Bai was born in Chengdu, China; "Bai", her surname, literally means "white". Ling, a common Chinese given name, means clever. Her father, Bai Yuxiang was a musician in the People's Liberation Army, and later a music teacher. Her mother, Chen Binbin was a dancer, stage actress, and a literature teacher in Sichuan University; Bai's maternal grandfather was a military officer of Kuomintang's army, and thus was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. In early 1980s, Bai Ling's parents divorced, and both got remarried later. Her mother was remarried to the writer Xu Chi, who got his national reputation by his report titled Goldbach's Conjecture, about Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun. Bai Ling has one elder sister Bai Jie, who works for a tax bureau in China, and a younger brother Bai Chen, who emigrated to Japan and works for an American company.
