section_path: Early life
section_name: Early life
paragraph_text: Early life
  
  Hsu was born on 6 October 1976 to Hsu Chien and “May" Huang Chun-mei in Taipei as the second child of three sisters. She had an elder sister, Hsu Shi-hsien, and a younger sister, Dee Hsu.
  
  Hsu's paternal family owned a jeweler's shop in Taipei, founded by her paternal grandfather, a waishengren from Tancheng County, Shandong, for over 60 years until its closure in 2018. When she was young, her mother, a benshengren originally working as a waitress at the restaurant next to the Hsus' shop before marriage, separated from Hsu's father, the only son with seven sisters, due to pressure from his family to bear a son, along with his infidelity, domestic abuse, alcoholism and gambling. Her mother worked as a real estate broker to support Hsu and her two sisters while her father fled due to his gambling debt when she was 14, though he later returned. Her parents formally divorced in late 2008, as part of an agreement in which Barbie and Dee settled their father's gambling debt one last time in exchange for his signature. Their mother acted as a spokesperson and partial manager throughout their career, while their father, who maintained a good relationship with his daughters after he had given up drinking, died from liver cancer in 2012 at the age of 59.
  
  In 1993, Hsu enrolled at the National Kuo Kuang Academy of Arts, then under Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, and dropped out after one year due to its military-style discipline. In 1994, she and Dee enrolled at the Taipei Hwa Kang Arts School, a vocational senior high school where she majored in the Drama Department and specialized in Chinese opera kungfu (the martial arts and acrobatic techniques used in traditional Chinese opera). At Hwa Kang, the sisters befriended classmates Pace Wu, Aya Liu, and three others, forming a close-knit group known as the “Seven Fairies,” named after the charatcers of Chinese folklore. After four of them entered the entertainment industry, they grew close to three fellow artists— Christine Fan, Mavis Fan, and Makiyo Kawashima—who were later also widely associated with the name “Seven Fairies.”
  
  Hsu was born on 6 October 1976 to Hsu Chien and “May" Huang Chun-mei in Taipei as the second child of three sisters. She had an elder sister, Hsu Shi-hsien, and a younger sister, Dee Hsu.
  
  Hsu's paternal family owned a jeweler's shop in Taipei, founded by her paternal grandfather, a waishengren from Tancheng County, Shandong, for over 60 years until its closure in 2018. When she was young, her mother, a benshengren originally working as a waitress at the restaurant next to the Hsus' shop before marriage, separated from Hsu's father, the only son with seven sisters, due to pressure from his family to bear a son, along with his infidelity, domestic abuse, alcoholism and gambling. Her mother worked as a real estate broker to support Hsu and her two sisters while her father fled due to his gambling debt when she was 14, though he later returned. Her parents formally divorced in late 2008, as part of an agreement in which Barbie and Dee settled their father's gambling debt one last time in exchange for his signature. Their mother acted as a spokesperson and partial manager throughout their career, while their father, who maintained a good relationship with his daughters after he had given up drinking, died from liver cancer in 2012 at the age of 59.
  
  In 1993, Hsu enrolled at the National Kuo Kuang Academy of Arts, then under Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, and dropped out after one year due to its military-style discipline. In 1994, she and Dee enrolled at the Taipei Hwa Kang Arts School, a vocational senior high school where she majored in the Drama Department and specialized in Chinese opera kungfu (the martial arts and acrobatic techniques used in traditional Chinese opera). At Hwa Kang, the sisters befriended classmates Pace Wu, Aya Liu, and three others, forming a close-knit group known as the “Seven Fairies,” named after the charatcers of Chinese folklore. After four of them entered the entertainment industry, they grew close to three fellow artists— Christine Fan, Mavis Fan, and Makiyo Kawashima—who were later also widely associated with the name “Seven Fairies.”