Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s: A Decade of Splendour 9789463728669, 9789048555000

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
A Note on Romanization and Translation
Table of Contents
Prologue Horse Racing and Dancing as Usual
Introduction
1 Televising Pop: New Stars and Renewed Sensibilities
2 Golden Days of the Silver Screen : Cinematic Imagination in a Not Yet Fallen City
3 The Sound of Chinese Cool: Do You See the City Sing?
4 The Importance of Being Chic: Fashion, Branding, and Multimedia Stardom
5 The Practice of Everynight Life: Disco as Another Kind of Dance
6 (Un)Covering Cosmopolitan Hybridity : Every Great City Deserves a City Magazine
Epilogue ‘We’ll Always Have Hong Kong’
Select Bibliography
Glossary
Index

Citation preview

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

Asian Visual Cultures This series focuses on visual cultures that are produced, distributed and consumed in Asia and by Asian communities worldwide. Visual cultures have been implicated in creative policies of the state and in global cultural networks (such as the art world, film festivals and the Internet), particularly since the emergence of digital technologies. Asia is home to some of the major film, television and video industries in the world, while Asian contemporary artists are selling their works for record prices at the international art markets. Visual communication and innovation is also thriving in transnational networks and communities at the grass-roots level. This series seeks to explore how the texts and contexts of Asian visual cultures shape, express and negotiate new forms of creativity, subjectivity and cultural politics. It specifically aims to probe into the political, commercial and digital contexts in which visual cultures emerge and circulate, and to trace the potential of these cultures for political or social critique. Series Editors Jeroen de Kloet, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Edwin Jurriëns, The University of Melbourne, Australia Editorial Board Gaik Cheng Khoo, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Simon Fraser University, Canada Larissa Hjorth, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Amanda Rath, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany Anthony Fung, Chinese University of Hong Kong Lotte Hoek, Edinburgh University, United Kingdom Yoshitaka Mori, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Japan

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s A Decade of Splendour

Yiu-Wai Chu

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Lau Cing Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 866 9 e-isbn 978 90 4855 500 0 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463728669 nur 640 © Y.W. Chu / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

Acknowledgments The following illustrations are reprinted from: Figures 4.1-4.3, 4.6 Wikimedia Commons (Minorax/Hong Kong/2019, COLA CARKZ 222, MAMAEN Wingzoas Onculfuewo and SKTungwoods, respectively); Figure 4.4 “In Memory of Philip Kwok” facebook (photo provided by Ragence Lam); Figure 4.5 “Very Hong Kong Very Hong Kong” facebook; Figures 5.1 and 5.3-5.10 “CANTON DisCo” facebook; Figures 6.1 - 6.10 covers of City Magazine; and Figure 5.2 is photographed by the author. Permissions from Mr. Andrew Bull, Miss Inez Chan, Modern Media Co Ltd HK, and the facebook/webpage owners are deeply appreciated. I am also very grateful to Lau Cing for designing the cover illustration that perfectly encapsulates the glamour of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s.



A Note on Romanization and Translation

Chinese names are generally romanized according to the style commonly used in Hong Kong, with English first names followed by Chinese surname (such as Leslie Cheung). For the sake of consistency, those without English first names are also romanized in the same way (such as Yun-Fat Chow), except those internationally known by other formats (such as Tsui Hark) or more commonly known by pinyin (such as Lin Xi). Names of Mainland Chinese generally follow standard pinyin (such as Zhang Yimou) unless they have English first names (such as Jet Li). I have adopted the way other Chinese names have been transliterated by convention in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Mainland. All translations from Chinese materials are mine except otherwise stated.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 5 A Note on Romanization and Translation

7

Table of Contents

9

Prologue 11 Horse Racing and Dancing as Usual

Introduction 29 1 Televising Pop: New Stars and Renewed Sensibilities

55

2 Golden Days of the Silver Screen: Cinematic Imagination in a Not Yet Fallen City

83

3 The Sound of Chinese Cool: Do You See the City Sing?

115

4 The Importance of Being Chic: Fashion, Branding, and Multimedia Stardom

145

5 The Practice of Everynight Life: Disco as Another Kind of Dance 177 6 (Un)Covering Cosmopolitan Hybridity: Every Great City Deserves a City Magazine

213

Epilogue 257 ‘We’ll Always Have Hong Kong’

Select Bibliography

275

Glossary 285 Index

295

To Nancy, Sebastian, Nathaniel and our beloved family members

Prologue Horse Racing and Dancing as Usual Abstract Deng Xiaoping, the chief engineer of the unprecedented “one country, two systems” framework, famously promised Hong Kong people horse racing and dancing would remain unchanged after Hong Kong’s reversion to Mainland China in 1997. This chapter discusses how horse racing and dancing were used to symbolize Hong Kong’s lifestyle and the smooth transfer of sovereignty. Throughout the 1980s, the upward mobility and vigorous development of Hong Kong pop culture enabled a distinctive cosmopolitan lifestyle between the East and the West to grow and mature, and Hong Kong people came to take pride in their cultural identities. Keywords: personal belonging, one country two systems, horse racing, dancing, lifestyle

What Is Hong Kong? To answer this question, it is usual to begin by explaining how Hong Kong came into being from a historical point of view. As succinctly noted by John Carroll, while the Chinese Government officially holds that ‘Hong Kong has been part of the territory of China since ancient times,’ until recently, British historians ‘generally dismissed the idea of Hong Kong as having any real history until the British arrived’.1 It was just a ‘barren island’, or to borrow Richard Hughes’ often-cited term, just a ‘borrowed place living on borrowed time’ – ‘Hong Kong did not exist, so it was necessary to invent it.’2 Regarding this assessment, Carroll cited the example of James Hayes, 1 John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), p. 9. 2 Richard Hughes, Borrowed Place – Borrowed Time: Hong Kong and Its Many Faces, 2nd rev. ed. (London: André Deutsch, 1976), p. 97.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_PROL

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historian and former colonial official, noting that ‘the island was certainly well-established in settler communities long before 1841’.3 That said, I would rather take up the question from a different perspective, which may seem out of the blue. Refuting Hughes’ concept of ‘borrowed time, borrowed place’, renowned Hong Kong author Kai-cheung Dung has argued that ‘space and time can never be borrowed’: ‘I and many others like me simply don’t accept this description of the place where we live’ because ‘we belong to the space-time that is ours. Nobody lends it to us and we don’t borrow it from anybody.’4 Two years older than Dung and having grown up in Hong Kong with a similar background, I share his view completely. Hong Kong has been commonly known as a barren rock, a Chinese fishing village, an imperial outpost, a capitalist metropolis, a city between worlds and a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China under the unprecedented ‘one country, two systems’ framework. The brief introduction to Steve Tsang’s Modern History of Hong Kong nicely sums up the so-called ‘Hong Kong story’ in the following manner: From a little-known fishing community at the periphery of China, Hong Kong developed into one of the world’s most spectacular and cosmopolitan metropoles after a century and a half of British imperial rule. This history of Hong Kong – from its occupation by the British in 1841 to its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 – includes the foundation of modern Hong Kong; its developments as an imperial outpost, its transformation into the ‘pearl’ of the British Empire and of the Orient and the events leading to the end of British rule.5

Having experienced most of these stages, I tend to think that, to borrow Dung’s term, it is the ‘personal belonging’ – ‘a near oxymoron, joining the private and the public’ – that matters.6 When David Der-wei Wang commented on Dung, he made an inspiring point about Hong Kong as a metaphor: Located as it is at the intersection of many spatial topoi, Hong Kong’s origins are somewhat dubious, and whether or not it disappears is unimportant. It does nothing but extend, in the configuration of power, 3 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, p. 10; James Hayes, ‘Hong Kong Island before 1841,’ Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 24(1984): 128. 4 Kai-cheung Dung, ‘Preface: An Archaeology for the Future,’ in Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. xiii. 5 Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong: 1841–1997 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003). 6 Dung, ‘Preface,’ p. xiv.

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in architectural blueprints, in literature…. Hong Kong had become a metaphor for Dung’s imaginary history.7

In his award-winning Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, the novelist Dung conceived Hong Kong as ‘a work of f iction from its very beginning’.8 In light of this, I decided to share my ‘personal belonging’ in this book, telling the story of Hong Kong from my own perspective – as an inveterate fan of Hong Kong pop culture since the 1970s. My ‘personal belonging’ is deeply entangled with the Hong Kong cultural identity noted by cultural critics such as Chun-hung Ng and Eric Ma: the people of Hong Kong have accumulated their sense of identity through mass media and the practices of daily life.9 Pertaining to the distinctive identity of Hong Kong people, Hugh Baker astutely stated in 1982 that ‘Hong Kong Man is sui generis and the problems of the territory’s future are more difficult to resolve because of it.’10 More than thirty years later, in the midst of the Umbrella Movement, a social movement that strived for ‘genuine’ universal suffrage (without candidate screening) in Hong Kong in late 2014, Arif Dirlik made a similar remark about this: The movement may be viewed as the latest chapter in a narrative that goes back to the 1980s, the emergence of a neoliberal global capitalism of which the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has been an integral component, and the Tiananmen movement which was one of the earliest expressions of the social and political strains created by shifts in the global economy.11

Hong Kong identity has been a highly contested issue both before and after the handover (I will argue below that it may be necessary to speak of it in the plural). Most of the recent social conflicts in Hong Kong, such as the 7 David Der-wei Wang, ‘A Hong Kong Miracle of a Different Kind: Dung Kai-cheung’s Writing/ Action and Xuexi niandai (The Apprenticeship),’ China Perspective 1(2011): 81. 8 Dung, ‘Preface,’ p. xi. 9 Chun-hung Ng 吳俊雄 and Eric Ma 馬傑偉, ‘Pop Culture and Identity Formation’ 普及文 化與身份建構 (in Chinese), in Hong Kong History, Culture and Society: Volume 1 on Teaching and Learning香港歷史、文化與社會(一)教與學篇, eds. Tik-sang Liu et al. 廖迪生等編 (Hong Kong: South China Research Center, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2001), pp. 177–193. 10 Hugh Baker, ‘Life in the Cities: The Emergence of Hong Kong Man,’ The China Quarterly 95 (September 1983): 479. 11 Arif Dirlik, ‘The Mouse That Roared: The Democratic Movement in Hong Kong,’ Boundary 2 online: https://www.boundary2.org/2014/10/the-mouse-that-roared-the-democratic-movementin-hong-kong-2/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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governance crisis and the rise of resistance against Mainland Chinese, can be seen as important problems that need to be addressed in relation to the issue of identity. A critical, non-populist, in-depth study of Hong Kong is necessary to critique common misperceptions and misunderstandings of the territory and envision it in the context of China. ‘It is not that Hong Kong people are not patriotic. They are very patriotic indeed. But their patriotism is mediated by their Hong Kong identity.’12 Learning to belong to a nation, according to Gordon Mathews, Eric Ma, and Tai-lok Lui, is a question of considerable significance, not just in but also beyond Hong Kong, because in this SAR, unlike other countries in the world, the notion of national identity ‘is indeed often reflected upon in a critical and conscious way’.13 Before Hong Kong’s reversion to its motherland, the China factor had become an overwhelming influence on life in Hong Kong. It was the single most dominant force shaping Hong Kong public affairs, government decision making, and policy implementation as well as Hong Kong’s external links and global interactions…the accelerator, stimulant, and even midwife to the processes of decolonization, localization, internationalization, and democratization which are still unfolding in the current transition [as well as potentially] a destabilizing force, as it periodically precipitates a crisis of confidence and highlights the imperfect nature of the transition.14

I have noted elsewhere that Fortune wrote a cover story for its international editions in 1995, which was titled ‘The Death of Hong Kong,’ claiming that ‘the naked truth about Hong Kong’s future can be summed up in two words: It’s over.’15 Actually, this ‘end’ of Hong Kong was not new. 1997 was seen by many Hong Kong people as the ‘end’ of Hong Kong, as they were sceptical about whether the ‘one country, two systems’ concept proposed by the late leader Deng Xiaoping could be realized. I have also argued that Hong Kong witnessed a dramatic change in its attitude towards its motherland after 1997. The economic downturn in 1998 shattered Hong Kong’s myth of 12 Dirlik, ‘The Mouse That Roared.’ 13 Gordon Mathews, Eric Ma, and Tai-lok Lui, Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 3. 14 Ming K. Chan and Gerard A. Postiglione, ‘Introduction: Hong Kong’s Uneasy Passage to Chinese Sovereignty,’ in The Hong Kong Reader: Passage to Chinese Sovereignty, eds. Ming K. Chan and Gerard A. Postiglione (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), pp. 4–5. 15 Yiu-Wai Chu, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), p. 1; Joe McGowan, ‘The Death of Hong Kong,’ Fortune, 26 June 1995, p. 40.

Prologue

15

economic success, putting Hong Kong people in dire straits in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. Many Hong Kong people willingly turned to their motherland, not for the sake of the Hong Kong Government’s emphasis on national consciousness, but for the sake of China’s surprisingly swift economic growth in the new millennium. When China surpassed Hong Kong in terms of capitalism, Hong Kong culture could no longer retain its special role between China and the world – at that point, China had become the world. ‘The media in the early 2000s saw the death of aura twice, firstly through the literal death of stars as an embodiment of Hong Kong identity and secondly through the death of a glorious era of pre-1997 local culture.’16 Hong Kong’s once singular, ambiguous but prolific existence had ceased, and the loss of ‘in-between-ness’ fuzzed the edges, shifted the foci, and changed the shape of its cultural identity. In short, there were fears that the identity and distinctiveness of Hong Kong culture were ‘lost in transition’, and that core values such as rule of law were, to borrow Carol Jones’ account, ‘lost in China’.17 When Beijing enacted the National Security Law in Hong Kong on 1 July 2020, in the aftermath of the protests against the Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) that began in June 2019, it was once again believed to be ‘the end of Hong Kong’. Although Hong Kong has experienced immense impacts in an age commonly believed to be that of a new cold war, it has not died. Despite one end after another, ‘What is Hong Kong’ – at least in regard to ‘personal belonging’ – has become a controversial question once again.

Beginning of the End: The 1980s ‘The end of Hong Kong’ was widely discussed before the Fortune special issue mentioned above. The 1967 riots were one of the major crises of modern Hong Kong indeed. Regarding Hong Kong cultural identity, however, it is generally agreed among cultural critics that before the late 1960s, there was not a strong sense of local belonging among Hong Kong people, who were dominated by the so-called ‘refugee mentality’.18 Therefore, while many people fled Hong Kong after the 1967 riots, strictly speaking, it was not the end of ‘Hong Kong’, which was yet to be formed culturally and even 16 Wing-fai Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance and Identity (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2015), p.122. 17 Carol Jones, Lost in China?: Law, Culture and Identity in Post-1997 Hong Kong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 18 Mathews, Ma, and Lui, Hong Kong, China, pp. 27–29.

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socially. As rightly noted by David Faure, ‘[i]f the Hong Kong Chinese up to the 1970s were Chinese sojourners in Hong Kong, the generation of the 1970s [were] Hong Kong people of Chinese descent.’19 Shortly after the 1970s witnessed the formation and transformation of Hong Kong identity, Hong Kong Governor Murray MacLehose made his landmark visit to Beijing at the end of that decade of changes. In mid-January 1973, Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Alec Douglas-Home concluded in a memorandum to the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee that, as ‘China does not want to take back Hong Kong now’ and ‘the [Hong Kong] population continue to want us to stay…the material and moral balance of advantage to us is to maintain the status quo.’20 After Deng Xiaoping returned to office in 1977 and subsequently launched the Open Door Policy, however, things were significantly different. MacLehose’s visit marked the dawning of SinoBritish negotiations on the future of Hong Kong after 1997, anti-climaxed by Margaret Thatcher’s infamous slip on the staircase in front of the People’s Hall in Beijing after her meeting with Deng Xiaoping in 1982, which dealt an extremely heavy blow to Hong Kong and its people’s confidence towards the future. Subsequently, ‘the end of Hong Kong’ continued to unsettle Hong Kong people before and after its reversion to China, and 1997 was seen as the end boundary of Hong Kong. Even after Hong Kong’s reversion to China, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the financial tsunami in 2008, the Umbrella Movement in 2014, the protests against the ELAB in 2019, and the passing of the National Security Law in 2020 have all been seen as marking the end of Hong Kong. In these contexts, Humphrey Bogart’s famous words in Casablanca – ‘We’ll always have Paris’ – was paraphrased to express the feelings of Hong Kong people: ‘We’ll always have Hong Kong.’21 Which Hong Kong is this? As perceptively noted by Tai-lok Lui, the 1970s was a decade of transformation in Hong Kong. His inspiring re-examination of Hong Kong in the 1970s was an effort to look at Hong Kong ‘before it was formed’.22 While Lui wanted to deconstruct the overromanticization of the 19 David Faure, ‘Reflections on Being Chinese in Hong Kong,’ in Hong Kong’s Transitions, 1842–1997, eds. Judith M. Brown and Rosemary Foot (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), pp. 103–104. 20 Cited from Chi-Kwan Mark, ‘Crisis or Opportunity? Britain, China, and the Decolonization of Hong Kong in the Long 1970s,’ in China, Hong Kong, and the Long 1970s: Global Perspectives, eds. Priscilla Roberts and Odd Arne Westad (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 261. 21 Chu, Lost in Transition, p. 38; see, for instance, Bono Lee李照興, Chic China Chic 潮爆中國 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Enrich Publishing, 2008). 22 Tai-lok Lui, The Story of Hong Kong in the 1970s Retold 那似曾相識的七十年代 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Books, 2012); see also Tai-lok Lui, ‘The Unfinished Chapter of Hong Kong’s Long Political Transition,’ Critique of Anthropology 40(2) (February 2020): 270–276.

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1970s, he also underscored the importance of the 1980s. In the early 1980s, according to Lui, Hong Kong’s primary concern was still about maintaining the status quo.23 In this sense the 1980s was the Hong Kong ‘we’ll always have’, at least to some Hong Kong people. Bookended by two major incidents, the 1980s will probably enter the annals of Hong Kong history as the decade that defined its future after its reversion to China. Before the end of this decade of significance, the June 4th Incident in 1989 generated a new wave of emigration in Hong Kong, and shortly before its start, MacLehose made his visit to Beijing in March 1979, which ‘was hailed at the time as the prelude to extensive Sino-British negotiations on the future of the colony’.24 To explore China’s position on the question of Hong Kong, MacLehose sounded Deng Xiaoping out, suggesting that the land grants in the New Territories be approved for a term beyond 30 June 1997, ‘for so long as the Crown administers the territory’, but Deng reportedly refused the British request immediately, stating clearly that ‘Hong Kong can continue to implement its capitalist system for a rather long period from this century to early next century, while we, the Mainland, practise socialism.’25 This was followed by rounds of negotiations, which paved the way for Thatcher’s meeting with Deng in 1982, but the confidence level waned as Chinese and British leaders responded.26 The city was deeply troubled by the 1997 issue at that time. The worldwide economic recession triggered by the Federal Reserve’s tightening of monetary policy in 1981 to cool inflation and the recession in the United States further aggravated the problem. Hong Kong found itself trapped in the midst of a perfect storm, in which both stock and property prices fell sharply, corrected by 38% and 31%, respectively, from the end of 1981 to the end of 1983. ‘The credit squeeze finally came in 1983,’ according to Raymond Li, former Executive Director of the Banking Policy Department of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, as ‘[p]olitical uncertainties added to the crisis atmosphere, following China’s official statement in August 1983 that it would take back Hong Kong on 23 Tai-lok Lui, Stephen W. K. Chiu, and Ray Yep (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Hong Kong (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019), brief description. 24 Gary Cheung, ‘The Secret Handover,’ South China Morning Post, 20 November 2006; actually, MacLehose’s trip to Beijing kicked off serious diplomatic discussions about Hong Kong’s future. 25 For further details of the different rounds and stages of the negotiations, refer to Maria Wai-Chu Tam (ed.), Drafting and Promulgation of the Basic Law and Hong Kong’s Reunification with the Motherland (Hong Kong: Working Group on Overseas Community of the Basic Law Promotion Steering Committee, 2012), pp. 11–13. 26 For details about the negotiations, refer to Sze Yuen Chung, Hong Kong’s Journey to Reunification: Memoirs of Sze-yuen Chung (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2001), Chapter 2.

