Gong Xuehua

Biography

Gong Xuehua is a Hong Kong film and television actress, originally named Jiang Guoyu, born in Shanghai in 1948 with ancestral roots in Fujian. She holds two master's degrees: an MBA from the University of South Australia and a master's in calligraphy from the Beijing Calligraphy Academy. She married a translator at a Shanghai consulate and moved to France with her husband, but divorced after giving birth to a son due to not adapting to French life and the couple spending little time together. She settled in Hong Kong after the divorce. She participated in multiple international beauty pageants and won the Miss Chinese France title at age 36. Her most notable participation was in the 1995 Miss Asia pageant at age 37, which caused a media sensation and significantly boosted the show's ratings. In 2003 she represented China at the Mrs. World pageant in America and won the Best National Costume award. She starred in several television series after gaining fame, then stepped away from the screen but continued to appear at public events. In 2023 she revealed in an interview that her age during the beauty pageant was deliberately exaggerated to create media hype, and that her actual age was ten years younger than claimed.