Tsao Lan

Tsao Lan (Chinese: 曹蘭, also romanised Lan Cao; born May 19, 1968 in Taipei) is a Taiwanese television host, actor, singer and Japanese-language teacher. She trained at the China Television acting programme in 1987 and made her screen debut in 1985 in a small role in the CTV drama A Generation of Beauties, then spent the following decade as one of the recognisable faces of Taiwanese variety television.

Her first career phase ran from 1985 to 1997, built on variety hosting, most visibly Variety Kaleidoscope, and on a short recording career that produced three albums. In 1997 she left Taiwan to study in Japan, an interruption that lasted until her return in 2004. The move reshaped her working life rather than ending it: she went back to hosting, becoming a fixture on the long-running talk programme WTO Sisters, and in 2008 opened a Japanese-language school in Taipei that she has run alongside her performing work ever since.

Her acting credits stretch back to Winter Break (1989) and Cheng Chin-i’s Ghost Story (1990) and pick up again in the 2020s across independent Taiwanese cinema: As We Like It (2021) as Gold, A Trip with Your Wife (2021), Girls, Be Ambitious! (2022), Reclaim (2022) and The Bright Hours (2026). On television she appeared in 2049 (2021), The Amazing Grace of Σ (2022) and The Accidental Influencer (2026). In 2026 she joined the Taiwanese BL series Wishing Upon the Shooting Stars as Angela, appearing in all twelve episodes.