Walter Ho

Walter Ho
Walter Ho playing Pan Qiaoyun (Yang Xiong's adulterous wife) in 1947
Born	1923 New York, United States
Died	March 27, 2020(2020-03-27) (aged 96–97) Tamsui District,[1] New Taipei City, Taiwan
Occupation	Peking opera actor
Known for	Dan roles
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	華達
Simplified Chinese	华达
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Huá Dá Wade–Giles Hua2 Ta2 Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Waa4-daat6
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	夏華達
Simplified Chinese	夏华达
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xià Huádá Wade–Giles Hsia4 Hua2-Ta2

Walter Ho (1923 – March 27, 2020), known in Chinese as Hua Da^[2] (when he was in China) and Hsia Hua-ta^[3] (when he was in Taiwan), was an American^[1] Peking opera actor. He was a pupil of Wang Yaoqing and specialized in dan, or female roles. He was mixed with a quarter Chinese ancestry.

Born in New York, he traveled to China with his father at age 8 but couldn't return when Japan started bombing Shanghai. In China he became obsessed with Peking opera, so much that he traveled to Beijing alone to learn from Wang Yaoqing. He established himself in Shanghai in the 1940s with the support of Soong Mei-ling and Zhang Lingfu. During the Cultural Revolution, he was accused of being an American spy and imprisoned for six years until his release on the eve of Richard Nixon's 1972 visit. In 1982, at the personal invitation of President Chiang Ching-kuo he went to Taiwan, where he remained until his death in 2020.