Born in the Szechwan province of China in 1970, Ling Bai began her show business career when she was in grade school with the school choir. When she was 14, she enlisted in the Chinese People's Liberation Army where she spent three years in a performance troop entertaining soldiers stationed in Tibet. After her service, Ling became a performer in a local theater in Beijing where she eventually became involved in the pro-Democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. As a result of her involvement, Ling emigrated to the USA in 1991 where she soon found work in the Hollywood acting industry with her first English-language role as a villain in The Crow (1994). From then on, Ling found steady work in playing various character roles from the villainous Miss East in Wild Wild West (1999) to a Chinese interpreter in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995) to a part in Anna and the King (1999), in which she was forced to cut her long hair short for the role. Her appearance in the controversial Red Corner (1997) in playing a pragmatic Chinese People's lawyer jeopardizes her returns to her homeland every year since the film's release.