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or before 1 July 1997, regardless of the outcome of its negotiations with the UK.’27 Inflation in Hong Kong increased from 5% in the 1970s to 12.7% by 1983. All of these issues culminated on the infamous ‘Black Saturday’, which, among others, symbolized the confidence crisis in Hong Kong. On 24 September 1983, the Hong Kong dollar collapsed in the midst of the news that Sino-British negotiations had ended in a stalemate, and its exchange rate versus the United States dollar depreciated by some 130/0, falling to an all-time low of HK$9.6/US$1. As recollected by Joseph Yam, the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority: With no effective control over either the price or the quantity of the monetary base – there was then no monetary management mechanism to speak of – the currency was heading for a free fall. Queues began to gather in supermarkets and the shelves for rice and toilet paper were quickly emptied. In one or two banks, other kinds of queues were quietly forming, making substantial withdrawals of interbank lines and deposits through the drawing of cheques, and threatening to take cash or cheques in bank branches. The property bubble had already burst, further threatening banking stability, as banks traditionally were highly exposed, directly and indirectly, to the property market and vulnerable to volatility in property prices. We did not then have the 70% guideline for the degree of risk that could be assumed by banks in residential mortgage loans. And so, inevitably, we had one of the worst monetary and banking crisis in Hong Kong.28

Although the government launched a linked exchange rate on 17 October 1983, which has been in place since then, the confidence crisis continued to loom over Hong Kong, as evidenced by the taxi strike and the subsequent Mong Kok riot in January 1984, an important year in the history of Hong Kong. The taxi strike, during which angry drivers ‘occupied’ main roads to protest against a proposed steep increase in registration and license fees, triggered a night of rioting on 13 January, the first major riot in Hong Kong since 1967. It was a time of uncertainty for the city and its people, as their future after 1997 was still under negotiation. Although the British Hong Kong Government promised political reform in its Green Paper titled ‘The 27 Raymond Li, ‘Banking Problems: Hong Kong’s Experience in the 1980s,’ BIS Policy Paper, Bank for International Settlements (1999): 131. 28 Joseph Yam, ‘Lessons from 1983,’ Insight, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, 18 September 2003: https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/news-and-media/insight/2003/09/20030918/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Further Development of Representative Government in Hong Kong’ and released on 18 July 1984, and its resulting eponymous White Paper released on 21 November 1984 (announcing the introduction of the indirect election of members of the Legislative Council – twelve seats by an Electoral College and twelve seats by functional constituencies), Hong Kong people could not rest assured about the future of Hong Kong.29 The Sino-British Joint Declaration was formally signed by the People’s Republic of China and the United Kingdom on 19 December 1984, and Hong Kong people finally knew the inevitable, that Britain would return Hong Kong to its motherland in 1997. Worse yet, ‘[t]he economic gloom and the general lack of political confidence persisted, however, and did not bottom out until 1985.’30 And the rest was history.

Horse Racing and Dancing as Usual After the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, uncertainty continued to characterize Hong Kong’s future as the agreement was believed to raise as many questions as it attempted to resolve. As argued by Peter Wesley-Smith, ‘[t]here is a difference involving international agreements and one in which China commits herself to an agreement concerning its own territory over which it is sovereign.’31 To appease the anxiety of Hong Kong people as well as the international community, Deng Xiaoping reiterated his well-known promise to the members of the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee at their fourth meeting in Beijing on 16 April 1987: ‘[H]orse-racing and dancing will continue, and capitalist lifestyle will remain unchanged.’32 As noted above, the sui generis identity of Hong Kong people was deeply entwined with their everyday lives and the pop culture they consumed. Hsin-chi Kuan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong professor emeritus and chairman of the Hong Kong Civic Party from its foundation in 2006 until 2011, highlighted in his Hong Kong after the Basic Law that the preservation of the socioeconomic status quo, and hence the continuance of the capitalist system and lifestyle, 29 Eva Liu and S. Y. Yue, Political Development in Hong Kong since the 1980s (Hong Kong: Research and Library Services Division, Legislative Council Secretariat, 1996), 2.2. 30 Li, ‘Banking Problems,’ pp. 131–132. ‘Between 1983–86, seven local banks got into difficulties. These included the then third largest local bank in Hong Kong, the Overseas Trust Bank.’ 31 Cited from Thomas S. Macintyre, ‘Impact of the Sino-British Agreement on Hong Kong’s Economic Future,’ Journal of Comparative Business and Capital Market Law 7(1985): 208. 32 People’s Daily Overseas Edition人民日報海外版 (ed.), Basic Law: A Creative Masterpiece 基本法: 創造性的傑作 (in Chinese) (Beijing: People’s Daily Press, 1991), p. 176.

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in Hong Kong was the least contentious issue during the drafting of the Basic Law.33 In other words, the capitalist system and lifestyle were the status quo that would be preserved in the ‘fifty years unchanged’ framework. That Deng Xiaoping, the engineer of the ‘once country, two systems’ blueprint, put the emphasis on lifestyle and used horse racing and dancing as examples are worth noting indeed. Interestingly, when Xia Baolong, former Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, explained the National Security Law to the Hong Kong delegates at the National People’s Congress in May 2020, he said that its legislation would guarantee that ‘horses will run even faster, and dancing will be even more spectacular.’34 More than thirty years later, horse racing and dancing are still used as symbols of Hong Kong’s capitalist lifestyle, although they are not totally absent in the Mainland anymore. While consumerism in Hong Kong has been ‘deeply associated with its international image and self-identity, through which people in Hong Kong define a common historical experience’,35 horse racing and dancing were so ingrained in Hong Kong culture that they were used to symbolize Hong Kong’s lifestyle and the smooth transfer of sovereignty in 1997. As pointed out by Allen Chun, cosmopolitanism and cultural hybridity were the essence of Hong Kong’s ‘place-based identity’.36 Horse racing and dancing can be seen as not only symbols of capitalist consumerism but also cosmopolitan hybridity. I will briefly discuss horse racing and dancing and their implications on Hong Kong’s lifestyle, and then move on to the importance of pop culture in the distinctive everyday lives of Hong Kong people. Horse racing is actually a typical British colonial sport. Introduced by the British shortly after Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1842, it has a history of over 150 years. According to the Hong Kong Jockey Club, founded in 1884, horse racing began in Happy Valley back in 1846. The Club claims itself to be ‘an integral part of Hong Kong society, contributing to the city’s social and economic progress’ throughout its long history.37 It successfully enhanced the image of horse racing by highlighting its social responsibility. 33 Hsin-chi Kuan, Hong Kong after the Basic Law (Hong Kong: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1990), pp. 3–4. 34 Cited from ‘Hong Kong Will Continue to Prosper with the Country’s Staunch Support’ 國 家堅強後盾，港必繁榮穩定 (in Chinese), Wen Wui Pao, 29 May 2020. 35 Janet Ng, Paradigm City: Space, Culture, and Capitalism in Hong Kong (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009), p. 89. 36 Allen Chun, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), p. 106. 37 For further details, refer to ‘Our Milestones,’ Hong Kong Jockey Club: https://corporate. hkjc.com/corporate/english/history-and-reports/our-milestones.aspx; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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As early as 1915, the Club made its first public donations, and since then it has provided generous funds for public clinics, parks, and schools. Back in its early days, the colonial sport remained exclusive to the British elites, but thanks to the attractiveness of gambling for many people—both elite and ordinary—as an opportunity to win money, horse racing transcended race and class. After the Hong Kong Jockey Club went from an amateur to a professional organization in 1971, horse racing was even more popular among the local population. ‘Hong Kong’s races are carnival-like in atmosphere, as spectators from all walks of life come together to cheer for their local heroes.’38 In the end, horse racing became something more than gambling and sport in Hong Kong: it was a culture. Not unlike other pop culture, horse racing swiftly developed in the 1970s after it turned professional. Horse racing went beyond the racecourse when telephone betting and the first six off-course betting branches were launched in 1974. The Hong Kong Jockey Club soon realized that the Happy Valley racecourse was not big enough to meet increasing demand, and therefore a second racecourse was built in Sha Tin in the New Territories. With a capacity of over 80,000, the Sha Tin Racecourse opened in September 1978, and since then it has become one of the leading racecourses in the world. This paved the way for the swift development of the horse racing industry in the next decade. Not only were all the off-course betting branches fully computerized in 1983, ‘a concerted effort was made to boost the quality of both horses and races’ in the 1980s: ‘That meant that the city’s fixtures were upgraded to Group 1 status, so they could attract international talent and attention.’39 By the end of the decade, Hong Kong horse racing was effectually internationalized, and the 1st Hong Kong International Cup – which later developed into the Hong Kong International Races comprising four races, with some of the biggest purses in the world – staged in January 1988 was a milestone event. Given Hong Kong horse racing’s similarity to other popular entertainment industries, it is necessary to have stars to enhance its carnival-like atmosphere. As pointedly noted by Andrew Hawkins in 2014, ‘[w]ith only 24 trainers and a similar number of jockeys, it means the participants are firmly in the spotlight. They are Hong Kong’s Cristiano Ronaldo or Usain Bolt.’40 Stars were born back in the 1970s. Derek Tai-chi Cheng, who 38 Vincent Cheung, ‘A Brief History of Hong Kong Horse Racing,’ in Discovery (the inflight magazine for Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon), 30 September 2019. 39 Cheung, ‘A Brief History of Hong Kong Horse Racing.’ 40 Andrew Hawkins, ‘Why Horse Racing in Hong Kong Is a Different Beast Entirely,’ South China Morning Post, 1 May 2014.

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straddled across amateur and professional years, was the first star jockey based on his status as the Hong Kong Champion Jockey from 1967 to 1975. The competition between Cheng and Australian jockey Gary Moore, who later bagged the champion title between 1976 and 1979, was very fierce in the 1970s, before Cheng left racing to become a trainer in 1976. Gary Moore, the son of champion-jockey-turned-trainer George Moore, who also came to Hong Kong in the 1970s, first rode in 1971 and won his first race on New Year’s Day in 1972. He formally arrived from Australia and commenced his career in Hong Kong in the 1972–1973 season. The rivalry between Cheng and Moore was simply legendary, seen by local fans as a battle between local/ Chinese and foreign jockeys. Local jockey Tony Cruz succeeded Cheng and continued the battle with Gary Moore in the latter half of the 1970s. Among the first batch of apprentice jockeys trained by the Hong Kong Jockey Club who graduated in 1973, Cruz was the most successful home-grown jockey in the history of Hong Kong horse racing. Even with Gary Moore’s dominance in the late 1970s, Cruz managed to win the title in 1979–1980, and their contest continued until the mid-1980s, when they were so successful that they shifted their emphases to the international scene. On the subject of horse trainers, Gary Moore’s father, George Moore, was the star. Shortly after he arrived in Hong Kong in 1972, he won the champion trainer title a record eleven times between 1973 and 1985. His older son, John Moore, who also moved from Australia and kickstarted his career in Hong Kong as a jockey, may not have been as successful as his younger brother, but he succeeded his father and won the trainer title in 1985–1986, later becoming one of the most acclaimed trainers in Hong Kong in the next three decades. If horse trainers’ competition was not as fierce as that of the jockeys in the 1970s and early 1980s, because of the overwhelming George Moore, the competition between Brian Ping-chee Kan and John Moore in the late 1980s was also seen as a battle between local/Chinese and foreign trainers. Arguably the most successful Chinese trainer in the history of Hong Kong horse racing, Kan dominated the scene in the latter half of the 1980s, winning the title four times between 1986 and 1990. Horse racing would not be possible without horses indeed. Besides star jockeys and trainers, star horses – often hailed as ‘King of Horses’ in Chinese – also played an indispensable part in the development of horse racing into a culture in Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s. With a record-breaking eighteen total wins, Super Win, trained by George Moore and often ridden by Gary Moore, was undoubtedly the horse of the 1970s, although Money Talks and Fantan were also popular among fans by virtue of their outstanding performances. However, the first official

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‘King of Horses’ was Silver Lining, crowned in 1977–1978, the first of its kind launched by the Association of Hong Kong Racing Journalists and sponsored by Marlboro. Silver Lining was first trained by Chinese champion trainer Chi-Lam Ng (1969–1970 and 1971–1973) and later moved to George Moore’s stable, where he partnered with Gary Moore and became one of the most celebrated horses in the history of Hong Kong horse racing. Cruz would not have been as legendary as Gary Moore, even though he won six champion jockey titles, without a ‘King of Horses.’ Co-tack, trained by local Chinese Tang-Ping Wong, was certainly the most successful horse in Hong Kong in the 1980s. As recollected by Cruz, Co-tack was plainly invincible during his heyday: He knew how to race – very professional going into the gates. He had exceptional acceleration but would slow right down in the last quarter – I could have trotted him in because no horse in Hong Kong could come anywhere near him; he blew them out. 41

More crucially, Co-tack was named ‘King of Horses’ twice between 1982 and 1984, a time in which Hong Kong was deeply troubled by the negotiations about its future after 1997. In the midst of unrest and uncertainty, Co-tack gave horse racing fans, and even ordinary Hong Kong people, something to cheer about. Horse racing became part of the Hong Kong lifestyle beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, providing not only a carnival-like atmosphere with crowds and families on race days but also ‘thrills and hopes for the people in Hong Kong’. 42 Effective promotion strategies over the years helped horse racing become an extremely successful form of popular entertainment in Hong Kong. It has built up a star system that is not too different from that of the entertainment business. It is cosmopolitan but local at once; its fans straddle across ethnicity, class, and gender; and it is sport, gambling, charity, and, above all, lifestyle. These are plausible reasons why ‘the “sport of kings” has lost its crown in most of the world, but there’s no doubt it rules supreme in Hong Kong.’43 Horses did continue to race after the handover. Deng’s promise made was a promise kept, except perhaps 41 Heather Adams, ‘My Life: Tony Cruz,’ South China Morning Post, 14 April 2013. 42 Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Hong Kong’s Popular Entertainment: https://www.heritagemuseum.gov.hk/documents/2199315/2199693/Entertainment_E.pdf; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 43 Hawkins, ‘Why Horse Racing in Hong Kong Is a Different Beast Entirely.’

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in September 2019, during the height of the protests against the ELAB, when a Happy Valley race was cancelled after an imminent safety threat to racegoers, jockeys, and employees, as well as to the welfare of the racehorses, because a horse owned by a controversial pro-Beijing lawmaker was scheduled to race on that night. It was adventitious, however, as horse racing quickly resumed and continued in Hong Kong even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when normal life was still a distant dream for people around the world. If horse racing is a gambling sport that turned into a culture in Hong Kong, dancing has become an icon of the nightlife of this city. The big spenders ‘dancing’ in nightclubs in the 1980s were showcasing their city’s success in the capitalist world-economy. Hong Kong’s ‘nightscape’ caught the world’s attention as a result of The World of Suzie Wong, the 1960 romantic drama directed by Richard Quine and starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. In this film, Holden falls in love with the gorgeous ‘bar girl’ Kwan—Suzie Wong—in Wan Chai. Meanwhile, the James Bond author and The Sunday Times journalist Ian Fleming, known to be an admirer of Richard Mason’s 1957 eponymous novel on which the f ilm The World of Suzie Wong was based, visited Hong Kong in 1959. In order to get a sense of the real setting, Fleming paid a visit to the Luk Kwok Hotel (in Mason’s novel it is called the Nam Kok House of Pleasure), where the novelist had stayed when writing the love story between the painter Robert Lomax and the prostitute Suzie Wong. In his travelogue Thrilling Cities – a collection of articles that he wrote for The Sunday Times in 1959 and 1960 – published in 1963, Fleming mentioned the Tonnochy Ballroom in Wan Chai when he described Hong Kong’s night life: The dance-hostesses are on call – which does not mean by telephone, but by personal arrangement – at seventy-six ‘ballrooms’. The prettiest girls and the best bands tend to be in places like the Tonnochy Ballroom and the Golden Phoenix (on the island) and at the Oriental (in Kowloon), where most of the patrons are Chinese and no hard liquor is served, only tea, soft drinks and melon seeds. 44

An area in Wan Chai later developed into a red-light district filled by regular pubs, girlie bars, and hostess clubs. As perceptively noted by Siu Leung Li in his account of Hong Kong-made musical films, ‘Hong Kong nightclubs and cabaret singers had a long and fascinating history in Hong Kong, especially 44 Ian Fleming, Thrilling Cities (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963).

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between the 1950s and 1970s; the nightclub world in Hong Kong musical films is not at all unfounded in social reality.’45 Similar to other entertainment businesses, the nightclub scene also expanded quickly in the 1980s, thanks to the opportunities and hence money brought by the opening up of the Mainland market. Club Volvo (later renamed Club Bboss due to a copyright issue), the grandest Japanese-style club that opened its doors to Hong Kong’s nightlife in 1984, was seen as a symbol of confidence in the future of the city. In spite of rumours that China was the financial backer of the new hot spot of Hong Kong’s nightlife, there was no concrete proof. Beijing did make a public endorsement though. The opening ceremony of Hong Kong’s biggest, most luxurious nightclub on 12 December 1984 (just one week before the official signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration) was marked by the presence of Li Chuwen, the deputy director of the Xinhua News Agency (the de facto representative of China in Hong Kong back then), who represented Beijing’s commitment to keeping the lifestyle of Hong Kong beyond 1997. Moreover, Huang ­Guangying, who was believed to be among the first generation of ‘red capitalists’ in Hong Kong and who funded the Guang Da Group, also conveyed the message that ‘horse racing and dancing will continue’ – Deng Xiaoping’s promise to Hong Kong people – at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Located in Tsim Sha Tsui East, back then a newly developed commercial and tourist area as well as nightspot, Club Volvo had a dancefloor that could cater to 400 in a space of 70,000 square feet. It was so big – the literal translation of the Chinese name is actually big billionaire—that nouveau-riche customers were driven to their glitzily decorated private booths in golf carts kitted out as gold antique Rolls-Royces. Tsim Sha Tsui East was the newest nightspot on the Kowloon side, while the historical nightclubs such as the Tonnochy Club were still operating in Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. ‘The most famous was always Club Volvo. The money spent there had no limit,’ according to Neva Shaw, who was running her own late-night bar, The Professional Club, back in the 1980s. ‘These girls were like geishas. There was a patron to be found, a lifestyle to be maintained…. I saw one girl take out a wad of bills big enough to choke on, to deposit in the bank.’46 The business was so successful that there was a plan to turn it into a listed company in the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, which derailed in the 45 Siu Leung Li, ‘Embracing Glocalization and Hong Kong-made Musical Film,’ in China Forever: The Shaw Brothers and Diasporic Cinema, ed. Poshek Fu (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 86. 46 Cited from ‘Hostess Clubs Close in Hong Kong,’ South China Morning Post, 24 December 2012.

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aftermath of the 1987 stock market crash.47 Former Reuters correspondent Elizabeth Pisani once wrote: I was covering business at the time, and was curious about the planned stock-market flotation of Club Volvo, the mother of all pickup joints. I’ve been in a lot of pleasure palaces since then, but none has matched the kitsch of Volvo, a club that makes you feel like you are trapped inside a wedding cake iced in brass, mirrors and cheap satin. 48

This nicely summed up the lavishly boisterous scene in this heaven of some of the biggest spenders in town. Although Club Volvo was shut down in 2012 owing to the reconfigured nightscape after the rise of China, its glitter and glamour had written a flashy chapter for Hong Kong’s nightlife. In Hong Kong Night Club, a romantic comedy adventure shot almost entirely in Hong Kong by Japanese director Takayoshi Watanabe, the conflation of Hong Kong and the nightclub ‘seems to have made explicit an underlying metaphor running through the made-in-Hong Kong musical; that is, Hong Kong is a nightclub’.49

Lifestyle Unchanged Horse racing and dancing were just two cases of Hong Kong’s lifestyle that Beijing promised to keep unchanged after 1997. The late engineer of the unprecedented ‘one country, two systems’ framework picked them as examples, possibly because ‘according to the moral values of a socialist society, [they] were symbols of decadence of Hong Kong’s capitalist lifestyle’.50 This painted a sharp and clear picture, effectively highlighting the differences between the two systems and the capitalist lifestyle that would remain unchanged. ‘Lifestyle’ became a widely used term by the late 1970s. In 1981, Michael Sobel made a complaint about its abuse: Lifestyle is currently one of the abused words of the English language. Social scientists, journalists, and laymen use it to refer to almost anything 47 For further details of the listing plan, refer to Nicholas D. Kristof, ‘Hong Kong’s Hottest Hot Spot,’ The New York Times, 11 October 1987. 48 Elizabeth Pisani, The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS (London: Granta Books, 2008), p. 67. 49 Li, ‘Embracing Glocalization and Hong Kong-made Musical Film,’ p. 86. 50 Tai-lok Lui, Stephen W. K. Chiu, and Ray Yep, ‘Introduction,’ in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Hong Kong, p. 5.

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of interest, be it fashion, Zen Buddhism, or French cooking. The more this word is bantered about, the less it seems to mean. If the 1970s are an indication of things to come, the word lifestyle will soon include everything and mean nothing, all at the same time.51

Despite this, lifestyle did have significant implications in Hong Kong. First and foremost, it is commonly agreed among Hong Kong critics that a distinctive Hong Kong identity gradually took shape when ‘the local economy achieved independence and the administration assumed effective autonomy’ in the 1960s, and ‘local lifestyles also began to diverge sharply from those of Taiwan or the Communist Mainland.’52 The 1970s was the decade in which Hong Kong witnessed the formation of a distinct local identity. The ‘refugee mentality’ of Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s was replaced by ‘market mentality’ in the 1970s,53 and consumption, including cultural consumption, became the dominant mentality of the swiftly developing capitalist city. As ‘a modern social form’, lifestyles have depended upon, among other things, the development of consumer culture.54 The political turmoil in the 1980s, ironically, created a Hong Kong that some people always wanted to have. Notwithstanding the anxiety about the future throughout the years, Ackbar Abbas’s famous notion about Hong Kong – ‘doom and boom’ (‘the more frustrated or blocked the aspirations to “democracy” are, the more the market blooms’55) – was perfectly applicable to the development of Hong Kong’s pop culture in the 1980s. Richard Harris, who pioneered Asian investment management at senior levels for companies such as JP Morgan, Citi, BNY Mellon, and several start-ups, hit the nail right on the head when he explained why the late 1980s was the best time for Hong Kong: ‘The final years of the booming decade represented the height of wealth creation and opportunity, but also a period which was culturally unique.’56 In other words, Hong Kong’s booming pop culture was one of the important reasons for its overall economic growth in that decade. 51 Michael E. Sobel, Lifestyle and Social Structure: Concepts, Definitions, Analyses (New York: Academic Press, 1981), p. 1. 52 Turner, ‘1960s/1990s,’ p. 15. 53 Mathews, Ma, and Lui, Hong Kong, China, p. 29. According to the authors, the market mentality ‘came to characterize Hong Kong in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and continuing today.’ 54 David Chaney, Lifestyles (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 14–24. 55 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1997), p. 5. 56 Richard Harris, ‘Why Hong Kong Was at Its Best in the Late 1980s,’ South China Morning Post, 7 July 2016.

