Yu learned Peking Opera at the age of eight and made her stage debut at the age of nine. She specialized in playing female warrior roles in which she could skillfully demonstrate her footwork by continuously juggling and kicking back twelve red-tasselled
tuo shou (脫手) spears, as seen in one of her famous stage Peking operas,
The White Snake (白蛇傳), and in the 1951 film
Amazon on the Sea (海上女霸王). Yu started her acting career in 1948. Yu made over 240 films in the
wuxia,
kung fu, action, detective and Cantonese opera genres. Her films were successful at the
box-office and she was one of the most popular superstars of the 1960 in
Asia and
Hong Kong. Her first movie was made in 1948. She was one of the three actresses in the 1950s who really knew
martial arts. Off the screen, she was virtually a heroine: at the age of sixteen, she alone successfully fought off a group of gangsters with only a silky belt on the streets of
Shanghai. Her early wuxia pictures from 1948 to 1957 were in both Mandarin and Cantonese dialogue, with stories intended to increase cooperation of the Northern Style and Southern Style of martial arts, as seen in
The heroine of deadly darts (女俠響尾追魂鏢) in 1956. These remarkable wuxia films were mostly based on kung fu novels, e.g.
Burning of the Red Lotus Monastery Pt 1 & Pt 2 (火燒紅蓮寺) in 1950,
The Golden Hairpin Pt 1 & Pt 3 (碧血金釵) in 1963,
Buddha’s Palm (如來神掌), a four-part film, in 1964 and
The Burning of Pingyang City (火燒平陽城) in 1965. Her performances in Cantonese opera were quite different; she brought in a mixture of Peking Opera, in which she performed a lot of footwork, as in
Suet Ting Shan and Fan Lai Hua - Meeting on the Weedy River (蘆花河會母) in 1961,
Giving birth on the bridge – the White serpent (斷橋產子) in 1962 and
How Zhong Wuyan Conquered the West (鍾無艷掛帥征西) in 1962. She also played a male lead as seen in movies
Execution of Lui Po at Pak Moon Lau (白門樓斬呂布) in 1961,
Two hunters in a pursuit (文武狀元爭彩鳳) in 1962 and
The beauties (陣陣美人威) in 1964. Apart from action films, she did a few rare contemporary and
melodrama films, for example
Midsummer night’s romance (夏夜之戀) in 1953,
Bachelors beware (溫柔鄉) in 1960 and
Two mouthy ladies from the north and south (南北鐵咀雞) in 1965. Her
golden age of filming was between 1963 and 1966, when she made at least thirty movies in a year. Her surprise roles in
The big revenge part 1 and 2 (灕江河畔血海仇) (1963) and
Heaven, Hell and Crystal Palace (天堂地獄水晶宮) (1965) did not destroy her popularity nor upset her fans; instead they won the hearts of the audience. Her last major movie was filmed in
Taiwan (
Decree of the fire dragon (血火龍令) in 1968) and she made a guest appearance in
Secret agent no.1 (神探一號) in 1970. In 2004, Yu was one of the celebrities honoured on the
Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong. To date, Yu still holds the record among actresses of making more than 170 wuxia movies. ==Personal life==