Ai Ti 艾蒂
Ai Ti worked as a model in Taiwan before becoming a Shaw Brothers actress in Hong Kong. Her role as a young widow in Crazy Bumpkins won her an Asian Film Festival award and led to appearances in the sequels. Around the same time, Lui Kei regularly cast her in his erotic comedies. From the surviving credits, Ai Ti's career can be traced through to the mid-1980s.
Before she ever set foot at Shaw Brothers, Ai Ti worked as a model in Taiwan. Little reliable information survives about her childhood. The film journalist Mai spoke about her first shoot many years later. By his account, on her first day Ai Ti had to step in front of the camera in a swimsuit. The scene was shot take after take, and she was so flustered that she ended up in hospital afterwards. At the studio she was helped by Mona Fong Yat-Wah, who introduced her to people in the film business and took her shopping for clothes for receptions. The studio was working with many visiting actresses at the time. Ai Ti was used to posing for photographers, and now she had to find her feet in a crew where several very different scenes might be shot in a single day.
One of Ai Ti's early films, Sex For Sale (1974), is set precisely in the world of models. A newcomer from the provinces, who needs to earn a living and make a place for himself in the big city, lands in that milieu. The same year saw the release of Crazy Bumpkins (1974). In it a country boy likewise finds himself in unfamiliar surroundings, but the film looks on him kindly. Ai Ti played Ah Hua, a young widow who takes pity on the simple-minded Ah Niu and tries to convince him that he too can live honestly. The others laugh at his clumsiness or take advantage of his failure to understand what is going on, but Ah Hua has the patience to talk to him. The comedy is full of bustle, yet with the widow Ah Niu can have a serious conversation. For this role Ai Ti received the Best Newcomer award at the Asian Film Festival.
The picture was well received, and the studio began making sequels. Ai Ti appeared in Return of the Crazy Bumpkin (1975) and Big Times for the Crazy Bumpkins (1976). She quickly became a familiar face, and at that time she worked most often with Lui Kei (Lü Qi), an actor who had turned to directing and assembled his own production unit at Shaw Brothers. In the mid-1970s he made a great many erotic comedies. Among the actresses who found steady work with him, the Hong Kong Film Archive also names Ai Ti. Her credits with him include The Foxy Ladies (1979) and 36 Secrets of Courtship (1982), and later Killing in the Nude (1985). These films gave her a very different reputation from the one she had earned as the widow. The Taiwanese critic Su Yongzhi later recalled that actresses regarded explicit scenes in different ways, and that Ai Ti was willing to perform herself in places where body doubles were sought for others. Because of censorship, such films were released in Taiwan and Hong Kong under different conditions.
In the 1980s Lui Kei turned more often to comedies about everyday manners. Ai Ti kept acting, though less and less is known about her life in those years. She still landed roles far removed from erotic comedy. In 1984 she appeared in I Love Lolanto (1984), and the following year came the period picture How to Choose a Royal Bride (1985). Her other last known roles also date from around 1985, among them the television production Jyu Ga Naam Yan (1985). No reliable information survives about when she decided to stop acting, what she did after leaving films, or where she lived. Ai Ti's name still turns up in the programmes of later screenings of old Hong Kong films. In January 2024 the Asian Film Archive in Singapore showed Crazy Bumpkins and recalled Ai Ti's festival award for her role as Ah Hua.