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In this context, the rise of local cultural industries such as movies, television, and pop songs had exerted a very profound impact on everyday life. Hong Kong in the 1980s, at least culturally speaking, was the Hong Kong many of its people always wanted to have. Throughout the 1980s, the upward mobility and vigorous development of Hong Kong pop culture enabled a distinctive cosmopolitan lifestyle between the East and the West to grow and mature, and Hong Kong people came to take pride in their cultural identities. ‘The increasing prominence and importance of style in pop culture production goes hand in hand with a redefinition of consumption as an aesthetic or artistic exercise,’ and as astutely argued by Imre Szeman and Susie O’Brien, the term ‘lifestyle’ perfectly captured this shift.57 In his in-depth study on lifestyles, David Chaney cited Michel de Certeau, whose theory has contributed ‘a distinctive approach to pop culture that has influenced other studies of lifestyles’, and made a point pertinent to our understanding of Hong Kong identity: ‘The idea here is that as they move through established spatial and social order, actors are telling stories through their reinforcement and confirmation of local knowledges.’58 While de Certeau famously stressed the importance of spatial practices, the stories told by the culture of everyday life enunciated a strong sense of belonging among Hong Kong people in the 1980s, when the clouds of the 1997 issue were looming over the future of the city. It is against this backdrop that I would like to ‘enunciate’ – to borrow de Certeau’s term – my ‘personal belonging’ through Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s.

57 Imre Szeman and Susie O’Brien, Popular Culture: A User’s Guide (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2009), p. 115. 58 Chaney, Lifestyles, p. 74; see also Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 15–42.

Introduction Abstract The 1980s was a critical and transitional decade for Hong Kong, in connection with not just politics and economics but also culture and lifestyle. Against this backdrop, this chapter offers a brief account of “Hong Kong” and its people, the choices of pop culture and the emphasis on a single decade in relation to present researches on these topics. It is argued that Hong Kong’s stardom can be effectively studied from the perspective of creative synergies among different media texts. The notion of “multimedia stardom” is adopted to highlight the synergies among various practices of pop culture in the 1980s. Keywords: cosmopolitan hybridity, multimedia stardom, nostalgia, decade studies, momentum

The concept and structure of this book were partially inspired by Leo Ou-fan Lee’s City between Worlds: My Hong Kong, in which the author walked in the city, trying to ‘find out what indeed is (or was) there, in Hong Kong’s past, that may still shed light on its culture today’.1 According to Lee, a long-time Hong Kong resident, the city means quite different things to different groups of people: the natives who grew up there and experienced it as the context for everyday life, the expatriates who came to work in its robust finance centre, the British who created the colonial face of the city, and the urban and global residents whose emerging consciousness encompassed and transcended that of the previous groups. Lee had chosen to look at his Hong Kong from this perspective: ‘voicing opinions, wherever possible, on behalf of a Chinese community whose members have not chosen to write about their city in English’.2 ‘Each chapter presents a slice of the 1 Leo Ou-Fan Lee, City between Worlds: My Hong Kong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 2. 2 Lee, City between Worlds, p. 1.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_INTRO

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city’s history and culture,’ in addition, ‘called up by the streets, sites, and artifacts themselves, and by association with literature and film.’3 Taking this as the critical backdrop, the chapters in this book – structured around walking tours – were conceived to touch on different ‘slices’ of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s: While writing this book, I found myself constantly trying to draw mental maps not only from the many walks and wanderings I have taken all over these areas but from the diverse anecdotes, vignettes, memoirs, and fiction I have read, and films I have seen. In piecing together these fragments, I do not arrive at an overall picture of this ‘city between worlds.’ What I offer is rather a smorgasbord of thoughts and impressions – a food metaphor that may not be inappropriate for Hong Kong, a city well known for its culinary delights. Readers of this book can pick and choose from its contents and read at random. I hope they find some of the dishes served here to their taste. 4

From a different but related point of view, I have chosen to walk not in the city but down memory lane, telling a native’s story (Lee’s travelogue style does not suit me as I was born, brought up, and educated here) closely entangled with the perspectives of the other three groups of people. In the light of Lee’s ‘pedestrian’ approach that, albeit not about high theory, articulates new dimensions, I decided to talk about my ‘personal belonging’ as an inveterate fan of Hong Kong pop culture since my childhood. Unlike Lee’s abundant supply of anecdotes and vignettes, however, this book will only occasionally draw in personal memory and reflection. Besides personal ability and preference, another major reason is that what I am going to focus are the pop cultural texts more than my personal receptions of them. Although my personal memory has shaped the selection of the texts (more below), I would avoid its escalation as a central component in my reflection on the 1980s. My approach can be further explained by the inspiration I found in Rey Chow’s Not Like a Native Speaker, in which she offered a ‘mini-memoir’ of Cantonese radio plays – her mother being a radio broadcaster. Besides that ‘firsthand something of [her] mother’s aura as a popular broadcaster’,5 Chow 3 Lee, City between Worlds, p. 5. 4 Lee, City between Worlds, p. 7. 5 Rey Chow, Not Like a Native Speaker: On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 103.

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also used her own experience as a schoolchild in Hong Kong to advance her own theories related to languaging and postcoloniality. ‘Drawing on memories of language acquisition and practice as a child and adolescent in the Anglo-Chinese school system in British Hong Kong,’ she raised ‘the vexed question of linguistic nativism’ and argued for ‘a revision of language practices in postcoloniality that can encompass quotidian and seemingly simple but in fact ideologically loaded phenomena such as accents and intonations.’6 ‘The postcolonial scene,’ according to her, is ‘a melancholic scene in which the colonized suffers the loss of her harmonious relation to her own language.’7 I have chosen not to focus more on my own speaking position as someone growing up in Hong Kong, because I understand that the scene of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s is much more diverse and complex than my account allows. In other words, I hope that this book will be read less as ‘my 1980s in Hong Kong’ than my accounts on Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s.8 I do not want to be misunderstood. I fully recognize that limitations and drawbacks are inevitable, such as overgeneralization and overromanticization, in focusing only on a particular aspect of a single decade. ‘When attempting to reconstruct past events based on general knowledge of what usually happens,’ as argued by psychologist Daniel L. Schacter in his The Seven Sins of Memory, ‘we become especially vulnerable to the sin of bias: when present knowledge and beliefs seep into our memories of past events.’9 Before moving on to my slices of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s, let me provide a brief account of ‘Hong Kong’ and its people, my choices of pop culture and the emphasis on a single decade against the backdrop of present researches on these topics. Hopefully this can help explain the limitations of my selections although they are central in my argument.

Whose Hong Kong? In addition to ‘Which Hong Kong is this?’ mentioned above, ‘whose Hong Kong?’ is a pertinently related question to ask. As this has been discussed 6 Chow, Not Like a Native Speaker, p. 12. 7 Chow, Not Like a Native Speaker, p. 47. 8 I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments, which not only reminded me that my approach is actually different from Lee’s, but also made me rethink some important issues such as my own oblivion in relation to the question ‘Whose Hong Kong?’ 9 Daniel L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), p.16.

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elsewhere, I shall not repeat the details, but just briefly refer to two related points here. In Lost in Transition, I borrowed Saskia Sassen’s question ‘Whose city is it?’ to challenge the branding of Hong Kong as ‘Asia’s World City’, arguing that this has framed the development of the city by neoliberal logic and marginalized other equally important values. Hong Kong might have been able to hedge between Mainland China and the world, but after the former’s rise completely reconfigured the world order and hence Hong Kong’s position on the edge of empires. ‘In the age of China and the rise of its cultural industries, Hong Kong has lost not only its hedging position but also its distinctive function of exporting popular cultures to Chinese communities.’10 ‘When everyday life in Hong Kong began to drown under global as well as Mainland capital,’ as suggested in a follow-up consideration of ‘Whose Hong Kong? Which Method?’ in Found in Transition, ‘its ever-infamous identity crisis inevitably surfaced again’ when the city was troubled by the problem ‘Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore’.11 Ironically, this crisis had a positive effect as those well received labels of the city, such as ‘Asia’s World City’, were problematized. One of the side effects of this problematization, however, was that the past was uncritically romanticized to either escape or critique the present to fulfil political agenda. It therefore became crucial to consider how Hong Kong studies, as a method, must be more than simply politically oriented. Toward this end, my reconsideration of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s should be seen as an attempt to highlight the importance of the inheritance and transmission of Hong Kong culture, rather than to provide an easy answer to the question ‘Whose Hong Kong?’. When I say ‘Hong Kong people’, I understand it is difficult, if possible, to pin down to whom I am talking about. Since this book focuses on my personal sense of belonging and the scene of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s, I shall not dwell on the complex notion of ‘identities’ here. As regards an explanation of the diversity and complexity of the people of Hong Kong, a rough sketch of the state of related researches would be useful. First, Hong Kong and its people often defy easy definition. As discussed above, ‘Hong Kong identity’ is sui generis but often escapes most attempts to define it. Although John Carroll was right in pointing out that the petition sent by a group of wealthy Chinese residents in Hong Kong to Governor Henry Blake in March 1901, which asked the government to establish ‘a suitable English School for the education of the children’ of the ‘upper classes of 10 Chu, Lost in Transition, p.17, see also pp.11-17. 11 Yiu-Wai Chu, Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018), pp. 192-193.

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the Chinese residents in the Colony’, had already told us about the making of a Hong Kong Chinese bourgeoisie identity.12 This Hong Kong identity, defined by both Chinese nationalism and British colonialism, was restricted to a certain class of people in Hong Kong. I have argued that, according to Matthew Turner, concepts such as ‘civil identity’ and ‘society’ were first widely disseminated in Hong Kong after the 1967 riots.13 In the aftermath of the riots, the Hong Kong Government designed a series of programs, such as the Hong Kong Festival, with the aim to construct a kind of local consciousness in order to curb national and/or anti-colonial sentiments of post-1967 society. Before that time, Hong Kong people had never been self-conscious about their own identity, and they looked down on their own culture. The radical transformation of the sociopolitical background and the swift development of local mass media in the 1970s provided a historical juncture in which ‘Hong Kong consciousness’ finally came into being.14 To borrow the terminologies of Mathews, Ma, and Lui, the 1970s was the decade in which Hong Kong people ‘fled the nation’ and ‘created a local home’, whereas the 1980s was a time for Hong Kong to ‘rejoin the nation’: The 1997 question fundamentally changed the expected teleological development of Hong Kong society, which…had broken away from the old perspective of Hong Kong as a ‘borrowed place on borrowed time’ to become a society with its own identity and way of life.15

This statement pinpointed the very important relationship between Hong Kong identity and way of life. The formation of a Hong Kong identity in the 1970s was a process of accumulation through everyday life from below, in which pop culture genres were important sources.16 Baker’s notion of ‘Hong Kong Man’ is sui generis exactly because of the territory’s unique culture and lifestyle that began to grow rapidly in the 1970s, and matured in the 1980s. 12 John M. Carroll, ‘Colonialism, Nationalism, and Bourgeois Identity in Colonial Hong Kong,’ Journal of Oriental Studies 39(2) (October 2005): 146–147. 13 Matthew Turner, ‘Hong Kong 1960s/1990s: Dissolving the People,’ in Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identities, eds. Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Art Centre, 1994), pp. 13–19. 14 Chu, Lost in Transition, p. 125. 15 Mathews, Ma, and Lui, Hong Kong, China, p. 43; for a postcolonial reflection on the changes of this ‘borrowed place’ two decades after the handover, refer to PEN Hong Kong (ed.), Hong Kong 20/20: Reflections on a Borrowed Place (Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books, 2017). 16 Ng and Ma, ‘Pop Culture and Identity Formation,’ pp. 177–193. Allen Chun has also offered a nuanced account of the ‘unique and complex changes that precipitated the rise of a place-based Hong Kong culture and identity during the postwar era’; refer to Chun, Forget Chineseness, pp. 105, 103–124.

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Hong Kong’s unique history as a British colony, a ‘little dragon,’ ‘Pearl of the Orient’ and Special Administrative Region of China makes its culture importantly distinctive. Being ‘a postcolonial anomaly’17 that cannot be analyzed simply by postcolonial theories, Hong Kong has its unique history of returning the motherland in 1997. Its special position on the ‘edge of empires,’18 to borrow the term from John Carroll, enabled Hong Kong to inscribe its own culture from an in-between position. The formation and transformation of local Hong Kong identities have been intertwined with the national and the global, and the plurality has to be understood within the complex triangular relationship among the national, the local and the global, which helped develop a distinctive kind of culture before and shortly after its reversion to China. As noted by Koon-Chung Chan in his often-cited essay ‘Hong Kong as Method,’ Hong Kong culture can be characterized by hybrid cosmopolitanism straddling the traditional and the modern, the East and the West, and the indigenous and the foreign.19 Hybridity, which can point toward different possibilities of cultural agency, has therefore become the style of Hong Kong, its major characteristic as well as advantage. Notwithstanding the domination of finance and real estate sectors, there was still room for a hybridized Hong Kong popular culture to flourish on its own. In spite of its international fame, however, Hong Kong has long been considered a ‘a cultural desert’ (what Ackbar Abbas has called ‘reverse hallucination’20 – not able to see what is actually there). Therefore, the study of its culture was largely marginalized in the academy until the 1997 issue brought it to the attention of academic research. While the ‘one country, two systems’ framework prescribes that Hong Kong would continue to play a special role between China and the world after the handover to its motherland, there have been heated controversies in recent years. The government’s attempt to push through the extradition law amendment bill in 2019 ‘generated a “perfect storm” in Hong Kong that was completely unnecessary and avoidable.’21 Hong Kong is also hopelessly 17 Rey Chow, Ethics After Idealism: Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), p.149. 18 John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005). 19 Koon-chung Chung陳冠中, My Generation of Hong Kongers 我這一代香港人 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 20 Abbas, Hong Kong, p.8. 21 Albert Chen, ‘How the Proposed Law on Hong Kong-Mainland China Rendition Was Aborted,’ Verfassungsblog, 19 June 2019; https://tinyurl.com/apschen; last accessed on 28 October 2022; refer to Yiu-Wai Chu, ‘Hong Kong Studies in the Future Continuous Tense,’ The Newsletter, International Institute for Asian Studies 84 (Autumn 2019): 10.

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trapped in another perfect storm generated by the conflicts and collusion between market and state capitalisms. Hong Kong has thus to imagine the (im)possibility of its future in a new ‘one world, two systems’ world order. The experience of the 1980s, a time when Hong Kong first concretely felt its ‘in-betweenness’, may offer some thoughts on how to theorize Hong Kong pop culture in this special context. Let me use the conference ‘Hong Kong Popular Culture: Imagining a Research Field’ (June 2021) as an example to further illustrate the field, or lack thereof, of the studies of Hong Kong pop culture. Co-organized by the Hong Kong Studies Initiative at the University of British Columbia, the Hong Kong Studies Programme at the University of Hong Kong and the Department of Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University, this conference aimed to, among others, expand ‘the range of subject matters that could and should be examined under the umbrella of “popular culture”; in addition to films, TV shows, and pop music, we particularly look forward to thoughtful analyses of “less legitimate” popular cultural genres and practices.’22 I fully agree that the studies of pop culture should not be slanted towards films, TV shows, and pop music, and it is urgently important to include some other genres and practices. As the major theme of this book, however, is to show how the 1980s was a critical and transitional decade for Hong Kong, in connection with not just politics and economics but also culture and lifestyle, the three main genres that contributed enormously to this cannot be left unexamined. The synergies between different genres and practices is another important issue to be considered in this book, and the ‘less legitimate’ ones I choose – fashion, disco, and city magazine – are closely related to them, and they have not been studied as extensively as the other main genres. This has already brought up the second question about which kinds of pop culture are to be explored.

Which Pop Cultures? ‘Whose Hong Kong?’ will inevitably lead to another question: ‘Which pop cultures?’. Apparently different pop cultures might have constructed different senses of belonging for Hong Kong people. I do understand that the portfolio should be comprehensive enough to portray a wide range of experiences of Hong Kong people, but it is necessary to prioritize given 22 Cited from the CFP of ‘Hong Kong Popular Culture: Imagining a Research Field’: https:// networks.h-net.org/node/7094617/pdf; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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the scope of this book. Regarding the selection of cases to be included in the analysis here, I have to confess that the choices are my own ‘personal belongings.’ The choices of popular cultural genres and examples cannot but be characterized as personal, but it has to be noted that the reconsideration here can and should also be seen as a continuing inquiry into ‘Whose Hong Kong? Which Method?’ This book is thereby my attempt to reconsider Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s by placing its back into its context, a time when Hong Kong became the dynamic centre of ‘cosmopolitan hybridity’ – to borrow Allen Chun’s term.23 To explore and reflect on Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan hybridity, the mass media of television, films and pop music are chosen to reflect a sense of belonging among the majority of Hong Kong people in the 1980s in view of their enormous popularity in not just Hong Kong but also Chinese communities across the world. There are other mass media such as radio and comics indeed, but as I will examine stardom and cosmopolitan hybridity as key components of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s in the following chapters, the three media could better represent the scene as a whole. The other three choices seem less straightforward. Joyce Boutique was, and still is, in the restricted and elite scope of fashion, but its glamourous aura was mysteriously attractive to stars and celebrities. Although the young urban label of Esprit, which appealed to young, fashion-minded customers, can cover a wider sector of customers, it has to be noted that fashion, albeit pop and chic, might have deviated from the masses. On the subject of nightlife, discotheques were somewhat remote from the masses. But in view of their being renowned as hangouts for stars and celebrities in town, they are used to further illustrate how creative synergies contributed to Hong Kong’s stardom in that glamorous decade. Of course, not all discotheques were equally trendy and stylish. Disco Disco and Canton are used as examples to lay out the uber-chic nightlife map of the city. This criterion also applies to the chapter on the print media. While pop magazine is a good example of the print media, the focus on a single case – City Magazine – cannot but seem a bit unrepresentative. With respect to sales and readership, it was undeniably less ‘mass’ than some mainstream newspapers and magazines. With regard to cosmopolitan hybridity, however, it was possibly the most important trendsetter back then. Also, it was selected for in-depth study for the sake of its blatant but elegant promotion of stardom and celebrity. To put it briefly, the chapters on fashion, discotheques, and city magazine are 23 Allen Chun, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), p. 10.

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conceived as extra dimensions. They might not be genuinely ‘pop’ in the strict sense of the word, but being ‘chic’ they added immense glamour to the decade by generating synergistic effects with the three examples of mass media. It would be helpful to have a very brief account of the term ‘pop culture’ here. Both ‘pop culture’ and ‘popular culture’ are widely used – often interchangeably – in the references of this book. Beng Huat Chua’s conceptual distinction between the two terms provides a useful starting point for discussion: Conventionally, mass entertainment – television, film, and pop music – is referred to as ‘popular culture.’ However, following Stuart Hall’s proposition, the term ‘popular culture’ should be reserved for the larger cultural sphere that encompasses the everyday life of the masses in contradiction to and contestation with elite culture, while ‘pop culture’ should be used to refer to commercially produced, profit-driven, media-based mass entertainment; so conceived, pop culture is but one segment of popular culture.24

For the sake of consistency and clarity, I follow his argument and use ‘pop culture’ unless ‘popular culture’ is used in the original sources. Hong Kong’s ‘commercially produced, profit-driven, media-based mass entertainment’ are exactly what I mull over in this book. As mentioned above, stardom is considered one of the key components of Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s. It may be confusing, however, to use ‘pop stardom’ as ‘pop’ is more commonly referring to popular music and pop stars to stars in popular music, and my take on stardom is not restricted to them. There have been numerous anthologies and monographs on star studies influenced by Richard Dyer’s field-defining book Stars published in 1979, which have covered a wide range of topics and themes related to individual stars, the star culture of Hollywood, transnational stardom, and gender and identity politics embedded in star-texts.25 While academic studies of 24 Beng Huat Chua, Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), p. 9. 25 Here are some examples: Christine Gledhill, ed., Stardom: Industry of Desire (London: Routledge, 1991); Jeremy G. Butler, ed., Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991); Marshall, P. David, ed. The Celebrity Culture Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006); Sean Redmond and Su Holmes, eds. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader (London: Sage, 2007); Russell Meeuf and Raphael Raphael, eds., Transnational Stardom: International Celebrity in Film and Popular Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Paul McDonald, Hollywood Stardom (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); Sabrina Qiong Yu and Guy Austin, eds., Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Michael Williams, Film Stardom and the Ancient Past (London: Palgrave

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stardom have been more closely associated with films, it is argued by Dyer that a star image is constructed from filmic as well as nonfilmic texts, and it is necessary to analyse stars as ‘images existing in films and other media texts’ embodying a ‘finite multiplicity of meanings and affects’.26 In Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Dyer dwelled on Marilyn Monroe, Paul Robeson, and Judy Garland in from various perspectives including publicity materials, biographies and media reports.27 What I am going to argue is that Hong Kong’s stardom in the 1980s should be more effectively studied from the perspective of creative synergies among different media texts. Although the emphasis of some studies on Hong Kong stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li is largely on film stardom, Hong Kong/Chinese stardom from a multimedia perspective is also an important perspective to add to our discussion.28 In her study of the Hong Kong stardom of Yun-Fat Chow, among others, Lin Feng has also underlined multimedia inquiries: ‘The discussion of a star as a public figure whose image appears both on the big screen and across various mass media channels provides an accessible topic through which people can express and exchange their understanding of cultural identification.’29 I therefore decided to adopt Wing-fai Leung’s notion of ‘multimedia stardom’ which is closer to what I want to underscore: ‘multimedia stardom in Hong Kong is conceptualized in relation to a range of media practices, including advertising, film, new media (such as the Internet), pop music, the printed press and television.’30 As stated by Sean Redmond and Su Holmes in their introduction to their Stardom and Celebrity, ‘the argument that studies from different media and disciplinary contexts can speak to one another in a broader dialogue about fame shapes the overall philosophy of this Reader.’31The exploration of Macmillan, 2018); Stephen Loy, Julie Rickwood, and Samantha Bennett, eds., Popular Music, Stars and Stardom (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2018). I am indebted to my postgraduate student Yuen-Yau Lai for this. Refer to Yuen-Yau Lai, ‘From “Bad Girl” to “Daughter of Hong Kong”: Anita Mui and the Phenomenon of Stardom in Hong Kong Popular Culture,’ M.Phil. Thesis, The University of Hong Kong, 2021. For a succinct account of star studies against the backdrop of Chinese stardom, refer to Dorothy Lau, Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp.20-23. 26 Richard Dyer, Stars (London: British Film Institute, 1979,), p.3. 27 Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004). 28 See for examples Amy Stone, Jackie Chan (Milwaukee: Gareth Stevens, 2007), Mary Ann Farquhar and Yingjin Zhang, eds., Chinese Film Stars (London: Routledge, 2010), Sabrina Qiong Yu, Jet Li: Chinese Masculinity and Transnational Film Stardom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), Lin Feng, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and Lau, Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture. 29 Feng, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom, p.135. 30 Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong, p.1. 31 Redmond and Holmes, ‘Introduction: What’s in a Reader?’, Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, p.6.

