Siqin Gaowa made her debut in the 1981 film Anxious to Return, in which she plays Yuzhen, a woman that during the Sino-Japanese War saves a wounded soldier, and falls in love with him. She was awarded the Ministry of Culture's Youth Creativity Award for her performance. She achieved fame and garnered wide acclaim for her performance in the 1982 film Rickshaw Boy, an adaptation of Lao She's novel of the same title, in which she portrayed Tigress, the love interest of Zhang Fengyi's character Xiangzi