Hai Qing Photo: Li Zhansheng/GT

When her name appears in a cast of a TV drama, it could easily be predicted as a popular one. This has been a rule for more than five years: The highest audience share for Double Sided Adhesive Tape came in at 12.2 percent in 2008, and the average rating of Wang Gui and Anna in 2009 reached 8.38 percent. Her later projects, Dwelling Narrowness in 2009 and A Beautiful Daughter-in-law Era in 2010, both recorded high ratings on TV and on video websites as well.

In many critics' eyes, actress Hai Qing has really mastered the subtleties of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships. She has successfully built up the wife character in various permutations in many realistic TV dramas. Portraying the lovely wife and ideal daughter-in-law in the TV series A Beautiful Daughter-in-law Era, Hai Qing gained the nickname of "China daughter-in-law," and made her especially popular with senior audiences.

But the characters Hai Qing, whose real name is Huang Yi, is taking on this year show a totally different side to the 35-year-old actress from the roles audiences may be used to seeing her in.

For instance, she starred as a lesbian who is pregnant with a test tube baby in the movie Finding Mr Right, which made 520 million yuan ($84 million) at the box office in March. And her latest part in the TV series Mop Lady's Spring, which premiered this month, brings out her masculinity as an auto mechanic.

Mislabeling

In a commentary for the TV series on his douban.com page, freelance critic Fang Liuxiang said that Hai Qing is trying to transform her image from mainstream to edgy in the new TV series and movie, which could open new doors for the roles she's offered. But some audiences don't like the change, and are calling for the good daughter-in-law to come back.

In response to the comments, Hai Qing told the Global Times, "I have never limited myself to a certain character type, so I am not transforming."

She concluded that the nickname might come from the commonality among the characters she had acted. But it is a label given to her by others, so she did not feel pressure to stick to it.

"As an actress, I need to act as different types of characters, and the range I choose is becoming wider. It is impossible for me to be fixed to a certain type," she said.

Modern pressures

Most of Hai Qing's work reveals social problems in today's world. Among all the types of women she has acted, the commonality is that they face great pressure when they act as daughters, girlfriends, wives, mothers and daughters-in-law.

She said modern professional women are living in a tough time.

"On one hand, we are traditional Chinese women, so we need to keep the family running and care for the seniors and children," she said. "On the other hand, we need to pay more attention to our careers to make a difference."

The job of an actress also presents unique challenges between family and career.

When Hai Qing was shooting the TV series Angel Heart in 2011 in Shanghai, her father was announced to be critically ill in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. She had to bury her sadness when she was starring as a happy nurse, and drove between the two cities whenever she got a break.

"The whole crew would have had to wait for me if I had asked for a day off, and it would have cost a lot," she said. "But thanks to the director and my partners, they saved some days for me to leave to take care of my father."

Global ambitions

When President Xi Jinping visited Tanzania on March 25, he mentioned that A Beautiful Daughter-in-law Era was popular in Tanzania for showing the daily lives of Chinese people.

The dubbed version in Swahili, released on CCTV's News Network, is the first TV series exported to Tanzania.

And Tanzania isn't the only place where local people show a preference for Hai Qing's sweet image. It also helped secure the Special Award for Foreign Drama at the International Drama Festival in Tokyo in 2010.

When asked about the reason the TV series is so popular in Africa, Hai Qing explained that African people are also living in big families, so the problems that can arise when generations cohabitate might also be relevant to their lives.

Even though praised by overseas audiences, Hai Qing doesn't have greater ambitions for global fame.

 She said that if a TV show could be popular among the domestic audience, it would have been successful enough for her. The overseas market, for her, is not that necessary.

After acting as a Chinese living in the US in Finding Mr Right, Hai Qing showed some interest in the topic of life for other Chinese experiencing life overseas.

"It would be valuable and meaningful if a drama could reflect the living condition of those Chinese staying in other countries," she said. "It doesn't make sense if we are only shooting abroad for the scenery. We need writers who have the experience of living abroad for a long time."

"Only in that way can the story and the relationships between the characters be realistic," she said.