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intersections and synergies between different aspects of stardom and Hong Kong pop culture is the major thesis of this book. Given limitations of scope and my own personal belongings, I have chosen to explore the three main genres of mass entertainment mentioned by Chua above. Some others, such as radio, were also avenues for stardom, but in terms of influence the three genres chosen were more important in regard to the theme of multimedia stardom in the 1980s. The print media, fashion and discotheques, what I consider to be pertinent to Hong Kong’s multimedia stardom in the 1980s, are therefore included to highlight the synergies among these practices of pop culture, which, I believe, is one of the major reasons why ‘Hong Kong pop stars are icons with more aura than usual and with longer shadows after they leave the stage.’32 While these media are interrelated, however, they need to be discussed separately for the sake of lucidity. It should also to be noted that memory and oblivion can be considered as two sides of the same process. Due to my own limited personal belonging, there cannot but be something left out of my account. For example, there will not be any discussion on gender and sexuality (except some brief references in Chapter 5). I hope the personal belongings of some other authors will be written to capture other sides of the decade.

Decade Studies and Hong Kong 1980s Third, the focus on the 1980s may also be problematic. In his inspiring study of American culture in the 1980s, Graham Thompson began by admitting that [i]f there are several expressions that can help to try and distil the values of a particular historical moment – Zeitgeist, ‘spirit of the age,’ ‘sign of the times’ – none automatically coincides with the ten-year period known as the decade. Although potentially tempting as an object of study, the tendency to make decade-length periods in American cultural history cohere under catchy epithets now seems clumsy and inadequate.33

I agree with Thompson on his point about Stephen Paul Miller’s The Seventies Now: Culture as Surveillance, that ‘producing a narrative of a decade that seeks to establish overarching definitions and to analyze specific cultural 32 Lee, City between Worlds, p. 234. 33 Graham Thompson, American Culture in the 1980s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 1.

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products and cultural production itself in the light of these definitions is to mistake American narratives for totalizing narratives about America.’34 The study of a decade cannot but generate an umbrella, all-encompassing understanding of a period of time which has to be understood in relation to other decades, at least the ones preceding and following it. As for Hong Kong, the 1970s was a time when Hong Kong pop culture gathered momentum, and therefore its effects lasted well into the 1980s.35 In this sense, the 1980s did not begin in 1980. Having this in mind, the 1980s – ‘or more precisely, the cultural, economic social political upheavals that we commonly lump together and refer to as the 1980s’ – is seen in this book as ‘an era with a loose cultural, economic and political affinity’ that lasted more than ten years.36 Hong Kong’s 1980s is considered a historical period and not simply a decade, so to speak.37 On account of this, Fredric Jameson’s often-cited essay ‘Periodizing the 1960s’ can shed some important light on my argument. A staunch supporter of the critical practice of periodization, Jameson began by warning against overgeneralizing: ‘Nostalgic commemoration of the glories of the 60s or abject public confession of the decade’s many failures and missed opportunities are two errors which cannot be avoided by some middle path that threads its way in between.’38 What Jameson stressed regarding the 1960s as a period is that, to borrow Andrew Jones’ words in his study on Chinese pop music in the ‘global 1960s’, ‘the First World 1960s with which many of us are familiar were first set into motion by the “great movement” of Third World decolonization,’ and his point ‘is not solely to celebrate the creative energies unleashed by decolonization’: ‘In dialectical fashion, he shows instead how those forces had themselves been set into motion by the penetration of metropolitan capital into its agrarian hinterlands.’39 In this sense Jameson’s macrohistorical account 34 Thompson, American Culture in the 1980s, pp. 2–3. 35 Not unlike the ‘long 1970s’, which was seen by Andy Beckett’s When the Lights Went Out (London: Bloomsbury House, 2009) as lasting well into the 1980s (Thatcherism as the decade’s apotheosis); Sue Harper and Justin Smith, British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), p. 2. 36 Jeffrey T. Nealon, Post-Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 8–12. 37 Jeremy Varon, Michael S. Foley, and John McMillian, ‘Time Is an Ocean: The Past and Future of the Sixties,’ The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture 1(1) (2008): 1–7. 38 Fredric Jameson, ‘Periodizing the 60s,’ Social Text 9(10) (Spring/Summer 1984): 178. 39 Andrew Jones, Circuit Listening: Chinese Popular Music in the Global 1960s (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), pp. 8–9. ‘As “natives became human beings”, Jameson asserts, their struggles became the inspiration and the strategic blueprint for social movements and insurrections in the First World as well.’

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placed more emphasis on the 1960s as a historical period, during which the relations between the First and the Third Worlds were open to possibilities: ‘The simplest yet most universal formulation surely remains the widely shared feeling that in the 60s, for a time, everything was possible.’40 In the light of this, Hong Kong’s 1980s was an historical period in which Hong Kong identity, pop culture, everyday lives, and their interactions were still vigorously creative, especially when the city was clouded by uncertainties about its future after 1997. It is totally understandable to have different views on the impacts of a certain decade. For example, while Christopher Booker’s The Seventies: Portrait of a Decade considered the 1970s ‘the most important decade of the twentieth century’ because of the social, political, and cultural changes that occurred during these years, Andy Beckett’s When the Lights Went Out saw it as ‘the worst of time’. 41 Talking about the 1980s in the United States, Bob Batchelor and Scott Stoddart’s The 1980s borrowed Charles Dickens’s often-quoted ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times’ to describe the opposite views towards Ronald Reagan: a nostalgic 1950s view of good old America and the blind eye to difficult realities facing the United States. 42 What I am going to offer in this book is just my ‘personal belonging’, a kind of memoir of the pop culture of a place where I grew up. The 1980s continues to define my generation – as well as several other generations of Hong Kong people – and, perhaps more importantly, remains urgently within our identity today. That said, I neither intend nor expect my enunciation to be interpreted as an objective, comprehensive account of Hong Kong. Even though the target of the study is different, I share what Sunyoung Park underlined in her edited volume Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea: Today still, recollection of the 1980s in the South Korea is often associated with controversy, historical recrimination, and the inescapability of politics. It is a testament to the centrality of the 1980s that contemporary Koreans are in this way still trapped by, if not in, that decade. 43

40 Jameson, ‘Periodizing the 60s,’ p. 207. 41 Katy Shaw, ‘Affluence and Its Discontents: Working Class Literature in the 1960s and 1970s,’ in British Literature in Transition, 1960–1980: Flower Power, ed. Kate McLoughlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), p. 126. 42 Bob Batchelor and Scott Stoddart, The 1980s (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007), p. 3. 43 Sunyoung Park, ‘Introduction,’ in Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea, ed. Sunyoung Park (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019), p. 4.

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In dealing with this, Park tried ‘bringing new themes, new subjectivities, and new theoretical perspectives to the study of one of the most crucial eras in South Korean history’, as ‘scholarly treatments of the decade have tended to emphasize narratives of upheaval and liberation to the detriment of other complexities and contradictions.’44 Instead of new themes, new subjectivities, and new theoretical perspectives, it is the momentum of Hong Kong pop culture that this book will highlight. However, not unlike the case of South Korea, Hong Kong people are also still trapped by, if not in, the 1980s, and our understanding of the decade has also been overwhelmed by political controversies and economic developments. For other places in the world, the 1980s may mean the end of the cold war (or history, using Francis Fukayama’s term) or the emergence of social movements and a new globalized world order. 45 The 1980s was dominated by Reagan, Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The case of Hong Kong was similar but different, as it was also overwhelmed by politics and emerging global capitalism, which was aptly summarized by Chi-Kwan Mark: In 1979 Deng’s opening-up policy presented Hong Kong with another economic opportunity. Hong Kong entrepreneurs (particularly ‘patriotic’ ones) were quick to respond: in the long term, Hong Kong would play a pivotal role, as a trading partner, f inancier, and conduit of information and technology, in China’s integration into the global economy. In 1979, too, Britain’s political leadership changed, with the market-oriented Thatcher defeating the left-wing Callaghan. During the 1980s, the triangular relationship of Hong Kong, Britain, and China would be shaped by the twin processes of decolonization and economic globalization. 46

Deng Xiaoping was undoubtedly one of the most crucial political figures in Hong Kong in the 1980s, whose influence was exerted more on the future than the present back then. As noted above, London, Beijing, and the people in Hong Kong believed that the status quo was the best option for Hong Kong’s future. Notwithstanding, that ‘status quo’, the triangulation among Beijing, London, and Hong Kong – or the national, the global, and the local, respectively – did not remain unchanged. This act of ‘freezing’ Hong Kong 44 Park, ‘Introduction,’ p. 4. 45 See, for instance, Jonathan Davis, The Global 1980s: People, Power and Profit (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019). 46 Mark, ‘Crisis or Opportunity?’, p. 273

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(its policies as successful generic examples of a prosperous city), a false and damaging conclusion rightly criticized by Tai-lok Lui, failed to imagine a genuine future for Hong Kong.47 Hong Kong pop culture, owing probably to its nature, could not afford to remain unchanged. No other decade has been so powerfully transformative in the history of Hong Kong as the 1980s. The 1970s was undeniably a decade of hope and growth, but it was not until the 1980s that the cultural industries matured to the point where their endless imaginations could not be totally tamed by unabashed commercialization. By virtue of the strong momentum, the impacts of the pop culture in the 1980s lasted well into the 1990s. In this sense, the 1980s did not end in 1989. That said, it is not only unnecessary but even undesirable to draw simple generalizations as the trajectories of different kinds of Hong Kong pop culture are different. That 1980 and 1989 should not be seen as the beginning and end, respectively, of Hong Kong pop culture will be considered in the following chapters, so that the decade can be written in a more nuanced and complex manner.

More Than Nostalgia Looking back at a decade in the past will naturally prompt further questions about nostalgia. Nostalgia is often discussed within cultural studies, and Fredric Jameson’s account of the nostalgia is among the most frequently cited in its accounts. Jameson once saw the possibility of nostalgia as a source of inspiration for struggle against status quo beliefs, 48 but its necessary historicizing perspective was lost in a postmodern consumer society, in which the death of the subject made ‘stylistic innovation’ impossible, and ‘all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.’49 Recalling Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s in today’s context, this book argues that it is not necessary even if it were possible to ‘imitate dead styles.’ While Jameson has also considered ‘nostalgia-deco’ or ‘pastiche,’ I would rather jump to another often-cited notion with regard to a nuanced understanding of nostalgia. In The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym distinguished ‘restorative nostalgia’ 47 Tai-Lok Lui, Check, Please: Notes on Hong Kong by a Sociologist (enlarged edition; in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 118; Chu, Found in Transition, p. 193. 48 Fredric Jameson, ‘Walter Benjamin, or Nostalgia’, Salmagundi 10/11 (Fall 1969-Winter 1970): 52-68. 49 Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 (London and New York: Verso, 1998), p.57

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from ‘reflective nostalgia’: the former a nostos that ‘proposes to rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps’ whereas the latter an algia of ‘longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance.’50 Restorative memories tend to, as previously mentioned, romanticize the past, but ‘reflection suggests a new flexibility, not the reestablishment of stasis,’ in her own words, and therefore the focus ‘is not on recovery of what is perceived to be an absolute truth but on the meditation on history and passage of time.’51 What this book tries to explore is exactly the possible values of the 1980s could have for the present. At a time of heated social and political controversies, what Tom Vanderbilt calls ‘displaced nostalgia’ has become common in Hong Kong in recent years: ‘where one generation is nostalgic for the music and fashion of a period which passed before they were born.’52 While it is not unreasonable that a people can feel nostalgia for something they had not experienced, I think it is necessary to capture that experience to enable it to be described and analysed. ‘Nostalgia is most commonly understood as the sentiment of homesickness,’ as incisively stated by Rey Chow, ‘which may extend into a tendency to reminisce about old times or to romanticize what happened in the irretrievable past.’53 The next question to ask is: ‘Nostalgia as home, but what is home?’54 To tackle this issue, I think it would be helpful to reflect on the 1980s generation of multimedia stars in Hong Kong, who, according to Wing-fai Leung, ‘despite their divided public selves, held the individual and the collective together in the early 2000.’55 Should there be a nostalgia for a lost collective memory, I hope my ‘personal nostalgia’ here can shed some useful light on a preliminary answer to this question. In the context of Hong Kong pop culture, nostalgia was a common theme in the 1990s as a result of the ‘love at last sight’ of Hong Kong leading up to 1997, and in the words of Shu-mei Shih: ‘If the particular structure of nostalgia in the pre-1997 Hong Kong cultural imaginary can be tentatively called nostalgia for the colonial present amid fear of the impending future, the loss of this nostalgia suggests the inevitability of a different temporal 50 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p.41. 51 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p. 49. 52 Tom Vanderbilt, ‘The Nostalgia Gap.’ The Baffler, December 1993: https://thebaffler.com/ salvos/the-nostalgia-gap; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 53 Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p.49. 54 Janelle L. Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005), p.32. 55 Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong, p.124.

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consciousness in the post-97 cultural imaginary.’56 Nostalgia was closely related to Hong Kong pop culture back then, in which it was often used to invoke memories of the ‘good old days’ from the 1950s to the 1980s.57 Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, based on an exhibition organized by the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1994, is one of the most often-cited decade studies of Hong Kong culture. This event ‘addresses not only the issue of cultural identity but also focuses on the most important decade in the Hong Kong cultural history [sic],’ as made clear by the exhibition director Oscar Ho, ‘a period which is regarded by many as the formative years of a distinctive Hong Kong culture.’58 Turner’s introduction underlined an important paradigm shift in the 1960s: A decade later [the 1970s] it was evident that local lifestyle was displacing traditional cultural attachments as the basics of identity to the point where, in the mid-eighties the great majority of the population identified themselves as ‘Hong Kong people’ not ‘Chinese people’.59

This ‘local lifestyle’ offered a chance for the people of Hong Kong ‘to recognize themselves reflected in vernacular pop songs, newspapers and comics, new expressions of identity in English-medium school textbooks and in images purveyed by advertising, popular photography and television,’ and, perhaps more notably, ‘[w]ithout a public myth of origin…with no founding fathers or constitution, yet subject to competing foreign influences, language and values from the West, Hong Kong in the late sixties became (in Homi Bhabha’s useful phrase) a culture of translation rather than tradition.’60 If the 1960s, as argued by Turner, represented the coming of age of the ‘Hong Kong people’, the 1980s was a time when Hong Kong’s local lifestyle had been fully developed. As a culture of translation, Cantonese pop culture began to gain 56 Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p.141; for more details about the ‘love at last sight’ mentality of Hong Kong, refer to Abbas, Hong Kong, p.23. 57 Lok-yin Law, ‘Rethinking Popular Culture,’ in Hong Kong History: Themes in Global Perspective, eds. Man-kong Wong and Chi-Man Kwong (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), p.208. For a detailed account of nostalgia and post-nostalgic imagination in Hong Kong cinema, among others, refer to Vivian P.Y. Lee, Hong Kong Cinema since 1997: The Post-Nostalgic Imagination (Basingtoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 58 Oscar Ho, ‘People with No Faces,’ Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity. Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, eds. Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1994), p. xiii. 59 Turner, ‘1960s/1990,’ Hong Kong Sixties, p. 24. 60 Turner, ‘1960s/1990s,’ p. 22.

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momentum in the 1960s, accelerated in the 1970s, and reached full speed in the 1980s in Hong Kong. While Tai-lok Lui demystified the overromanticized 1970s (in regards to public policies and social development as a whole) in his The Story of Hong Kong in the 1970s Retold, Lui, Mathews, and Ma have argued that ‘as Hong Kong society developed in its own direction, so did its popular culture. A distinct Hong Kong local culture came into being in the mid-1970s.’61 This local culture further developed into a distinct lifestyle. Mathews, Ma, and Lui also made an important observation on the impact of China on Hong Kong, which was, however, utterly different from that in the new millennium: This era of the 1970s also saw the launching of economic reform in China, the restoration of direct train services between Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and a rapid increase in Hong Kong people’s visits to the mainland and their home-towns there. Hong Kong people in a sense ‘rediscovered the mainland,’ bearing a new sense of pride and superiority.62

This sense of pride and superiority, widely reproduced and disseminated by Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s, was fully justified, at least with respect to its impact on Asian pop. J-Pop (Japanese pop music) undoubtedly had a profound influence on Hong Kong, but at one point Hong Kong’s capitalist modernity, as incisively observed by Beng Huat Chua, was not only seen by Japanese fans of Hong Kong pop culture ‘as “contemporaneous” to Japan’s – “apparently similar” – but also as “different” and better – “retains vitality” – within high capitalist economic development’.63 Hong Kong pop culture played a role at the forefront of the transformation of Chinese pop culture in the 1980s, and it also became ‘the most “international” stage for stars from Taiwan and even from Southeast Asian countries to kick off their global stardom’.64 It is not exaggerating to say that Hong Kong pop culture had exerted a signif icant impact on the later rise of Asian pop cultures.

61 Tai-lok Lui, The Story of Hong Kong in the 1970s Retold; Mathews, Ma, and Lui, Hong Kong, China, pp. 36–37. 62 Mathews, Ma, and Lui, Hong Kong, China, p. 38. 63 Chua, Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture, p. 98. 64 Klavier J. Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture: Worlding Film, Television, and Pop Music (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 143; see also Kevin Latham, Pop Culture China!: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007), p. 21.

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Cultural Legacy/Momentum As convincingly noted by Stephen Teo in his account of Hong Kong cinema in the 1970s, ‘[t]hus by 1979…Cantonese was revived as a younger generation came onto the scene, aware of its own identity as Hong Kong filmmakers. Cantonese would be recognized throughout the 1980s as the lingua franca of Hong Kong cinema.’65 This was also applicable to other media cultures, including television and pop songs. Actually, there were creative synergies generated by the interactions among the three platforms, as will be shown in this book. Chapter 1 will begin with an account of Hong Kong’s television industry, which played a crucial role in the rise of Cantonese pop culture in Hong Kong in the 1970s. Free-to-air television provided a common platform for Hong Kong people to establish an imagined community in the 1970s, through which a new sensibility was introduced into society. Although there were more commercial calculations and constraints imposed on television production in the 1980s, Hong Kong’s television industry continued to thrive as a star-producing machine, at least up till the latter part of the decade. Moreover, thanks to the challenge posed to the market leader Television Broadcasts Limited in the early 1980s, Hong Kong’s television industry ushered in another, albeit short-lived, period of new sensibilities. Chapter 2 will deal with Hong Kong cinema by examining the evolution and transformation of the film industry in the 1980s, a golden decade in which Hong Kong cinema became a cult phenomenon hailed as the ‘Hollywood of the East’. Throughout the 1980s, Hong Kong cinema displayed, with the 1997 handover looming, a decadent glamor with unparalleled imagination. Hong Kong movie fans saw the emergence of different film stars, genres, styles, and, arguably most importantly, creativity famously described by David Bordwell as ‘all too extravagant, too gratuitously wild.’66 The 1980s also saw a surge in Hong Kong’s pop music scene at the same time. Having gathered enough momentum in the 1970s, Cantopop became firmly established as a pop music product for the consumption of the majority of the listening and viewing public in Hong Kong, as well as Chinese communities across the world. Hong Kong Cantopop, while unabashedly commercial, remained diversified and hybridized, possessed of creative agency. Chapter 3 will 65 Stephen Teo, ‘The 1970s: Movement and Transition,’ in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 108. 66 David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 1.

