Chin Han (秦漢; born 10 July 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 (林青霞) and Joan Lin (林鳳嬌), the four eventually became known as the "Two Chins and Two Lins" (二秦二林) for their extensive roles in the genre of literary romantic film.
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Life and career
Chin’s father is Sun Yuan-liang (孫元良), a general who fought against the Japanese in World War II. 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 completing 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 has taken several leading roles as scholarly characters in literary films. In 1973, he had roles in Sung Tsun-shou's (宋存壽) Story of a Mother (母親三十歲) and Outside the Window (窗外). 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, but his contract for Sung's Where Have the Lovers (晨星) meant that he had to turn down Li's invitation and go to Hong Kong instead . Li Hsing instead cast Charlie Chin (秦祥林) for his film. Chin Han and Charlie Chin became the two household names for the extremely popular genre of Literary Romantic Films (愛情文藝片), which are mainly 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 the “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 the ‘Two Chins and Two Lins’ later.”
