Andrew Yin Zheng 尹正
Andrew Yin studied singing in Guangzhou and began his stage career in the dance troupe of the Mamma Mia! musical. Cinema audiences remember him for his role as Yuan Hua, a straight-A student whose romantic misfortunes in the comedy Goodbye Mr. Loser are invariably accompanied by the same song. For Winter Begonia, Yin mastered the basics of performing female roles in Peking opera, and in Pegasus and its two sequels he played the co-driver.
Yin Zheng was born on December 30, 1986, in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. He grew up in Guangdong Province, in Zhongshan, where he moved with his mother. At home they often watched Hong Kong films. His mother loved the films of Chow Yun-Fat, and through them Yin discovered Leslie Cheung Kwok-Wing. He recalled learning Cantonese from films and at first speaking with a Hong Kong accent. The local kids found it affected, and he had to separately master the speech he heard on the street. At school Yin wanted to study acting but doubted he could get in. In the end he chose pop vocal performance at the Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou. His teacher Cui Quanxin asked students to first read the lyrics of a song aloud so they would understand what story it told. Yin later said that thanks to those lessons he began to pay attention to breath and rhythm in his acting work as well.
In 2007 Yin received an encouragement award at the Golden Bell national pop music competition. At one of the vocal contests he was noticed by a man who later wrote to him that they were casting artists for the Chinese production of Mamma Mia! Yin passed the audition, joined the dance ensemble, and from 2011 performed in the musical more than 180 times. At rehearsals he listened closely to how experienced actors delivered their lines. The lead actress Tian Shui invited him to audition for a Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre production based on Jin Yong's The Deer and the Cauldron. Yin won the role of the Kangxi Emperor. He recalled that at first he was figuring out how to make it to his next paycheck and bought frozen dumplings on sale. His rented flat was so cold in winter that he had to warm up his shower gel by the heater.
The play was revived by Wang Yong, who had himself played Kangxi in the first production. In 2013 he suggested that Yin audition for the role of the bandit Shan Ji in the period comedy Longmen Express. The bandit speaks Mandarin with a Hong Kong accent. It was Yin's first television role. The following year he appeared in the thriller Last Flight and in the story of a student's mysterious death, Inside the Girls.
After the release of the comedy Goodbye Mr. Loser (2015), passersby began calling out to Yin by the name Yuan Hua. His character, a top student and the son of an official, believes that the school beauty Qiu Ya, played by Wang Zhi, should rightfully be his. In the decisive moments Yuan Hua erupts into melodramatic wails to the tune of "A Single Sprig of Plum Blossom." The directors Yan Fei and Peng Da-Mo came up with the idea of repeating the melody in Yuan Hua's love scenes, and it became his trademark. Yin admitted that at first he was afraid to play the hero's rival because audiences might come to hate him. It turned out otherwise. After the film the song was once again requested at karaoke, and Yin was asked to sing it. In 2016 Yin released his own version in a bossa nova rhythm.
Back in 2015 Yin had played Fu Ziyu in the detective series Love Me, If You Dare. Fu assists a criminal psychologist played by Wallace Huo Jian-Hua and understands people better than his brilliant but unsociable friend. After the comedy's success offers increased, and Yin still gladly took on series. In the spy drama Sparrow (2016) he played Su Sanxing, an employee of the collaborationist intelligence service who tracks down underground operatives. Yin wrote a biography of his character for himself, trying to understand where so much cruelty in him came from. After the episodes aired, viewers berated Yin in the comments, and he took it as a sign that the role had succeeded. A year later he played the talkative monk Tang Seng in Journey to the West: Love You a Million Years.
In Pegasus (2019), directed by Han Han, Yin played Sun Yuqiang, the navigator of the racer Zhang Chi, portrayed by Shen Teng. While Zhang Chi serves a five-year suspension, Sun works at an amusement park in a dinosaur costume, waiting for his friend to get back behind the wheel. Yin himself was a motorsport enthusiast. Han Han recounted that in one of the chase shots he took the handlebars of the motorcycle himself to save on filming. Their next collaboration was Only Fools Rush In (2022), where Yin played the motorcyclist Zhou Huangge. He recalled how, long before shooting began, he would write to Han Han from time to time and ask when he would take on a film about motorcycles.
Yin was invited to the lead role in Winter Begonia (2020) by producer Yu Zheng. He first suggested that Yin take a small part in Arsenal Military Academy and get to know director Hui Kai-Dong. The hero of Winter Begonia, Shang Xirui, performs female roles in Peking opera. While Yin was still shooting another project, he traveled to Shanghai once or twice a week for lessons, and once the series began filming he continued to train right on set. He mastered the movements with a fan and learned to project his voice while barely opening his mouth, so that the audience would not see his teeth. Together with the director, he thought about which stage gestures Shang might have carried over into everyday life. Shang becomes acquainted with the wealthy opera lover Cheng Fengtai, played by Huang Xiao-Ming, and in wartime the theatre brings them closer. Offstage, Shang is by turns getting into fights and sitting down at the table. In one scene the director asked Yin to eat two or three bowls of noodles without ever stopping talking. Yin later recalled that he barely managed even two.
In the detective film Be Somebody (2021), the feature debut of Liu Xunzimo, Yin played Li Jiahui, a former reporter turned screenwriter. A group of filmmakers gathers to discuss a film about a sensational murder and discovers that they are at the crime scene, with a convicted man sitting in the room. According to Yin, Li has kept a journalist's stubbornness. His colleagues above all want to make a good film, while Li keeps asking questions, even when the truth threatens to destroy their plan. On set Yin was reunited with Yang Hao-Yu, with whom he had worked on his very first series. According to Yin, working with these actors reminded him of theatre rehearsals.
Sun Yuqiang returned in Pegasus 2 (2024). Now he could even argue with the racer to whom he had once submitted without question. In one episode Sun leans out of the car window and wipes the windshield while on the move. Yin explained that such things happen in real racing. For the shots inside the car, a handle was fixed in place for him to hold on to. In The Stage (2025) by Chen Pei-Si, Yin once again took to the Peking opera stage. His character, the clerk Jin Xiaotian, arrives with a troupe in the capital, where a warlord mistakes him for a famous opera performer and orders him to go on stage. A year later, in Pegasus 3, Yin and Shen Teng once again played old partners. For the episode in which they have to change a wheel right on the track, they rehearsed the movements over and over against a stopwatch.