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examine how Cantopop turned into the trendsetter of Chinese pop music, becoming a multibillion-dollar pop industry acclaimed as ‘the Chinese cool’. To probe further into the lifestyle of the city in the 1980s, it is necessary to go into other dimensions of Hong Kong pop. The remaining chapters will then explore fashion culture, disco vogue, and print media. As noted above, although they are not genuinely ‘pop’ in the strict sense of the word, but being ‘chic’ they added glamour, which ‘is usually embodied in the lifestyles of the rich and famous,’67 to the decade through their close relation to Hong Kong’s multimedia stardom. When Hong Kong’s emergent lifestyle began to be integrated into the city’s popular media, the audience could feel the glamour of the multimedia stars. Lifestyle glamour here is not understood simply as hanging out with celebrities, which most, if not all, ordinary people do not have the luxury of enjoying. I could not afford designer labels at all, but I felt the perceived glamour of that lifestyle through the multimedia stars in both their work and daily lives, such as the clothes they wore and the discotheques where they hung out. In other words, when I watched their films or listened to their songs, I was not only consuming their products, but was also perceiving their lifestyle and glamour. Given the scope of this book, I have chosen to concentrate on representative examples in these areas. First of all, ‘the 1980s was a wonderful time for fashion,’68 said Joyce Ma, the founder of the legendary multibrand retailer Joyce Boutique. The proliferation of the spectacular images of its rising stars helped Hong Kong firmly established its role as a fashion trendsetter in the 1980s, which will be examined in Chapter 4. Not only did stars like Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui become style icons who dictated trends, a generation of Hong Kong fashion designers also came to the fore, proving that Hong Kong had developed into a centre of fashionable chic. World-class designer brands entered the Hong Kong market, and a host of high-end fashion labels were introduced by Joyce Ma, whose boutique expanded from a department store counter in the early 1970s to a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1990. All dressed up, stars and celebrities had someplace to go. Chapter 5 will move on to the thriving disco scene in Hong Kong in the 1980s, which provided excellent venues for them ‘to see and to be seen’. Besides the dancing that would continue after 1997 according to Deng Xiaoping, 67 Saara Maria Ratilainen, ‘Business for Pleasure: Elite Women in the Russian Popular Media,’ in Suvi Salmenniemi (ed.), Rethinking Class in Russia (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), p.48. 68 Cited from Arthur Tam, ‘The History of Hong Kong Fashion,’ TimeOut Hong Kong, 10 September 2014: https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/shopping/history-of-hong-kong-fashion; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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disco was seen as another kind of dancing that shaped another dimension of the city’s nightlife in the 1980s. After the signature Disco Disco opened its door to trendy celebrities in the now-world-famous Lan Kwai Fong in December 1978, an epidemic of disco fever spread across the territory. This chapter will also examine Hong Kong’s disco culture in the light of Cantonese disco songs and Hong Kong stars/celebrities. Among the many popular print media in Hong Kong, City Magazine was considered an outlier that showcased fashion trends, celebrities, talk of the town, and even philosophy and literature. Co-founders Koon-Chung Chan and Peter Dunn, among others, also wrote pop fiction that exhibited a new metropolitan sensibility of the emerging class of yuppies. Chapter 6 will discuss how this magazine defined the fashionable and cosmopolitan taste of the city throughout the 1980s and beyond. Ironically, Koon-Chung Chan later argued that of Hong Kong had conjured up a myth of success in the 1980s, which became a trend and a misconception that interacted in a reciprocal manner. When the trend and the misconception became unsustainable later, Hong Kong and its pop culture fell into a downward trajectory. The Epilogue will then informally wrap up previous discussions in relation to the statement raised at the beginning of this book: ‘We’ll always have Hong Kong.’ By highlighting its pop and chic, this cultural memoir of the city will hopefully point toward the Hong Kong at least some of us will always have. ‘Are we dead yet?’ ‘No. This is just the beginning.’ This was my response to the repeated claims about the end/death of Hong Kong.69 If the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong in July 2020 was not an exception, which I believe it was not, the past will not end here. I do share the feelings of Rey Chow: [Hong Kong,] a city in which I grew up, is a particular kind of passageway, which was created by an accident of history but which nonetheless persists from the nineteenth century to the present [the 1990s] with a uniqueness and resilience that is otherwise unknown in world history.70

Although its uniqueness and resilience may be waning in the new millennium as the passageway has changed in a new world order reconfigured by the rise of China, it is ‘just the beginning’ for a reconsideration of that uniqueness and resilience. ‘As a decade, the 1980s greatly influenced a 69 Chu, Found in Transition, pp. 24–26. 70 Rey Chow, Ethics after Idealism: Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 168

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number of areas in pop culture, including in the delivery and content of television, music, sports, and movies.’71 This is about American pop culture, but it is also applicable to the situation of Hong Kong. However, as previously noted, Hong Kong has generated a culture of translation rather than tradition. Therefore, this book puts the emphasis more on ‘momentum’ rather than ‘legacy’ – not some success formulae to be replicated. The importance of momentum has been discussed at length in Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China, but for the sake of clarity a few details are repeated here. I borrowed David Wang’s term shi to refer to ‘momentum,’ which he used to analyze the characteristics of Sinophone literature. Cited from Liu Xie’s classic The Literary Heart and the Carving of the Dragon (completed in approximately 501–502 ad), shi prompts a kind of disposition and propensity, a kind of momentum (translation and emphasis mine): ‘pointing toward a force before or in the midst of the effect, and even a series of incessant changes.’72 I also borrowed E. K. Tan’s words when he used the concept of the translational in physics to further unpack what I mean by ‘momentum’: ‘and to construct new subjectivities through the interconnectedness of people’; as per his argument, ‘energy is generated upon the contact of bodies shifting from inertia to movement.’73 The generation of energy from inertia to movement and turn it into power is precisely the momentum (shi) of Hong Kong pop culture. Tracking the momentum of Hong Kong culture, I argued, allows its creative hybridizations to present themselves. More crucially, Hong Kong has accumulated an exclusive experience of cultural hybridizations that cannot be emulated by other cities.74 Hong Kong pop culture picked up mass and unplanned momentum in the 1970s. Its multimedia stardom provided energy to its acceleration at full throttle in the 1980s in Asia and even across the world. I have argued elsewhere that the later decline of Hong Kong pop culture could 71 Thomas Harrison, Pop Goes the Decade: The Eighties (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2017), p. 260. 72 David Der-wei Wang王德威, ‘The Politics of “Root,” the Poetics of “Propensity”: Sinophone Discourse and Chinese Literature’ 根的政治, 勢的詩學: 華語論述與中國文學 (in Chinese). Modern Chinese Literature (December 2013): 15; see also Chu, Found in Transition, pp.77-78. 73 E. K. Tan, ‘Rethinking Overseas Chinese Studies and Chinese Diaspora Studies,’ Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities, 35(July 2013), 23. 74 In Found in Transition, I use three projects of Hong Kong literature and/or culture as examples. By tracing their path of cultural hybridizations, how the particular histories of Hong Kong have provided a distinctive juncture for the city’s culture to begin to pick up momentum is discussed; refer to Chu, Found in Transition, pp.78-85.

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be attributed to the waning of hybrid cosmopolitanism.75 Although the 1980s did leave some culturally significant legacies, I think it makes little sense to simply try to replicate the success formula according to these legacies in a completely different context. The changes since the 1980s are too complex to be discussed here. Simply put, when the unprecedented ‘one country two systems’ framework was rolled out in the 1980s, no one would be able to foresee the unprecedented and remarkably swift rise of China, which has changed the global mediascape. To make the most of the glamourous decade of Hong Kong pop culture, it would be necessary to trace how it acquired full momentum back then, as ‘what made Hong Kong unique was its distinctive experience of cultural translations, in which disposition, propensity, and momentum can be articulated but not easily censored.’76 Revisiting the 1980s, a decade that defined not just Hong Kong but also Chinese and even Asian pop, will shed important light on the accumulated momentum of Hong Kong pop culture’s full maturity.

Hong Kong Studies as Method Even though the study of Hong Kong culture had long been marginalized in the academy, there were some important early Hong Kong studies that broke important ground.77 Researches, however, were scattered in different departments at the periphery of the academy, and Hong Kong cultural studies still needed a strong theoretical thrust as a field. As the 1997 handover turned the limelight onto this first-ever special administrative region in the unprecedented ‘one country two systems’ framework, much interest in Hong Kong was generated globally. The study of Hong Kong culture as a field emerged in the 1990s, and continued to develop when it was institutionalized by, among others, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The University of Hong Kong and Lingnan University. Academic programmes, departments, conferences and publications began to appear, changing the situation of bicrolage of Hong Kong cultural studies. All in all, Hong Kong cultural studies in the 1990s was ‘a tendency across disciplines, rather than a discipline 75 Chu, Found in Transition, p.198. 76 Chu, Found in Transition, p.199. 77 For greater details of these studies, refer to Elizabeth Sinn’s keynote address ‘Reflections on Some Early Moments in Hong Kong Studies,’ First Annual Meeting of the Society for Hong Kong Studies, Hong Kong, 22 June 2019.

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itself’78 – to borrow Toby Miller’s description of cultural studies. After Hong Kong’s reversion to China, there were significant changes in its ‘in-betweenness’ caused by the rise of China and its soft power. It was widely believed that the success formula of Hong Kong could be ‘frozen’ – to borrow Tai-lok Lui’s term79 – and keeping the status quo would guarantee the long-term prosperity of the city. After the handover, both China and the West wanted to retain Hong Kong’s status quo as a ‘capital of free-wheeling capital,’ and thus spawned a myth of status quo that ‘froze’ a Hong Kong dominated by the so-called ‘Central District Values’ that hold profit and development in esteem.80 It was only until recently that this ‘myth of status quo’ was shattered by social movements. When Hong Kong captured the world’s attention again after the umbrella movement in which protestors striving for genuine universal suffrage blocked some of the main roads for 79 days, Hong Kong culture further captured the attention of global researchers. The transformation of Hong Kong cultural studies in this context would be an important topic as Hong Kong is the place where the impact of the rise of China is most acutely felt. Hong Kong has been undergoing drastic changes in recent years, especially after the social unrest in 2019 and the subsequent pandemic that exerted devastating impacts on not just the city but also the world. Now that the historical context has changed completely, it is necessary to point toward new imaginaries by re-examining the development of Hong Kong. Toward this end, its pop culture in the 1980s is one of the important topics to be (re)considered. This book is a modest but distinctive attempt to provide an in-depth study of the ‘golden decade’ of Hong Kong pop culture. When I explored the possibility of ‘Hong Kong studies as method’, I cited Ge Zhaoguang’s remark on Yoshimi Takeuchi’s ‘Asia as method’ to illustrate what I mean by ‘as method’: ‘as method’ should be understood as ‘a reconsideration of the object of study in its particular historical milieu by placing it back to its context and casting off the layers of accumulated

78 Toby Miller, ‘What It Is and What It Isn’t: Introducing…Cultural Studies,’ in Toby Miller (ed.), A Companion to Cultural Studies (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p.1. 79 Tai-Lok Lui, Check, Please: Notes on Hong Kong by a Sociologist (enlarged edition; in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007), 118; see also Tai-lok Lui, ‘A Missing Page in the Grand Plan of “One Country, Two Systems”: Regional Integration and Its Challenges to Post-1997 Hong Kong,’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16(3) (2015): 396-409; Chu, Found in Transition, p.193. 80 Yiu-Wai Chu, Main Melody Films: Hong Kong Directors in Mainland China (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), p.229.

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meta-concepts and thinking’.81 Having witnessed and experienced the rise of Hong Kong pop culture to unprecedented height in the 1980s, I feel obliged to place it back to its context through a story about my own personal belongings which are not framed simply by theories and political agenda. For international readers, it serves to provide an insider story from the point of view of a native Hong Konger. More than backward-looking, this can throw new light on cultural production in relation to the national, the local and the global, which will in turn generate a renewed understanding on the reconfigured triangulation and entanglements faced by Hong Kong pop culture in the new era of Greater Bay Area – Beijing’s plan to link nine cities in Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macau to develop a megalopolis in Southern China. While this book engages with Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s, which was a period of paradigm shift, it can also point new directions for future studies in related areas. For example, it will be useful for understanding the paradigm shift of Mainland-Hong Kong cross-border collaborations in the cultural realm, in which researchers and postgraduate students in related fields, such as cultural policy and creative industries, would be interested. Those who have related expertise could also make more connections to the larger constellations of politics and economy. As such, it will also be of interest to scholars conducting specialized researches in the field of cultural studies, China Studies and Asian studies. The analysis in the book will also have theoretical implications for researchers and students in related areas such as inter-Asia cultural studies and postcolonial studies. Having a theoretical thrust, the following guide to Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s would also cater to the interests of general readers. As the chapters are different ‘slices’ of Hong Kong pop culture, they can be read separately. Furthermore, thanks to the increasing attention to Hong Kong among academics in recent years, the book will be of interest to general pop culture fans, especially those interested in Asian pop culture, around the world. To conclude this Introduction, I would like to summarize the importance of Hong Kong studies by referring to the workshop ‘State of Hong Kong Studies’ hosted by the Hong Kong Studies Initiative at the University of British Columbia in June 2023. The call for paper was very thoughtfully and insightfully written, which I shall take the liberty of citing at length: 81 Ge Zhaoguang葛兆光, ‘Premodern, Thinking from Asia and China as Method: Reinterpreting Some Historical Viewpoints of Professor Yūzō Mizoguchi’ 前近代、亞洲出發思考與作為方法 的中國：重新理解溝口雄三教授的一些歷史觀點 (in Chinese), Reflexion, 20(2012): 38.

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In a more ideal world, there need not be a field of ‘Hong Kong studies.’ That world may still have problems aplenty, but the ‘proper’ scale for humanistic or social scientific inquiries would be hemispheric, global, or even planetary. But we do not live even remotely close to that world, and the injustices we need to wrestle with are certainly not limited to those that could be easily placed under the category of North-South divide, disinformation, or human-induced climate change. So we do have good reasons to go back to the basics and to try to understand from the ground up where we have come from and where we might be heading. So, yes, this is a slightly long-winded way of making the case that it remains important and useful that we take as our unit of analysis a geographiccum-cultural space—not as an isolated, self-evident object of study but as a phenomenon to be made sense of both on its own terms and in broader translocal, transnational, as well as global contexts. To do so is to take seriously the diversity of human experiences and to deepen our understanding of the transformations as well as connectedness of the modern world.82

82 Cited from ‘Call for Papers,’ State of Hong Kong Studies – A Workshop, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver: https://hksi.ubc.ca/workshop2023/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

1

Televising Pop: New Stars and Renewed Sensibilities The spread of television represented the birth of an art form which introduced a new sensibility into Hong Kong society.1

Abstract This chapter traces the development of Hong Kong’s television industry in the 1980s. Free-to-air television provided a common platform for Hong Kong people to establish an imagined community in the 1970s, through which a new sensibility was introduced into society. Thanks to the challenge posed to the market leader Television Broadcasts Limited in the early 1980s, Hong Kong’s television industry ushered in another, albeit short-lived, period of new sensibilities. Although there were more commercial calculations and constraints imposed on television production in this decade, Hong Kong’s television industry continued to thrive as a star-producing machine, at least up till the latter part of the decade. Keywords: TV New Wave, popular tastes, youth idols, star-making, Five Tigers

A New Kind of Collective Sensibility While there have been studies that contested ‘the notion that television has a powerful identity-conferring ability’, Eric Kit-wai Ma has noted in his research on Hong Kong television that ‘in the light of the Hong Kong 1 James Kung and Yueai Zhang, ‘Hong Kong Cinema and Television in the 1970s: A Perspective,’ in A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies, eds. Cheuk-To Li, Michael Lam, and Mo-Ling Leung (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1984), p. 14.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_CH01

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case, these studies can only reach the conclusion that television is not an effective agency for realizing cultural imperatives when imposed from above.’2 Given the distinctive history of Hong Kong, those studies may not be totally applicable. As Ma further argued: Due to the deficiency of the Hong Kong polity as a representative structure, and also because of other social factors, television culture plays a central role in identity formation in post-war Hong Kong. Before the mid-1980s, the newly emergent indigenous culture of Hong Kong was closely related to the development of the local television industry.3

Although the history of Hong Kong television can be traced back to the 1950s, when Rediffusion Television (RTV) – operated by Rediffusion (Hong Kong) Limited, a subsidiary of Rediffusion in the UK – launched paytelevision service in 1957, Hong Kong audiences did not have free-to-air television until the Television Broadcasting Company (TVB) launched it in 1967. During its early years, TVB relied heavily on foreign-purchased dramas until the localization of its productions was gradually completed in the mid-1970s. Meanwhile, RTV turned free-to-air in April 1973, and Commercial Television (CTV), the third free-to-air television station in Hong Kong, was founded later in 1975. The Hong Kong television industry changed ‘from a monopoly to a tripartite dominion’. 4 It is therefore reasonable to say that the 1970s was the ‘golden decade’ of Hong Kong television. Notwithstanding this, as I will discuss below, this was conceivably true from the perspective of industry development. Pertaining to multimedia stardom, however, the 1980s was the decade in which Hong Kong people saw the rise of stars of different styles, who had different target audiences of different age groups. In the 1970s, free-to-air television provided a common platform for Hong Kong people to develop a strong sense of belonging. More and more Hong Kong people who were born and grew up in Hong Kong could afford to consume Cantonese pop culture, and a sense of Hong Kong cultural identity

2 Eric Kit-wai Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 18. 3 Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong, p. 18. 4 Pak Tong Cheuk, ‘Television in the 70s: Its State of Being,’ in Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After, ed. Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1999), p. 28.

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began to emerge,5 which was further strengthened by increasing locally produced Cantonese television programmes in this special context: With reference to the fact that Hong Kong people in the late 1960s and early 1970s did not have a firm cultural bearing, it was not surprising that the fast-growing television medium had quickly become a cradle of collective identity and a cultural resource that unified popular tastes.6

The unification of popular tastes generated a new kind of collective sensibility among Hong Kong audiences. According to James Kung and Zhang Yueai, ‘the increased popularity of television in the early 1970s radically transformed the importance of popular, previously dominant forms such as Cantonese films and radio programmes,’ and, more notably, television as an emergent art form introduced a new sensibility into Hong Kong society: ‘Because of it, the society was more aware of itself and its own popular culture.’7 As the 1980s is the focal point of this book, let me just use two examples to illustrate my own understanding of this new sensibility. Firstly, television changed Hong Kong people’s perception of their city. Eric Ma borrowed Benedict Anderson’s often-cited notion of imagined community to argue that the ‘imaginary and symbolic nature of identity boundaries renders television an influential symbolic source of identity formation’: ‘The people of Hong Kong “saw” Hong Kong for the first time through the daily broadcast of television news.’8 I still remember very clearly the first time I ‘saw’ Hong Kong’s Cross-Harbour Tunnel on television, when renowned television actress Lydia Shum took the first ceremonial ride through the tunnel on its opening day on 2 August 1972. Just six years old back then, I was totally amazed by the image on the small television set. The second example is the live news coverage at the scene of the 1974 Po Sang Bank robbery in Mong Kok (which means ‘crowded corner’ in Chinese). This was among the biggest bank robbery cases in Hong Kong history, and the live broadcast of events was ‘a classic example of sensational television news’.9 Many people, 5 Yiu-Wai Chu, Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018), p. 110. 6 Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong, p. 29. 7 Kung and Zhang, ‘Hong Kong Cinema and Television in the 1970s,’ p. 14. 8 Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong, p. 30. ‘As argued by Anderson, the boundaries of a community exist in the minds of their beholders; collectivity is necessarily imagined since members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members. Yet in the mind of each person, there is the image of their community.’ 9 Kung and Zhang, ‘Hong Kong Cinema and Television in the 1970s,’ p. 16.

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including me, sat down in front of the television set to watch this first-ever live broadcasting of news event for many hours (the broadcast lasted almost 20 hours). Seeing the image of their community, Hong Kong people started developing a strong, albeit imagined, sense of belonging, which later made them feel that they were very different from Mainland Chinese. Besides the sense of ‘reality’ in news coverage, the ‘hyper-reality’ presented in television programmes also mattered. For the first time, I ‘saw’ the lives as well as the conflicts of the local upper class in Hotel (aka Raging Tide), a soap opera of 129 episodes that premiered in November 1976. In addition to the ‘local Cantonese-based cultural identity that distinguishe[d] the island from mainland China’,10 local entertainers were successfully promoted by television producers in Hong Kong to become pop culture icons. These measures created a sense of social solidarity among Hong Kong citizens, and the function of television as a pop culture trendsetter was equally important. The influence of television began to decline in the late 1980s, and by the new millennium, TVB was generally unwelcomed by young audiences. I do understand that it is unimaginable for youths to think that watching television was chic back in the 1970s, but yes, television – especially the market leader TVB – was fashionable at that time. In a special coverage published in 2008, Ming Pao Weekly, a leading entertainment and lifestyle magazine in Hong Kong, featured the topic ‘Worshipping the Trendy TV Dramas of the 1970s’, which spoke volumes for TV’s status as a trendsetter back then. As succinctly pointed out by the editors of this special topic, ‘if Hong Kong people were considered chic in the 1970s, the major reason could be attributed to television.’11 City Magazine, a trendy urban culture magazine (refer to Chapter 6 for an elaborated account), actually published a special feature on television in 1977, using Hotel as a symbol of the penetrating influence of TVB.12 In the same year, City Magazine published the featured topic ‘Don’t Forget: Kids Will Grow Up’, in which they introduced young rising stars-to-be in different media, and one of their picks was Danny Chan, who not only hit the Cantopop industry two years later with his debut album First Love but also subsequently became the most well-liked fashion icon among the younger generation of Hong Kong fans.13 10 Shirley Fedorak, Pop Culture: The Culture of Everyday Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), p. 30. 11 Yuk-Ka Cheung 張育嘉 and Wai-Chun Choi 蔡蔚駿, ‘Worshipping the Trendy TV Dramas of the 1970s’ (in Chinese), Ming Pao Weekly, Vol. 2080 (September 2008). 12 Refer to ‘Special Issue on Television’ (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 10 (June 1977). 13 Refer to ‘Danny Chan Will Certainly Be Immensely Popular’ 陳百強一定會—紅紅紅 (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 16 (December 1977), p. 22.

