Four arts.
One life.

A Childhood Inside a Dynasty

Grace Chang was born into one of China’s great performing families. Her father, Baoting Chang, was a grand master of Xiang Sheng — the demanding Chinese art of comic performance — whose career spanned six political regimes and shaped generations of artists. Her grandfather, Chang Lian’an, founded the Qi Ming Teahouse, one of old Peking’s most storied performance houses. Art was not a choice in the Chang household; it was the family language.

That inheritance gave Grace two things at once: a standard of craft set impossibly high, and the conviction that a performer’s first duty is to the audience in front of them.

Lead Magician Under the Circus Lights

Her own career began in the ring. As lead magician of a touring circus, Grace built illusion acts that audiences compared to Cirque du Soleil — full-scale spectacles of silk, fire, and transformation. The circus taught her timing, stagecraft, and how to hold a thousand people in silence.

The stage never left her. She continues to perform — Lunar New Year productions, puppet spectaculars, and theatrical storytelling for audiences of all ages.

From the Circus Ring to The Joy Luck Club

The stage led to the screen. Grace appeared in the independent film The Accordionist and, in Hollywood, The Joy Luck Club — the landmark film about Chinese-American mothers and daughters that mirrored her own life between two cultures.

Independent productions followed, in front of the camera and, increasingly, behind it.

Jin Jin the Dragon

Becoming an author was the family business by another name: storytelling. Her children’s series Jin Jin the Dragon carries Chinese culture into the hands of young American readers — and into the permanent collection of the New York Public Library. She brings the books to life in costumed readings at bookstores, schools, and libraries, often with Jin Jin himself in puppet form.

Behind the Camera

With a Master’s in Film Directing, Grace moved behind the lens. Her 2019 short A Missing Piece won the Golden Angel Award at the 15th Chinese American Film Festival. She is now directing her feature debut: a docudrama that brings her father’s extraordinary life — and the century of Chinese history it crossed — to the screen.