Xie Jin (1923-) is a native of Shangyu, Zhejiang Province. While young, he was educated in Chinese opera and classical literature and began his career as an actor in Shanghai in 1938. He later became a student of dramatists Cao Yu and Hong Shen in the State Theater Institute. There he was exposed to Western dramatic and cinematographic forms. He then studied Marxist theory at the Political Research Institute in the Northeastern Revolutionary University in 1950. He started out as an assistant director to the noted film personality Zhang Junxiang in 1948 and has been directing his own films in Shanghai since 1953.