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There is no denying that the 1970s was the golden decade of TVB in terms of creativity.14 The mid to late 1970s witnessed a large number of highly innovative and creative endeavours by, among others, those who later triggered the Hong Kong New Wave in the film sector, such as Patrick Tam who practiced his cine-modernism on Hong Kong’s television screens, including but not limited to his ground-breaking ‘Kam-fung Miu’ (1976) episode in TVB’s Seven Women series, which paid homage to Jean-Luc Godard. Having no idea whatsoever of the French New Wave, many Hong Kong television fans, myself included, were totally amazed by the way Tam presented consumerist decadence in a capitalist society with elaborate shots of the shelves of a supermarket.15 Unfortunately, as a result of its role as the overwhelming market leader, especially after the closing down of the short-lived free-to-air CTV in August 1978, the ‘TV New Wave’ subsided and TVB’s interest in creativity gradually waned into a low tide.

Raising a Thousand Sails: TV New Wave 2.0 Just before the end of the 1970s, fortunately, RTV successfully put some pressure on the market leader with its extremely well-received martial arts drama Reincarnated (1979), prompting TVB to change its prime-time programming by replacing episodic dramas with Chor Lau Heung (1979), a star-studded martial arts drama starring Adam Cheng, Liza Wang, and Angie Chiu. Additionally, a number of actors as well as producers moved to RTV after the shutting down of CTV, which contributed a fresh impetus to the underdog in the television market. This set the stage for RTV’s ‘Raising a Thousand Sails’ campaign launched in 1980 (see details below), which totally rocked not just the industry but also television fans in Hong Kong. Hong Kong television in the 1980s was a decade in which there were only two free television broadcasting service providers, with 14 As underlined by Pak Tong Cheuk, who had worked for TVB and later became a film director, ‘[t]he late 1970s was the liveliest period in history of Hong Kong television, and was also the peak period for social development in Hong Kong’; see Pak Tong Cheuk, Hong Kong New Wave Cinema (1978–2000) (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2008), p. 38. 15 Refer to Esther C. M. Yau, ‘Urban Nomads, Exilic Reflections: The Cine-modernism of Patrick Tam,’ in Hong Kong Screenscapes: From the New Wave to the Digital Frontier, eds. Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and See-Kam Tan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), pp. 75–92; for an inspiring account of the character, psychology, and maturation of ‘New Wave TV’, see Stephen Teo, ‘Hong Kong’s New Wave in Retrospect,’ in Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After, ed. Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1999), pp. 19–23.

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TVB the predominant market leader. As I will argue in the next section, RTV’s challenge in the early 1980s, notwithstanding a short-lasting one, enabled the television industry to reclaim some of its lost creativity. In this sense, although the TV New Wave was triggered in the 1970s, after the challenge posed to market leader TVB in the early 1980s, Hong Kong television ushered in another, albeit short-lived, period of new sensibilities. Additionally, although there were more commercial calculations and constraints imposed upon Hong Kong television productions in the 1980s, the industry continued to thrive as a star-producing machine, at least up till the latter part of the decade. This chapter will analyse how the Hong Kong television industry helped make stars such as Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, Andy Lau, and Tony Chiu-Wai Leung (hereafter Tony Leung in this chapter; there are two famous Hong Kong actors called Tony Leung: Tony Chiu-Wai Leung and Tony Ka-Fai Leung), who later enchanted fans in not only Hong Kong but also across the world. According to a survey conducted by the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong in 1984, 90.2% of television viewers had watched drama series during the survey period.16 Drama series were therefore the main battlefield for viewer ratings in the Hong Kong television industry at that time. In September 1980, RTV launched a new campaign titled ‘Raising a Thousand Sails’, featuring three dramas during prime time: Fatherland at seven p.m., Tears in a Sandstorm at eight p.m., and Love Story 1980 at nine p.m. TVB was showing Five Easy Pieces at seven p.m., but Fatherland snatched an unanticipated rating of 40%, which was totally unacceptable to TVB. Although Five Easy Pieces recorded a higher rating than Fatherland, TVB decided to cut it short and replace it with the last five episodes of The Bund II, followed by Liza Wang’s King of Gambler. TVB regained lost ground before long, but RTV had already made an unprecedented breakthrough.17 Among the three RTV dramas that premiered in the ‘Raising a Thousand Sails’ campaign, Tears in a Sandstorm was less successful in terms of both popularity and creativity. It was basically another mediocre martial arts drama, especially when compared with the previous genre-redef ining Reincarnated. The most successful drama was Fatherland, which effectively, to borrow the term from RTV’s promotional campaign, ‘uprooted’ Five 16 Cited from Klavier J. Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture: Worlding Film, Television, and Pop Music (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 261. The television and sound broadcasting survey was conducted among 5,047 citizens (aged fifteen and above) regarding their experiences and views on television broadcasting service providers. 17 Yiu-Wai Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), p. 72.

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Easy Pieces. In a sense, Fatherland was not significantly different from other soap operas, but its subject matter – the fate of diasporic Chinese – touched the nerves of Hong Kong audiences at a time when London had started negotiating Hong Kong’s future with Beijing. As for innovativeness, Love Story 1980 was a bolder project. Although puppy love stories were not new to Hong Kong television, beginning with the classic Teenager (1976; starring Louis Castro), TVB and its actors and actresses had grown mature and lost that strong and powerful overflow of puppy love feelings. RTV’s Love Story 1980 triggered a new wave of youth stories, through which new vigour was injected into a television industry that was starting to show signs of age. As much as it revitalized a genre for Hong Kong television, it made new room for the making of youth idols in these dramas (see below). The eponymous theme song of Love Story 1980 was sung by Ruth Tsang. Although she was not an idol singer, the song was very well received among young fans because she was a popular disc jockey for trendy Commercial Radio 2. That the song was created by Michael Lai (melody) and Jimmy Lo (lyrics) is also worth noting. The duo composed many RTV theme songs comparable to those written by Joseph Koo and James Wong for TVB, providing alternative sensibilities to television and Cantopop fans who were looking for something different. I can still remember I kept switching channels for the sake of the TV programmes as well as the theme songs. In 1980, RTV also released Heartbreak at Long Beach, Love Story 1980 II, and Make a Wish in September, November, and December, respectively. Although the dramas were not as ground-breaking as Love Story 1980, they continued to accumulate popularity for RTV. In 1981, RTV released another very popular teen love story, The Trio, featuring two young idol disc jockeys, Ken Choi and Paul Chung, and the young actress Patricia Chong, who made her film debut in Po-Chih Leong’s teen romantic comedy No Big Deal (1980) and subsequently gave an impressive performance in Dennis Yu’s New Wave crime thriller The Beasts (1980). Not only did The Trio make an impact on young fans, its theme song, sung by Ken Choi, also topped pop charts, which proved that there was much potential in cross-media synergies and young idols’ stardom. TVB gradually felt the pressure and therefore decided to follow suit after RTV’s teen school drama IQ 100 premiered in the summer of 1981. To compete with IQ 100, TVB invited young idol actress Jing-Jing Yung (aka Mary Jean Reimer) to star in the teen love story My Little Darling. However, perhaps by virtue of the cast of IQ 100 – the ‘trio’ plus another idol disc jockey, Blanche Tang – and RTV’s proven track record in producing this TV genre, IQ 100 was more successful than My Little Darling, unsettling Hong Kong television audiences’

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‘habitual viewing’ and thus TVB’s ‘inertia ratings’. Youth love stories became a battlefield in the latter half of 1981, and the impetus of RTV continued with Four Couples and Agency 24 in August and September, respectively, both of which featured Leslie Cheung, who was yet to become a Hong Kong legend. It should be noted that actually Clifford Choi’s teen romance Encore (1980) had already created a vogue of young idols in the film sector, through which the cast – Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung, Paul Chung, and Jing-Jing Yung – had acquired increasing cogency and vigor. Trying to replicate the success of Encore, TVB invited Danny Chan and Jing-Jing Yung to partner again in Breakthrough, which premiered in November 1981. However, owing to personal reasons, Yung was soon replaced by Teresa Mo (Yung was scripted to die in an accident in the story). This was one of the reasons that made Breakthrough unconvincing in the end. It was evident from the huge difference in viewer ratings (during prime time) between TVB and RTV/Asia Television (ATV) that TVB was the overwhelming market leader throughout the 1980s18: Year

TVB Jade

ATV Golden/Home

1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

45 46 44 43 41 45 39 36 35 31

11 7 8 8 8 4 4 8 9 10

However, the impact made by RTV on the television industry in Hong Kong, at least in the early 1980s, was undervalued. Other than the attention to Fatherland and its sequels, as well as the young love stories mentioned above, some other new genres were also experimented with in television during and after the ‘Raising a Thousand Sails’ campaign. In the TV New Wave in the late 1970s, some young directors, who later moved to the film sector and triggered the phenomenal Hong Kong New

18 Eric Kit-wai Ma, The War Era of Hong Kong Television 電視戰國時代 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Subculture, 1992), p. 19.

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Wave, experimented with innovative genres in television.19 The Seven Women series mentioned above is a convenient example. After young talents such as Patrick Tam, Ann Hui, and Tsui Hark left the television sector, the TV New Wave ebbed. RTV’s project of challenging TVB’s market leader role generated a 2.0 version of TV New Wave – the scale of which was much smaller than the previous one – in the early 1980s. There were indeed not as many talented producers and directors in the 2.0 version, but its genre diversity and innovativeness had made a significant impact on the television industry. 1981 was considered an important year in the history of Hong Kong television. RTV released a series of highly experimental genres that year, including I Accuse, Newark File, Coma, and Angel in Crisis. Unlike traditional police and gangster TV dramas, I Accuse exposed the dark side of the police force, also touching on sensitive issues customarily forbidden on TV in Hong Kong, such as cross-dressing, exhibitionism, and sadomasochism. Tackling the structural problems of the healthcare system, Coma was unprecedentedly bold in its presentation of medical issues, from medical malpractice, collusion, and cover-ups to the sale of human organs. Angel in Crisis was a crime thriller, but similar to the two previous examples, it took up a scandalous social issue related to food safety. What struck me – a fifteen-year-old student back then – most of all, however, was the political suspense drama Newark File. Politics has long been taboo in media settings in Hong Kong. Conspiracy thrillers were not rare, but Newark File was the only one that centred around the assassination of a Legislative Councillor (modelled on a real figure) who had taken a proactive role in pleading and fighting for her people. As hinted in the literal translation of the Chinese title – Nuwa Operation – the political murder was allegorized as the act of the Goddess Nuwa in ancient Chinese mythology, who refined stones of five colours to mend the crack on the wall of Heaven. The Chinese name of the prosecutor in the Attorney General’s Chamber, who was in charge of the investigation of this case, was Chu-Shek Kong – ‘Shek’ means stone in Chinese. After a series of murders of possible witnesses, Kong was killed towards the end – echoing the Nuwa mythology that a stone was used to mend the crack – to cover up a political conspiracy. In the story, Kong also mentioned Icarus, the character from Greek mythology who died because he flew too close to the sun, a symbol of truth. On top of the star-studded cast (Paul Chu, Candice Yu, and Bruce Leung, and a pleasantly surprising cameo appearance by Anita Mui before she won the 1st New Talent Singing Contest held by TVB) and spectacular 19 Yiu-Wai Chu 朱耀偉, The (Post)Youthhood of Hong Kong Pop Culture 香港流行文化的(後) 青春歲月 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Chunghwa, 2019), pp. 36–44.

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action of the crime thriller, the political allegory made Newark File stand out from other TV dramas. It is also pertinent to note that the story of this 1981 thriller was set in 1986, showing that the efforts of Newark File could be perceived as a precursory attempt to imagine the future of the Sino-British relationship in a time of uncertainty. The story of course did not really happen in reality, but the audaciously creative project had already caught Hong Kong fans in wide-eyed amazement. It was not only unprecedented but also unrepeated so far in the history of Hong Kong television

Youth Idols and Stardom If TVB made important contributions to the television sector (and later the film industry) by nurturing talented directors during the TV New Wave in the 1970s, RTV’s ground-breaking programmes did really ‘raise a thousand sails’ – from mainstream martial arts dramas and young romance stories to alternative topics – during the TV New Wave 2.0 in the early 1980s. (These topics resonated with those taken up by Hong Kong New Wave directors in the film sector.) This also pushed TVB to try something different, although there was only a limited number of programmes, for example, Roller Coaster, about lower-class youngsters, and Angels and Devils in 1982 and 1983, respectively. The former featured an up and rising Felix Wong, who later became one of TVB’s Five Tigers, and the latter had the legendary Yun-Fat Chow as well as Tony Leung, another member of the Five Tigers. The sensibility spawned by TVB in the 1970s had been renewed by the energies of new young stars as well as genres. It was a pity that RTV’s fierce challenge was only short-term, although it was not armed with only a short-term plan of action or a limited set of immediate initiatives. History is made up of different kinds of ironies. Perhaps due to the departure of managing director Steve Huang in 1981 (some of RTV’s production staff left with him) and the subsequent sale of the company to Deacon Chiu in 1982, who rebranded RTV into ATV in September of that year, the production strategy of the new ATV gradually changed. After the passing of a thousand sails, it was another era of television productions, and TVB continued to dominate the market. Given the very short-lived impact of the TV New Wave 2.0, I would argue that the Hong Kong television industry in the 1980s played a more important role in another aspect of this pop decade: star-making. In order to catch the fancy of audiences, the teen dramas briefly mentioned in the previous section needed charismatic young stars. There were favoured television stars in the 1970s indeed, but most of them, such as Adam

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Cheng, Paul Chu, Liza Wang, Gigi Wong, and Louise Lee, could barely be considered young idols. Even though Yun-Fat Chow and Cora Miao, who stole the limelight in Hotel, were still young back then, they were not really young idols. In view of the expanding market and diversification of genres, the marketing strategies in the television industry was shifting to target younger audiences. Teen dramas provided a new discursive space and television became a platform on which creative synergies were generated, which facilitated the making of young idols. Cantopop singers (such as Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung) and radio disc jockeys (such as Ken Choi and Paul Chung) gained quick fame through their participation in television programmes which had a broader fan base. First of all, while Danny Chan focused mainly on singing throughout his entertainment career, he did make his television debut in the TVB situation comedy Sweet Gal back in 1976. His cameo performance did not win him much attention though. In September 1977, Danny Chan had the chance to display his singing talent on television, winning second runner-up in the Hong Kong Popular Song Contest hosted by TVB. As noted above, in December 1977, City Magazine predicted that Danny Chan would be a new rising star, which proved to be far-sighted. After he released his debut album First Love and starred in the teen film Encore, he was so adored by young fans that TVB invited him to lead their Breakthrough in response to the highly popular teen dramas of RTV. My sense is that Danny Chan was talented in singing much more than acting, and he was in fact not too interested in television and films. After Breakthrough, he quit television and sparkled like a diamond in the music industry. However, television nonetheless allowed him to first catch the spotlight and later broaden his fan base. For example, one of the songs in Breakthrough, ‘Ripples’, became one of his most well-known classic love songs. I will come back to Danny Chan in later chapters. Here, I would like to attend a bit more to his arch-rival, Leslie Cheung. As one of the most widely adored megastars in Hong Kong entertainment history, the legendary Leslie Cheung kicked off his entertainment career at RTV. Similar to Danny Chan, he also first caught Hong Kong fans’ attention in a singing contest on television. In May 1977, Cheung won first runner-up with Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ on RTV’s Asian Music Contest. He then signed with RTV, making a number of appearances in RTV dramas while releasing his debut English single I Like Dreaming in 1977 and the subsequent album Daydreaming in 1978. Unlike Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung did not have the chance to target primarily at the teen audience. Although he had displayed his acting talents in a variety of roles in TV dramas, from the soap opera Crocodile’s Tears (1978) to the martial arts drama Tale of Cleansing

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Flowers and Rinsing Swords (1979), he was not particularly well received among fans. One of the reasons was probably his leading role in a soft porn film based on the Chinese literary classic Erotic Dream of the Red Chamber (1978). He was misled into taking this project, which had an immensely adverse impact on his image. His first Cantopop album, Lover’s Arrow (all except one English song, ‘Thank You’, are in Cantonese), was released in 1979, but it was totally eclipsed by Danny Chan’s First Love. As recollected by Leslie Cheung himself, his performance at a concert held at the Shatin Racecourse in August 1980 was the lowest point in his career. Having shaved his head for his role in the RTV Qing Dynasty martial arts drama Imperial Heroes II, he decided to wear a hat on stage. After his performance he took off his hat and threw it from the stage as a souvenir to his fans, but he was completely devastated when it was thrown back on stage.20 He continued to work hard in RTV and Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) dramas, and he won accolades for the RTHK drama The Woman of My Family, which won the Gold Plaque Award at the 16th Chicago International Film & Television Festival (1980) and the Silver Award at the 1st Commonwealth Film & Television Awards (1980). The craze of youth TV dramas in the early 1980s provided an opportunity for him to let his charisma shine through, allowing him to gather momentum with his performance in Four Couples and Agency 24 and New Wave youth films such as Nomad (1982) and Teenage Dreamers (1982) (see Chapter 2). In 1982, he made a career-bending decision to leave RTV and sign with Capital Artists, a record company closely affiliated with TVB. He had more opportunities in the music as well as film sectors and in the leading role in his TVB debut Once Upon an Ordinary Girl (1984), in which he fancied countless fans with the grace and elegance of a young gentleman, to borrow James Wong’s term.21 Shortly after the premiere of this TVB drama, he released the now legendary Cantopop album Leslie in July 1984, which completely changed not only his career but also the history of Hong Kong pop culture. ‘Many of the entry routes into the entertainment industry have traditionally had a strong connection to local television,’ as perceptively pointed out by Wing-Fai Leung in her study of Hong Kong stardom, and ‘this was a unique feature of multimedia stardom in Hong Kong.’22 The beginning of the career 20 Chu, The (Post)Youthhood of Hong Kong Pop Culture, p. 79. 21 James Wong, ‘Forever Remembering CASH Music Ambassador Leslie Cheung’ 永遠懷念 CASH音樂大使張國榮 (in Chinese), CASHFLOW, Vol. 41 (June 2003). 22 Wing-Fai Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong: Image, Performance and Identity (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 41.

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of another legendary star in Hong Kong, Anita Mui, was also closely related to television. Interestingly, the Cantopop diva had appeared in a number of RTV dramas as an extra before she won the 1st New Talent Singing Awards held by TVB in 1982, including the above-mentioned Newark File, Four Couples, and Agency 24. While Mui directed her attention mostly to singing after signing with Capital Artists, she sang a number of widespread theme songs of TVB dramas, from local TVB productions to imported Japanese dramas dubbed into Cantonese – Dr. Slump, Akai Giwaku (The Crimson Doubt), and Akai Shougeki (The Crimson Shock). Anita Mui played a leading role only once, in the television drama Summer Kisses Winter Tears (1984). TVB tailor-made this soap opera for her, in which she became a songstress after her family went bankrupt. Mui had many chances to sing in this musical melodrama, and a total of six theme songs were included on her album Anita Mui (Homecoming) (1985). The TV theme songs were not as well received as the major hit of the album, ‘Homecoming’, the theme song of renowned New Wave director Ho Yim’s film of the same title, and ‘Dream Embrace’, a cover version of George Michael’s masterpiece ‘Careless Whisper’.23 However, the style of these TV theme songs was significantly different from the two major hits, allowing Mui to impress her fans with her versatile singing style as well as image (she was later widely known as the ‘Ever-changing Queen’). The TV drama also provided the chance for Mui to show her acting talents, which not even her dedicated fans could see in the RTV dramas. In other words, television was a springboard for Mui to ‘leap into the spotlight’ – to borrow the title of one of her albums – and further develop her stardom in the film sector. Subsequently, she became one of the brightest stars in the history of Hong Kong pop music as well as cinema. I will come back to her in the following chapters. In addition to Anita Mui, there were some other female stars in Hong Kong who commenced their acting career in the 1980s and acquired stardom in television not only in Hong Kong but also in Chinese communities across the world, such as Maggie Cheung, Cherie Chung, Rosamund Kwan, and Carina Lau: Among 33 female stars who were active in 2003, twelve had been beauty pageant contestants, nine came from advertising or modelling, six had completed television acting classes or came from performing arts college, three were discovered through song contests and three were reported to have simply been ‘discovered’.24 23 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, p. 81. 24 Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong, p. 41.

