Rosalind Chao (Chinese: 趙家玲) is an American actress, best known for playing Soon-Lee Klinger in the mid-1980s CBS show AfterMASH, Rose Hsu Jordan in the 1993 movie The Joy Luck Club, the recurring character Keiko O'Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the 1990s, and Dr. Kim on The O.C. in 2003. She also played Hua Li, Mulan's mother, in the live-action 2020 remake of Mulan.

Rosalind Chao was born in Anaheim, California. Her parents were performers with the Peking opera^[1] before they relocated to Anaheim, where they ran a successful pancake restaurant, Chao's Chinese and American Restaurant, across the street from Disneyland. Chao worked there from an early age.^[2][3]

She attended Pomona College in Claremont, California,^[4] and then the University of Southern California, where she earned a degree in broadcast journalism in 1978.^[4] She worked at Disneyland as an international tour guide,^[5] and contemplated pursuing journalism as a career.^[1]

Chao's parents were instrumental in her decision to pursue acting.^[6] She began acting at the age of five, in the California-based Peking opera traveling company with which her parents were involved. During the summer, they sent her to Taiwan for further acting study and experience.^[7]

As a child, she played the daughter of a laundry owner (played by James Hong) on a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy, "Lucy the Laundress".^[8]

Deciding not to pursue acting, Chao enrolled in the communications department at the University of Southern California where she earned her degree in journalism. However, after a year as a radio newswriting intern at the CBS-owned Hollywood radio station KNX,^[7] she returned to acting.^[9][6]

Chao's breakthrough role was that of Soon-Lee, a South Korean refugee, in the final episodes of the TV series M*A*S*H.^[9] Soon-Lee married longtime starring character Maxwell Klinger (Jamie Farr) in the series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen",^[10] which aired on February 28, 1983, and was the most-watched U.S. sitcom television episode of all time as of 2021. Chao repeated the role in the M*A*S*H sequel, 1983's AfterMASH, her first role billed at co-star status.^[11]

Chao played Japanese exo-botanist Keiko O'Brien on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In 2010, a preliminary casting memo for The Next Generation from 1987 was published, revealing that Chao was originally considered for the part of Enterprise security chief Tasha Yar.^[12]

In August 2018, Chao was cast as Mulan's mother in the 2020 live-action retelling of Mulan.^[13][14] In 2019, she was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, citing her contributions to the critically acclaimed films The Joy Luck Club and I Am Sam.^[15][16][17]

Chao met her husband Simon Templeman while they were working in theatre at the Mark Taper Forum.^[18] They have a son and a daughter.^[18][19]