Zhang Zifeng (born 27 August 2001), also known as Wendy Zhang, is a Chinese actress. Regarded as one of the New Four Dan actresses of the post-95s Generation, she is widely considered one of the best young actors in China today.
Zhang first gained recognition for her role in Aftershock (2010), where her performance as a young girl surviving the 1976 Tangshan earthquake won her Best Newcomer at the 31st Hundred Flowers Awards, making her the youngest ever Hundred Flowers Award winner. She later starred in films such as Go Brother! (2018), Last Letter (2018), and Upcoming Summer (2021). For her performance in Sister (2021), she won the Best Actress awards at the 16th Changchun Film Festival and 19th Huabiao Awards. Zhang ranked 98th on Forbes China Celebrity 100 list in 2019, and 81st in 2020.
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Early life and education
Zhang Zifeng was born on 27 August 2001 in Sanmenxia, Henan. At about the age of five, she moved to Beijing with her mother to make commercials, and at seven, she was cast in her first television role, as Xiao Niuzi in an adaptation of Lao She's Dragon Beard Ditch. In 2020, she placed third in the acting admissions of the Beijing Film Academy.
Career
2010–2016: Child actress
Zhang came to prominence as the young Fang Deng in Feng Xiaogang's 2010 film Aftershock, after which she signed with Huayi Brothers as its 100th contracted artist. The role won her the Best Newcomer award at the 31st Hundred Flowers Awards in 2012, making her, at 11, the youngest winner in the awards' history. She worked with Feng again in Back to 1942 (2012), and as a child, she appeared in television dramas such as My Father's Name Is Bench and Healing Hands and in films including Fake Fiction, opposite Xu Zheng, and My Old Classmate.
In 2015, she played Sinuo, a mysterious teenager, in Detective Chinatown, a role she reprised in Detective Chinatown 3. In 2016, she played Fang Duoduo in the family drama A Love for Separation, for which she won the Huading Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2017, the Communist Youth League named her one of ten "outstanding youths" from the entertainment industry.
2017–2021: Teenage roles and Sister
Zhang starred in the campus film How Are You in 2017. In 2018, she played the young Zhihua opposite Zhou Xun in Shunji Iwai's Last Letter, which earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 55th Golden Horse Awards, and she played the lead, Shi Miao, in the fantasy comedy Go Brother!. From 2019, she was a regular on the Hunan Television variety show Back to Field, and she played the young Lü Xiaoran in a segment of My People, My Country. She was named on Forbes China's Celebrity 100 list in 2019 and 2020.
In 2021, Zhang starred as An Ran, an older sister left to decide her young brother's future after their parents die, in Sister. For the role, she was nominated for Best Actress at the 34th Golden Rooster Awards, won Best Actress at the 16th China Changchun Film Festival and received the Outstanding Actress award at the 19th Huabiao Awards in 2023. Her other films that year included the youth films Upcoming Summer, with Wu Lei, and Goodbye My Lad.
2022–present
In 2022, Zhang starred in the television dramas The Heart of Genius and Homesick. She appeared in Chen Kaige's war films The Volunteers: To the War (2023) and The Volunteers: The Battle of Life and Death (2024), starred in the romance I Love You, to the Moon and Back in 2024, and played Andy Lau's daughter in the action film High Forces. In 2025, she appeared in Peter Chan's She's Got No Name and with Jackie Chan in the crime film The Shadow's Edge, and she performed at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
In January 2026, she starred opposite Mark Chao in Loving Strangers, a remake of the South Korean drama My Mister. In July 2026, she was nominated for Best Actress at the 38th Hundred Flowers Awards for The Volunteers: The Battle of Life and Death and The Shadow's Edge, and in October 2026, she was nominated for Best Actress at the 39th Golden Rooster Awards for The Shadow's Edge.