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Besides the television acting class graduates, the contestants from beauty pageants and song contests were also closely related to TVB and RTV. Maggie Cheung won the first runner-up and Miss Photogenic awards at TVB’s Miss Hong Kong Pageant in 1983, after which she became a popular leading actress with three TVB dramas, Rainbow Round My Shoulder (1984), Police Cadet ’84 (1984), and The Fallen Family (1985; she partnered with Leslie Cheung in this period martial arts drama). She then shifted her emphasis to the film sector and was crowned Best Actress five times at the Hong Kong Film Awards between 1990 and 2001, which is still a record. Cherie Chung was a different case. She entered the entertainment industry through TVB’s Miss Hong Kong Pageant in 1979, in which she ranked fourth. Although she only appeared in TVB’s variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight (aka EYT) and the RTHK television drama Floating Clouds directed by Clara Law in 1981, she later transformed into one of the most successful female leads in Hong Kong cinema. While Carina Lau and Rosamund Kwan kicked off their careers at TVB and RTV, respectively, they subsequently became very well-liked stars through their films. That said, it is safe to conclude that besides divas who had already acquired their fame in their home city, such as Taiwanese stars Brigitte Lin, Sylvia Chang, and Joey Wang, many important Hong Kong actresses in the 1980s were in one way or another related to the television industry. Male actors were actually a similar case. Back in 1976, Yun-Fat Chow made his mark as the leading actor in the soap opera Hotel. He continued to attract acclaimed publicity in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1979), and The Bund (1980) made him the most the most likeable television actor in the territory.25 In the 1980s, however, Chow turned most of his attention to the film sector. A contract dissension turned him into a kind of ‘frozen’ actor at TVB, and later when he was allowed to appear on TVB after the dispute, as Lin Feng noted in her study of Yun-Fat Chow’s stardom, his status as a top leading actor at the studio ‘was quickly replaced by new actors (the ‘TVB Five Tigers’ in particular) in the mid-1980s’.26 According to the Hong Kong Tatler, a luxury lifestyle magazine, the most iconic Hong Kong actors and actresses were Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Stephen Chow, Yun-Fat Chow, and Andy Lau.27 Besides the 25 Chu, Found in Transition, pp. 42–43. 26 Lin Feng, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), p. 28. 27 Helen Yu, ‘The Most Iconic Hong Kong Actors and Actresses—And All the Classic Local Movies You Should Know About,’ Hong Kong Tatler, 13 February 2020: https://hk.asiatatler.com/ life/best-hong-kong-actors-actresses-classic-movies; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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icons discussed above, the other three were TVB acting class graduates, and two of them – Tony Leung and Andy Lau – were widely known as part of the Five Tigers. Although Stephen Chow set off on his acting venture at TVB in the 1980s, most of his roles were cameos until the 1989 martial arts comedy The Final Combat. In this sense, he largely belonged to the 1990s. I will therefore move on to examine TVB’s Five Tigers, especially Andy Lau and Tony Leung, in the next section.

The Rise of the Five Tigers The Five Tigers, the most well-known group of TV actors in the 1980s, all graduated from TVB’s acting class: Kent Tong in the 8th (1979), Felix Wong and Michael Miu in the 9th (1980), Andy Lau in the 10th (1981), and Tony Leung in the 11th class (1982). The Chinese title of The Rise and Fall of a Stand-in (1984), the literal translation of which was ‘Five Tiger Generals’, may have been a bit misleading because the term did not come from the TVB drama that premiered in 1984. Only Michael Miu and Kent Tong starred in this story about stuntmen. The name was reportedly coined by TVB in a programme in the annual TVB jamboree show – the ‘All Star Challenge’ – in 1983: ‘Thereafter, it became a popular term to refer to five TVB contracted actors who attended this show.’28 After that, the Five Tigers played major roles in a variety of TVB dramas. Actually, before the show, they had all become well-known male leads in their signature works, such as Kent Tong’s Demi-Gods & Semi-Devils (1982), Felix Wong’s The Lonely Hunter (1981), Michael Miu’s You Only Live Twice (1982), Andy Lau’s The Emissary (1982), and Tony Leung’s Beyond the Rose Garden (1983). The Five Tigers not just showed TVB’s magical power to nurture rising stars; the group also became a synonym of the golden era of television. As mentioned above, TVB gradually lost its creative momentum towards the end of the 1970s, and in response to RTV’s challenge, it did try to introduce new genres. As for innovativeness, however, it could no longer regain its vigour in the mid-1970s. It was its matured mechanism and market leader role in the industry that made the difference. Its star-making machinery had already been set in full motion in the 1980s. Admittedly, this machinery stifled creative energy, but the 28 Feng, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom, p. 32; for a clip of the performance of the Five Tigers in ‘All Star Challenge’, refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8BPY5gexvE, and for a clip of Michael Miu’s account of the background of the composition of the Five Tigers, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHLoRp6GJ0g; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Five Tigers as a group was a very good example of how unexpected creative synergies might be generated by different collaborations of these stars, of which Andy Lau and Tony Leung were two excellent representatives. While the impacts of Kent Tong, Michael Miu, and Felix Wong were mainly restricted to the television sector, Andy Lau and Tony Leung crossed media platforms and became superstars in Chinese communities across the world. Andy Lau is perhaps the only cultural icon who can be discussed equally extensively in television, cinema, and pop music. Although other Hong Kong pop icons like Yun-Fat Chow and Tony Leung did release song albums, they did not spend much time and effort on their singing careers. Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui were undoubtedly megastars, but their achievements in the television sector could not be put on a par with those of their films and pop songs. Andy Lau has been a genuinely ‘enduring multimedia star’ since the 1980s,29 as shrewdly noted by Wing-Fai Leung. ‘Lau became popular through television series such as The Emissary and a period martial arts drama, The Duke of Mount Deer [1984; starring Tony Leung as well],’ and Leung also rightly underscored Lau’s outstanding performance and image in the episode ‘See You on the Other Side’ (1981) in the RTHK television drama series Hong Kong Hong Kong.30 This young gangster image, however, was not very suitable for TVB dramas, arguably, except for The Emissary in which he played an undercover cop. Lau had to wait until his later films, such as Kar-Wai Wong’s As Tears Go By (1988) and Benny Chan’s Moment of Romance (1990), to fully develop this image. After The Duke of Mount Deer, a martial arts drama adapted from Jin Yong’s novel, Lau continued to make some TVB dramas, but he gradually shifted his emphasis to the film sector, which was believed to be more profitable. Owing to a contract dispute, he was banned from taking new jobs at TVB for more than 400 days in 1985 and 1986, and after the dispute was settled, he turned his attention to films and, later, pop songs. (Lau’s last TVB drama was Leo and Sirius of Tin Long Kip in 1987, which was released only in overseas markets at that time; it was not until May 2012 that it was finally shown locally in Hong Kong.) Nevertheless, television was the platform through which Andy Lau became a star. His most memorable TVB performance was in The Return of the Condor Heroes (1983), a martial arts drama adapted from the masterpiece by Jin Yong. Playing the role of the protagonist Yang Guo, who had a controversial romantic relationship with his master Little Dragon Maiden (Xiaolongnu), Andy Lau fascinated countless audiences, both male and female. As Yang Guo, Andy Lau was 29 Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong, p. 97. 30 Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong, p. 97.

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so beloved that he was named one of the five most unforgettable male characters by TVB in 1999. Without the popularity accumulated during his TVB days, Andy Lau would not have become one of the ‘Four Heavenly Kings’ of Cantopop and one of the most influential Chinese actors. Andy Lau ‘has evolved into an icon of Chineseness’, as Anthony Fung has perceptively argued: ‘His story illustrates how the entertainment industry in Hong Kong has managed to accommodate the politically oriented pop culture in China and, more generally, how the state colludes with the market in China.’31 In this sense, he continued to be a multimedia star in the 1990s, becoming even more widely acclaimed in the age of China in the new millennium. Its outstanding Hong Kong box office and, perhaps more critically, its adaptation by Martin Scorsese in the Oscar-winning film The Departed (2006) made Infernal Affairs (2002) the most well-known collaboration between Andy Lau and Tony Leung. The history of their collaboration can be traced back to television. The chemistry between the two top television actors had won The Duke of Mount Deer fan adoration as well as critical acclaim. Actually, both had appeared in the RTHK television drama series Crossroad (1983), about youngsters, albeit in different episodes: Andy Lau in ‘Decision’ and Tony Leung in ‘Astray’ (by the way, two other superstars had also appeared in this series – Leslie Cheung in ‘Woman at 33’ and Stephen Chow in ‘Pocket Money’). This was proof that alternative television programmes (unlike other commercial TV stations, RTHK is the public broadcaster of Hong Kong) provided a cradle for young actors, in which they could accumulate acting experience not available in mainstream television dramas. As the youngest among the Five Tigers, Tony Leung rose to fame a bit later than the others. He played a supporting role in the TVB dramas The Emissary and Solider of Fortune (1982; starring Felix Wong and Kent Tong). In 1983, he partnered with Yun-Fat Chow, who was still among the most distinguished television actors in Hong Kong back then, in Angels and Devils and became the male lead in Beyond the Rose Garden. 1984 was Leung’s career-defining year. His performance in two TVB dramas of very different styles – The Duke of Mount Deer and Police Cadet ’84 – was extremely well received by Hong Kong audiences. After that, similar to Andy Lau, he gradually moved over to the film sector but still starred in at least one major TVB drama each year, including two sequels, Police Cadet ’85 (1985) and Police Cadet 1988 (which premiered in November 1987), and three martial 31 Anthony Fung, ‘Marketing Popular Culture in China: Andy Lau as a Pan-Chinese Icon,’ in Chinese Media, Global Contexts, ed. Chin-Chuan Lee (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 252.

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arts dramas, The New Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre (1986), The Duel of the Twins (1988), and Where Heroes Dare (1989). I do not intend to go into the details of these dramas here.32 Instead, they are mentioned as examples to show how Tony Leung’s increased fame gained on television facilitated his development in the film sector. After some lacklustre performances, Leung’s potential shone through in two 1986 films, Derek Yee’s The Lunatics (1986) and Stanley Kwan’s Love unto Wastes (1986). In the subsequent year, his outstanding performance in Derek Yee’s People’s Hero (1987) won him the Best Supporting Actor Award at the 7th Hong Kong Awards ceremony (1988). By virtue of his outstanding performance and popularity accumulated through television dramas, Leung had the chance to star in Taiwanese director Hsiaohsien Hou’s epic masterpiece A City of Sadness (1989). While he continued to appear in commercial films, Leung collaborated with auteurs, such as John Woo in his Bullet in the Head (1990). Leung’s a-little-more-than-two-minute solo appearance in the ‘famously enigmatic final scene’ – to quote The Hollywood Reporter33 – of buffing his nails and combing his hair in Kar-Wai Wong’s classic Days of Being Wild (in the film he appears only in that scene) was simply amazing, displaying fully the dazzling charisma of a great actor. It was therefore totally understandable when Tony Leung waved goodbye to TVB and threw himself into his film career in the 1990s. Thereafter, he became the most frequent partner of Kar-Wai Wong, and through their collaborations Leung was widely acclaimed as one of the greatest actors in Chinese cinema, selected by CNN as one of the three Hong Kong actors in ‘Asia’s 25 greatest actors of all time’ in 2010 (the other two were Leslie Cheung and Josephine Siao).34 Tony Leung’s international fame was given a further boost by his Hollywood film debut Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), in which he successfully transformed a problematic character into one of Marvel’s most compelling, multi-dimensional villains. All in all, the Five Tigers were symbols of the (last) glorious days of TVB as well as the Hong Kong television industry. The only TVB programme with all Five Tigers was Yang’s Saga (1985), which was star-studded with almost all TVB star actors and actresses. This was actually just a five-episode 32 For a detailed account of Tony Leung’s TVB career, refer to Mark Gallagher, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (London: BFI/Palgrave, 2018), Chapter 2. 33 Boyd van Hoeij, ‘How Days of Being Wild Gave Birth to the Wong Kar Wai We Know,’ The Hollywood Reporter, 12 March 2017: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/filmart-howdays-being-wild-gave-birth-wong-kar-wai-we-know-985410; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 34 La Carmina, ‘Asia’s 25 Greatest Actors of All Time,’ CNN Travel, 4 March 2010: http:// travel.cnn.com/explorations/none/asias-25-greatest-actors-all-time-223697/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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television drama in celebration of TVB’s anniversary (the first so-called ‘anniversary drama’). Seen as a response to their rival, whose 1st ATV Miss Asia Pageant won much attention, Yang’s Saga was an excellent example of the star-making ability of TVB in its heyday. By the late 1980s, some of the Five Tigers and other TVB stars, such as Maggie Cheung, had turned to the film sector. While Andy Lau and Tony Leung performed brightly in Hong Kong cinema, Felix Wong was still one of the most well-known actors in TVB dramas, such as Looking Back in Anger (1989), and Kent Tong and Michael Miu were seen less frequently on television (they became active again in the new millennium though). The next project in which all Five Tigers starred was the crime thriller film The Tigers (1991) directed by Eric Tsang. The film was seen as symbolically marking the end of the Hong Kong television era dominated by TVB, as the Five Tigers had grown up and some shone even brighter in the film industry, which was proliferating in the early 1990s.

Globalization of Hong Kong Television While its major target audience was local in the 1970s, TVB had prepared to lure the new mainland market shortly before the beginning of the 1980s. In 1979, its signature variety show EYT ‘crossed the border and performed in the Chinese New Year celebrative night in Guangzhou—for the first time after red China’s ten-year Cultural Revolution’.35 This breakthrough was seen as the prelude of Hong Kong television’s expansion into other regions (Hong Kong was still under British rule back then). In his account of the globalization of Hong Kong television, Michael Curtin underlined TVB’s shift of emphasis on its own drama productions in the mid-1970s, and this ‘dovetailed with TVB’s growing syndication business, which became so profitable that in 1982 the company set up TVB International (TVBI), devoted solely to the distribution of English- and Chinese-language programming’.36 Klavier Wang’s inspiring account of the ‘worlding’ of Hong Kong television also discussed how TVB went global beginning in the 1980s, and since then its sales performance has been mainly generated in the following geographical areas: Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States and Canada, Australia, Europe, Mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore.37 According 35 Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture, p. 302. 36 Michael Curtin, Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 110–111. 37 Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture, p. 304.

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to the figures provided by Eric Ma, 1,000 hours out of the 2,000 to 3,000 hours of TVB programmes were exported to over 25 countries in the 1980s.38 At first this was indeed an effective channel through which to generate more revenues from an enlarged market. Because ‘Hong Kong television programmes ha[d] become a part of the programming menu of broadcasters in Taiwan, China and Southeast Asian countries,’39 they also enhanced the influence of Hong Kong pop culture in overseas Chinese communities. For example, many overseas Chinese learned Cantonese because of Hong Kong television: ‘the main linguistic influence on Sinophone Chinese Malaysians is Hong Kong television shows and movies, a Hong Kong-style Cantonese with distinct divergences from the Cantonese spoken in the Guangdong.’40 Through advances in technology, moreover, it was easier for overseas audiences to watch Hong Kong television programmes: With the advent of video cassette recorders in the late 1980s, the Hong Kong television stations have started exporting video programmes. They are particularly popular among overseas Chinese in South-East Asia and North America. 41

However, with the benefit of hindsight, the globalization of Hong Kong television in the 1980s was a double-edged sword. It did draw new audiences and revenues but at the expense of local sensitivity. Eric Ma identified ‘the inadequacy of the unrestrained market system on broadcasting’ since the mid-1980s: After a decade of popularity, ratings and profits started to slide and TVB has been operating in less favourable financial conditions since then. The

38 Eric Kit-wai Ma, 1996, Television and Identity 電視與文化認同 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Breakthrough, 1996), p. 41. 39 Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong, p. 37. Moreover, ‘Hong Kong television dramas dominated mainland Chinese market. In the 1980s, TVB exported 1,000 hours of its 2,000–3,000 hours of annual production (mostly drama serials) to 25 countries.’ See also Chris Pomery, ‘Hong Kong,’ in Video World Wide: An International Study, ed. Manuel Alvarado (London: UNESCO, 1988); Joseph Man Chan, ‘Television Development in Greater China: Structure, Exports, and Market Formation,’ in New Patterns in Global Television: Peripheral Vision, ed. John Sinclair et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 126–160. 40 Shu-mei Shih, ‘Against Diaspora: The Sinophone as Places of Cultural Production,’ in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, eds. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013) p. 32. 41 Chan, ‘Television Development in Greater China,’ p. 139.

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hostile television environment means that more commercial calculations and constraints are imposed upon television production. 42

While the popularity and influence of Hong Kong television, especially TVB, in overseas markets increased, the local market was undergoing significant changes precipitated largely by the changing social structure: Once a city with an expansive Chinese middle class, Hong Kong was by the 1980s becoming a segmented society in which the myth of upward mobility was fading. What had been a truly mass medium during the early 1970s was increasingly becoming a service for older, less affluent audiences. Television was no longer at the centre of everyday life. Gone were the days when it gave Hong Kongers a pretext for sharing dreams, aspirations, and emotions. Instead, wealthy and younger citizens began to seek out alternative modes of entertainment, such as movie videos, karaoke and video games. 43

After the late 1980s, high growth in the local market slowed down, and the attractiveness of Hong Kong television overseas and the emigration of Hong Kong people after the Sino-British Joint Declaration helped generate significant revenues from overseas programme sales. Therefore, TVB paid less attention to ‘social relevancy and focus[ed] more on the basic entertainment value of their products’, and as a result of this market structure change, ‘the social integration effects of television ha[d] been reduced.’44 At the same time, ‘TVB’s efforts in carving out a niche in [the] overseas market only reached modest success’ without the habitual viewing of loyal audiences. 45 This was undeniably a time of the globalization of Hong Kong television, but as a consequence of the priority of commercialism over creativity, its influence could not but gradually diminish in the long run. And the introduction of satellite and cable television in the early 1990s made ‘the operations environment even more hostile’, as succinctly summed up by Eric Ma: ‘The pressure of commercialism has a mainstreaming effect on 42 Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong, p. 39. 43 Curtin, Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience, p. 111. 44 Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong, p. 40. 45 ‘In Hong Kong’s domestic market, TVB heavily relied on cheap and efficient production which is mostly commercially driven, while many Hong Kong people got used to an inertia viewing habit and remained loyal to TVB. Outside Hong Kong, however, TVB was like a fish out of water, failing to meet the market diversity, especially facing the growing heteroglossia in Sinophone community around the world.’ Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture, p. 305.

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the television industry, which opts for stereotypes, proven formulas, and dominant ideologies.’46 ‘The business expansion of TVB into an international conglomerate [was] much less optimistic than its cultural impact,’47 as rightly noted by Klavier Wang. I would go further to argue that it was not Hong Kong television’s business model but its stars that had exerted a sustained impact in the age of globalization. Most if not all of the above-mentioned stars who had won fame for themselves in the television sector continued to be influential in the reconfigured mediascape in the age of globalization – the 1990s and beyond. In regard to global influence, another person who was related to Hong Kong stardom is worth mentioning here: Kar-Wai Wong. He is not only a star director himself but also has the magic to make stars. Among the 100 greatest foreign-language films selected by BBC Culture in 2018, a quarter of the films were East Asian: eleven made in Japan, six in China, four in Taiwan, three in Hong Kong, and one in South Korea. 48 All three Hong Kong films were Kar-Wai Wong’s: 9. In the Mood for Love (2000); 56. Chungking Express (1994); and 71. Happy Together (1997). He is undoubtedly the most global Hong Kong director, whose distinctive film characteristics successfully crossed cultural gaps to inspire foreign audiences. Kar-Wai Wong is of course well known both locally and globally, but his ‘two capacities as assistant director and scriptwriter during his TVB period’ under the tutelage of Kwok-Leung Kam has not been fully acknowledged.49 In an interview, Wong made it clear that he had taken a course for production designers and directors offered by TVB because ‘most of the talents in the Hong Kong film industry came from TV.’50 Among the first batch of graduates of TVB’s first directing training class in 1981, Wong became the assistant director of Yu-On Tsui who worked under Kam. Tsui was the director of the sixth to the tenth episodes of Five Easy Pieces masterminded by Kam, who was well known for creativity. The melodrama, which was different in style from other TVB soap operas, was cut short as a result of the unexpected success of RTV’s Fatherland. Viewed 46 Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong, pp. 40–41. 47 Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture, p. 305. 48 Estudio Santa Rita, ‘The 100 Greatest Foreign-language Films,’ BBC Culture, 29 October 2018: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20181029-the-100-greatest-foreign-language-films; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 49 Chi-ting Chen, ‘Wong Works in Television,’ in A Companion to Wong Kar-wai, ed. Martha P. Nochimson (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), p. 562; see also Stephen Teo, Wong Kar-wai: Auteur of Time (London: British Film Institute, 2005), p. 13. 50 Cited from Peter Brunette, Wong Kar-wai (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), p. 114.

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in this way, this could hardly be considered a successful project. However, as sensitively observed by Chi-ting Chen, ‘Five Easy Pieces provided Wong with an early opportunity to wax nostalgic and probe into the private and collective memories of the Hong Kong 1960s, fertile ground for his 1960s trilogy Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046.’51 Moreover, the swift rise of China and its cultural industries in the new millennium enabled the mainland television market to grow at an unprecedented speed. It therefore needed many creative personnel familiar with television production. Not unlike the financial market, mainland cultural industries, including the television industry, have been greatly inspired by Hong Kong.52 Given the enormous potential of the mainland market, the major trend of Hong Kong television has shifted from globalization to mainlandization. Although TVB’s vogue has been declining since the 1990s, it continues to exert its influence by exporting actors as well as creative personnel to the television industry in Mainland China. In 1998, veteran Hong Kong television producer and director Kwok-Lap Li, who had worked at RTV and TVB, tested the waters of the mainland market by co-founding Chinese Entertainment Tianjin Limited. Based on the success of Li’s new renditions of martial arts classics, such as Handsome Siblings (1998) and The Book and the Sword (2002), television producers, directors, and actors and actresses became well accepted by mainland audiences. For example, veteran TVB directors such as Kok-Leung Kuk, Sze-Yue Lau, and Samson Lai blew up mainland television with their ‘hot-selling dramas’ in the new millennium. Kok-Leung Kuk was one of the executive directors of TVB martial arts classics, including The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1983), The Return of the Condor Heroes, and The Duke of Mount Deer, and he co-directed a highly rated mainland version of The Legend of the Condor Heroes in 2003. Moreover, the director of Princess Agents (2017), the first mainland television drama to reach a hit rate of more than 40 billion in a week, Gam-Yuen Ng, had also worked at TVB and RTV in the 1980s and 1990s. Yuk-Fan Lam, the first Hong Kong graduate from the Department of Directing at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, is another example. She returned to Hong Kong after graduation in 1989 to develop her career at TVB in the 1990s. After a short spell in Singapore in 1997, Lam moved to the mainland and soon adapted to the emerging market, catching the limelight with Treading on Thin Ice (2002). The enormous success of The Journey of Flower (2005) made her a top-tier director with a Midas touch. Lam’s signature 51 Chen, ‘Wong Works in Television,’ p. 564; for more details on Wong’s television work, refer to pp. 562–568. 52 Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture, pp. 322–324.

