relationship in the literary romantic films based on Qiong Yao's novels, such as Cloud of Romance (我是一片雲; 1976). Chin Han and Brigitte Lin were close when making Outside the Window, but due his marriage Chin kept a distance with Lin. After working Lin on Cloud of Romance, Charlie Chin began to passionately pursue Brigitte Lin, who eventually accepted his proposal and was engaged to him in San Francisco in 1980. However, after Chin Han's divorce, Brigitte Lin found that she was still deeply in loved with Chin and chose to break off her engagement with Charlie Chin in 1984, which caused a scandal. They were romantically related again through the help of Qiong Yao, but eventually broke up because Chin Han was unwilling to marry her.