King Lan Chew

King Lan Chew (November 4, 1901 – February 2, 1988), also known as Qionglan Chew, Caroline B. Chew, and later Caroline Chew Ruttle, was an American dancer born in Berkeley, California. The daughter of Ng Poon Chew, a Presbyterian minister, publisher, and lecturer, and Chun Fah Chew, she was raised in Oakland, California, as the youngest of five siblings. Both of her parents were born in China. She studied piano during her youth and graduated from Oakland High School in 1921. She went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Mills College in 1925, followed by a master's degree from the same institution the following year. Her dance training included study with Hanya Holm, Harald Kreutzberg, and Michio Itō, among other teachers.

Following college, Chew worked as a social worker at the International Institute in Oakland before pursuing a performance career. She became known in the 1930s as a touring concert dancer, billed as the only Chinese concert dancer in America, and traveled extensively across North America on the chautauqua circuit throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Her performances drew on traditional dances and costumes representing China, Java, India, Japan, Turkey, and Burma, as well as original contemporary dances set to compositions by Gershwin, Scriabin, and Debussy. She designed and constructed all of her own costumes, incorporating zippers to facilitate quick changes between numbers.

Chew's Broadway career included an appearance in the 1935 revue Continental Varieties, in which she performed alongside French singer Lucienne Boyer. She also appeared in the 1937 film adaptation of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. In addition to her solo touring work, she performed with the Red Gate Players, a puppet troupe directed by Pauline Benton, where she succeeded Soo Yong as the group's mistress of ceremonies.

In 1938, Chew married performer, writer, and publicist Lee Ruttle in New York. She was widowed in 1985 and died in California in 1988 at the age of 86. Materials related to her life and career are held in her sister Mansie (Jingping) Chew's scrapbook, archived at the Bancroft Library.