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costume fantasy dramas Wu Xin The Monster Killer (2015) and Eternal Love (2016) were the most favoured ones in the mainland television industry. In the end, these Hong Kong television directors successfully translated their experience accumulated in Hong Kong to the mainland.53 Furthermore, it was totally expected that Hong Kong producers and directors would opt to use Hong Kong actors and actresses who understood their production style. While established TV and film stars such as Raymond Lam and Charmaine Sheh left TVB for greener pastures, there were also actors and actresses not so well received in Hong Kong who became stars in the mainland. William Chan, Kenny Kwan, Hawick Lau, Sammul Chan, Wallace Chung, Michelle Ye, and Niki Chow, for example, acquired great fame, fortune, and success after they went north.

Death of Hong Kong TV? As per the results of the Hong Kong Entertainment Poll conducted by the University of Hong Kong in 2004, the ten most-liked local film actors in Hong Kong were as follows: 1. Yun-fat Chow; 2. Andy Lau; 3. Tony Leung; 4. Maggie Cheung; 5. Jackie Chan; 6. Anthony (Chau-sang) Wong; 7. Stephen Chow; 8. Sammi Cheng; 9. Miriam Yeung; and 10. Cecilia Cheung. ‘All of the top seven except Jackie Chan, who was also the oldest, came from or were connected to local television and started working in the entertainment industry in the 1970s or 1980s.’54 This spoke volumes for the importance of television as an important medium of stardom back in those decades. It also functioned as a platform on which cross-media synergies could be created: Television is linked to other forms of popular culture, such as popular music and movies, which owe their popularity to their exposure on television. It has been a practice for Hong Kong to feature its popular singers and actors in variety shows, drama series, music programs on television, and in movies; [in other words,] Hong Kong’s television-linked popular culture, such as movies and pop songs, relates positively to audience access to Hong Kong television.55 53 Refer to more details in Yiu-Wai Chu, ‘Hong Kong (in China) Studies: Hong Kong Popular Culture as Example,’ Global Media and China 5(2) (June 2020): 109–123. 54 Leung, Multimedia Stardom in Hong Kong, p. 49. 55 Joseph Man Chan, ‘When Capitalist and Socialists Television Meet: The Impact of Hong Kong TV on Guangzhou Residents,’ in Power, Money, and Media: Communication Patterns and

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Hence, six of the seven most-liked local actors were closely related to television at the beginning of their careers, and as evidenced by the above list, the 1980s was the decade in which most of them (five, four at TVB and one at ATV) embarked on their showbiz careers. The magical power of television was closely related to its huge fan base: ‘In the early 80s, the highest rating a Jade programme could get was 56 and the average rating for Jade’s prime time programmes was 46 points’ (each rating represents 1% of the Hong Kong population above four years old, equivalent to approximately 56,000 viewers at that time), and, as pointedly noted by Paul S. N. Lee, wireless television was the only service available to Hong Kong people up to the late 1980s.56 Without cable and satellite television, the Hong Kong television audience was still not segmented, and wireless television, mainly TVB, was still a common mass medium. TVB still made stars like Stephen Chow, although it was no longer as magical as the early 1980s when it had the Midas touch when it came to star-making. ‘In the 1990s, however, if a programme could get more than 32 points, it was already a hit.’57 Apparently, the impact of free television was waning in the 1990s. Some of the reasons included the rise of other media such as satellite television and changes in the education background of the audiences mentioned above, but it was undeniable that diminishing creativity was also a major one. ‘In the late 1980s, it was already reported that people’s fondness toward television dramas was decreasing,’ as Klavier Wang pointed out, and ‘[f]ar from reality, ridiculous, boring, lack of innovation and over-entertaining were the major comments from the public.’58 This triggered discussions about ‘the death of television,’ which was the title of a book published in 1990.59 In the chapter about Hong Kong media and telecommunications in The Other Hong Kong Report 1991, it was clearly noted that TVB Jade had been relying on its success formula throughout the years: Bureaucratic Control in Cultural China, ed. Chin-Chuan Lee (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000), pp. 261, 264. 56 Paul S. N. Lee, ‘Foreign Television in Hong Kong: Little Watched but Favorably Received,’ in TV Without Borders: Asia Speaks Out, ed. Anura Goonasekera and Paul S. N. Lee (Singapore: Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, 1998), p. 143. 57 Paul S. N. Lee, ‘Television in the Formation of Civil Society: The Role of a Non-controversial Public Space in Hong Kong,’ in Television, Regulation and Civil Society in Asia, ed. Philip Kitley (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), p. 194. 58 Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture, p. 271. 59 Wah-Shan Chou周華山, The Death of Television 電視已死 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore, 1990).

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It is extremely sad to find that, after yet another decade (and 200 more drama serials screened), TVB Jade still presents its viewers every evening with two strips of dramas with almost identical story lines about the leading protagonists suddenly discovering who their real parents were, with the rest of the ‘palm-reading’ story line (in slightly different configurations) to follow. Television is no longer the omnipotent integrator of society it used to be. Television Is Dead is the title of a recent (ironically the only) book-length attempt at a social history of Hong Kong television.60

This was basically true, but had television really died in 1990? Audience-wise, Hong Kong television was declining, as in the early 1980s, 60% of the population was watching television almost every evening, and in the mid-1990s, it dropped to 40%.61 In this sense it was not really dead, but its golden age had certainly passed. It no longer had plentiful star actors and creative personnel spilling over to other pop media, nor was it able to function as a platform for creative synergies among different pop media.62 For example, singing a theme song of a TVB drama was almost equivalent to increased popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s, but this was no longer the case in the 1990s. When Hong Kong was the trendsetter of Chinese pop culture across the globe from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, Hong Kong cinema, pop music, and television generated a kind of creative synergy that enabled the city to become a star-making centre of the Chinese entertainment business worldwide. By the 2010s, if not earlier, TVB had become a so-called ‘major station’ (referring to a hegemonic power suppressing innovation and diversity in Chinese) despised by the younger generation to such an extent that it was no longer possible to create synergy among different media to make stars. As the market leader in the television industry in Hong Kong, TVB’s fall from favour made it difficult, if not impossible, to break the vicious cycle of the decline of Hong Kong pop. Not only had the golden age of television 60 Chan Kai-cheung, ‘The Media and Telecommunications,’ in The Other Hong Kong Report 1991, ed. Sung Yun-wing and Lee Ming-kwan (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1991), p. 456. 61 Chan Kai-cheung 陳啟祥, ‘The Formation of Hong Kong Culture and the Role of Television’ 香港文化的建立和電視的角色 (in Chinese), in Hong Kong Culture and Society, ed. Elizabeth Sinn (Hong Kong: Asian Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong, 1995), p. 86. 62 For example, the film industry: ‘The mid-70s was the golden age of Hong Kong’s television industry, achieving unprecedented heights in both quantitative and qualitative terms,’ and it ‘changed the course of Hong Kong cinema in the late ’70s and early ’80s.’ Pak Tong Cheuk, ‘The Hong Kong New Wave: Its Characteristics in Creativity, Production, Distribution and Completed Works,’ in 50 Years of the Hong Kong Film Production and Distribution Industries: An Exhibition, ed. Mary Wong (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1997), p. 17.

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ended, the synergy between media industries as the primary vehicle for star-making was also lost. To sum up its development trajectory, Hong Kong television started showing youthful energy in the 1970s. As for innovation and creativity, TVB peaked in the late 1970s, and it continued to develop into a star-making centre and reached full maturity in the 1980s. In the early 1980s, RTV’s challenge brought renewed sensibilities to the industry that began to show signs of aging. However, its influence as an important source of the cultural identity of Hong Kong people, especially among the young generation, began to wane in the late 1980s, notwithstanding that it still had a large number of audiences in the 1990s. In the next chapter, I will move onto Hong Kong cinema which followed a somewhat similar trajectory, although its rise and fall cycle was completed at a slightly later time.

2

Golden Days of the Silver Screen: Cinematic Imagination in a Not Yet Fallen City Why are we often nostalgic for the 1980s? It is because it was similar to our adolescence.1

Abstract This chapter deals with Hong Kong cinema by examining the evolution and transformation of the film industry in the 1980s, a decade in which Hong Kong cinema became a cult phenomenon hailed as the “Hollywood of the East”. While the early 1980s benef ited from the rise of the New Wave directors who injected new vitality into the industry, Hong Kong cinema displayed, with the 1997 handover looming, a decadent glamor with unparalleled imagination throughout the 1980s. Movie fans saw the emergence of different film genres, styles and, arguably most importantly, creativity famously described by David Bordwell as “all too extravagant, too gratuitously wild.” Keywords: The New Wave, Cinema City, D & B Films, satellite f ilm companies, blockbusters

In the Prime of Youth After the Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB)-inspired The House of 72 Tenants (1973), a remake of a 1963 film of the same title, unexpectedly grossed HK$5.6 million and broke the then box office record set by Bruce Lee’s Enter 1 Cited from ‘Hong Kong Movies in the 1980s Shaped Our Aesthetics’ 八十年代港產片塑造 了我們的審美 (in Chinese), Hong Kong Economic Journal, 7 March 2019.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_CH02

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the Dragon (1972), Cantonese cinema seemed to bounce back from rock bottom low in a market dominated by English and Mandarin films – there were no Cantonese film productions in Hong Kong in 1972. As this was the only Cantonese production out of the ninety-four Hong Kong films released in 1973, it was indeed a pleasant surprise for Cantonese pop culture. It also successfully brought Cantonese films back to Hong Kong cinema. In 1974, out of a total of 101 Hong Kong films, twenty-one were Cantonese productions. The highest-grossing films were Cantonese productions, including the monumental Games Gamblers Play (1974) by the Hui Brothers – Michael Hui and Sam Hui. Even with the success of some Cantonese films, ‘Hong Kong’s film industry was still regarded as somewhat depressed’ in the mid-1970s, ‘particularly by young filmmakers who had just returned to the territory after graduating from film schools overseas’.2 Besides the Hui Brothers’ Cantonese comedies and kind of language-neutral wave of kung fu films triggered by Bruce Lee (his films were dubbed into Mandarin when they premiered in Hong Kong in the early 1970s), Hong Kong cinema had still yet to find new impetus in terms of talents and film genres. It was therefore believed that the Hong Kong film industry had reached a stage of shortage, and a new crop was yet to come. Although Jackie Chan’s The Young Master was the box office winner in the first year of the 1980s, crossing the HK$10 million line, Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest still ruled the local market with uninspiring productions: among the top twenty on the box office chart, six belonged to the former and five to the latter.3 It is remarkable, however, that some new genres and styles entered the top-twenty chart in 1980, including, among others, John Woo’s (under the pseudonym of Sheung-Fei Ng) Laughing Times (4th; HK$5.19 million), Ann Hui’s The Spooky Bunch (8th; HK$3.52 million), Clifford Choi’s Encore (15th; HK$2.96 million), Patrick Tam’s The Sword (17th; HK$2.65 million), Ho Yim’s The Happenings (18th; HK$2.64 million), and Dennis Yu’s The Beasts (20th; HK$2.29 million). At the beginning of this decade, these films evinced the structural changes that were about to surface. Laughing Times was the debut film of Cinema City Company (more below), a new film company that later surpassed market leaders Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest and dominated the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s. The 2 Stephen Teo, ‘1970s: Movement and Transition,’ in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, eds. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 101. 3 Cited from ‘Hong Kong Movie Box Office Chart in the 1980s’ 80年代香港電影票房排行榜 (in Chinese), Mtime, 23 December 2015: https://www.sohu.com/a/50145396_163491; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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others were the works of Hong Kong New Wave directors – the Hong Kong New Wave was a blanket term applied to a group of young, ground-breaking Hong Kong filmmakers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many of these directors had trained in overseas film programmes and had accumulated experience in the television sector beginning in the mid-1970s. While a new film culture had been shaped by cine clubs (such as Studio One – Film Society of Hong Kong), experimental film clubs (such as Film Guard Association), and film magazines (such as Close Up Film Review),4 the late 1970s was a time when cinema and television had a synergistic relationship. As noted by Pak Tong Cheuk, the rise of Cantonese pop culture generated by the television sector and the rise of the middle class, among others, created a demand for new film genres in Hong Kong.5 Although the box office records seemed unexceptional, history proved that it was actually the dawning of a new era. After Ho Yim’s The Extras (1978), which is generally agreed to be the first Hong Kong New Wave film,6 the year 1979 witnessed the advent of New Wave cinema (such as the film directorial debuts of Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, and Alex Cheung: the wuxia sci-fi crossover The Butterfly Murders, the mystery thriller The Secret, and the genre-bending police and gangster film Cops and Robbers, respectively). I consider myself lucky to be old enough to catch this new wave that was already forming – being fourteen years old at that time, I was able to watch those films in theatres with my friends as cheap front stall tickets were still available. 1979 was also the year that ‘Below the Lion Rock’ was written by Joseph Koo and James Wong as the theme song of Radio Television Hong Kong’s (RTHK) eponymous television programme about the hardships of everyday life of grassroots Hong Kongers (the programme did not have a theme song before this; it used the traditional Chinese tune ‘Be Lofty Step by Step’ as its theme music7). By the end of the 1970s, ‘Cantonese was revived as a younger generation came onto the scene, aware of its own identity as Hong Kong filmmakers,’ as succinctly summed up by Stephen Teo in his account of Hong Kong cinema in the 1970s, and 4 Law Kar ‘Hong Kong New Wave: Modernization amid Global/Local Counter Cultures,’ in Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After, ed. Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1999), pp. 44–46. 5 Pak Tong Cheuk, ‘Television in the 70s: Its State of Being,’ in Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After, p. 30; for an informative account of the interrelationship between cinema and television, refer to pp. 29–30. 6 See, for instance, Pak Tong Cheuk, Hong Kong New Wave Cinema (1978–2000) (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2008), p. 10. 7 Yiu-Wai Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), pp. 59–60.

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‘Cantonese would be recognized throughout the 1980s as the lingua franca of Hong Kong cinema.’8 At that juncture, Cantonese cultural industries had developed into the trendsetter of Chinese pop cultures across the globe. The new policy of the Hong Kong Government in 1980 (cancelling the so-called touch-base policy, which had allowed illegal migrants from China to claim their right to become Hong Kong residents once they reached the urban areas of Hong Kong) meant that for the first time Hong Kong had firmly closed its doors to potential migrants from across the border.9 Thanks to the formation of a stronger sense of belonging, Hong Kong people took great pride in their pop cultures, which were important sources of their identities. For these perspectives, the important changes in 1979 paved the way for Hong Kong cinema to enter a not only a new decade but also a new era in the 1980s. It was against this historical backdrop that Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s shaped the aesthetics of Hong Kong pop and chic: in the prime of youth, the Hong Kong film industry as well as its audiences accommodated different types of experiments, be they green, crude, or arrogant – a time of unlimited possibilities.10 The 1980s captured the most vigorous moments of Hong Kong pop culture, in which Hong Kong cinema played a very important role in framing those epiphanies on the silver screen. I will move on to re-examine the evolution and transformation of the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s, a golden decade in which Hong Kong cinema became a cult phenomenon hailed as the ‘Hollywood of the East’. There were not only new major film companies such as Cinema City, but veteran producers such as Golden Harvest also continued to be highly productive. Superstars such as Jackie Chan and Yun-Fat Chow and directors such as John Woo and Tsui Hark found ecstatic receptions among movie fans across Asia. While the early 1980s benefited from the rise of the New Wave directors who injected new vitality into the industry, Hong Kong cinema displayed, with the 1997 handover looming, a decadent glamour with unchained imagination. Movie fans saw the emergence of different film genres, styles, and, possibly most importantly, creativity famously described by David Bordwell as ‘all too extravagant, too gratuitously wild’.11 8 Teo, ‘1970s: Movement and Transition,’ p. 102. 9 Gordon Mathews, Eric Ma, and Tai-lok Lui, Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 38. 10 A great variety of different styles and genres helped def ine the tastes and aesthetics of audiences; refer to ‘Hong Kong Movies in the 1980s Shaped Our Aesthetics.’ 11 David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 1.

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The New Wave and New Genres On 9 March 1982, the 1st Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony was held to honour the best films of 1981. Only five awards were presented at this relatively small-scale event: Best Film, Father and Son; Best Director, Henry Fong (Father and Son); Best Screenplay, Alfred Cheung (The Story of Woo Viet); Best Actor, Michael Hui (Security Unlimited); and Best Actress, Kara Wai (My Young Auntie). Interestingly, this list encapsulated the typical genres during this time of transformation in Hong Kong cinema. While Hui and Wai won their titles with a typical comedy and martial arts actioner, respectively, Father and Son and The Story of Woo Viet were two of the representative works of the Hong Kong New Wave. Held on 31 July 1983, the 2nd Hong Kong Film Awards presentation ceremony was expanded to boast a total of thirteen awards for films released in 1982. A quick look at the five major awards showed that the situation remained more or less the same: Best Film, Boat People; Best Director, Ann Hui (Boat People); Best Screenplay, Ann Hui (Boat People); Best Actor, Karl Maka and Sammo Hung (Aces Go Places and Carry On Pickpocket, respectively); and Best Actress, Becky Lam (Lonely Fifteen). On the one hand, Boat People was one of the signature works of not just Ann Hui but also the Hong Kong New Wave, and the neorealist Lonely Fifteen was a New Wave social satire that stirred up heated debates among delinquent teenagers back then. On the other hand, Karl Maka and Sammo Hung were most well known for their comedies and actioners (and action comedies), respectively. In the 1980s, Hong Kong cinema continued to produce many highly rated as well as profitable comedies and martial arts actioners – as well as a hybrid of the two by Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and others. ‘Though not great commercial success by any means’, the Hong Kong New Wave ‘conveyed the feeling that the territory’s baby boom was coming into its own and that a new age had already begun’.12 Hong Kong New Wave directors were highly acclaimed for their experimental styles, and the diversification of themes was one of the most remarkable features of their experiments. ‘The storied situation of a band of young outsiders arriving on the scene, forging a new order in an aging industry is the stuff of which myths are made,’13 as well said by the organizer of the ‘Revisiting New Wave’ exhibition programme hosted by the Hong Kong Film Archive in 2017. I have argued 12 Teo, ‘1970s: Movement and Transition,’ p. 102. 13 Cited from the Introduction to the exhibition ‘Revisiting the New Wave’ presented by the Hong Kong Film Archive, February 2017: https://www.f ilmarchive.gov.hk/en_US/web/hkfa/ programmesandexhibitions/rnw.html; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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elsewhere that the emergence of the Hong Kong New Wave in the late 1970s, similar to the French New Wave that it was named after, was ‘a cultural phenomenon, resulting from economic, political, aesthetic, and social trends’.14 However, it should be noted that the trends produced were quite different. While the French New Wave was generated by revolutionary changes in ‘established disciplines such as literature, theatre, social science, and even film criticism’,15 the Hong Kong version was activated by an implosion within the film industry that led to the exploration of different possibilities beyond the success formulae of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest.16 Moreover, Hong Kong New Wave directors such as Tsui Hark and Ann Hui were heavily influenced by Western films. Educated in Western film schools, these New Wave directors kicked off their careers in television companies oriented chiefly towards local audiences. Their films were therefore often a hybrid of Western styles and local tastes that deconstructed the existing operational logic of the mainstream film industry. Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, and their contemporaries experimented with new genres and shot films in a way that was totally different from established masters, such as Li Hanxiang and Cheh Chang, ‘refusing the consolation of correct forms’, so to speak.17 Tsui Hark’s The Butterfly Murders and Patrick Tam’s The Sword, among others, subverted the wuxia genre from within, whereas Ann Hui’s The Secret and Peter Yung’s The System (1979) narrated outside the box of conventional mystery thrillers.18 In other words, Hong Kong New Wave cinema was able to ‘present the unpresentable’ by experimentally crossing over genres and media in films shot outside traditional film studios. More often than not, my friends and I were totally amazed by ‘the unpresentable’ of the innovative experiments of the New Wave directors. The Butterfly Murders, for example, differed utterly from the Shaw Brothers wuxia films I used to watch. One of the reasons behind the ‘aging’ image of the industry was the typical Shaw Brothers style of studio filming. Location filming was widely practiced by Hong Kong New Wave directors, and handheld cameras were 14 Richard Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), p. 3. 15 Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema, p. 36. 16 For a detailed account of the social and political context of the rise of Hong Kong New Wave cinema, refer to Law Kar, ‘An Overview of Hong Kong New Wave Cinema,’ in At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther Yau (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 31–44. 17 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 15. 18 Yiu-Wai Chu, Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018), pp. 122–123.

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often used to convey verisimilitude. Po-chih Leong’s Jumping Ash (1976), widely considered to be the prelude to the Hong Kong New Wave, placed great emphasis on authenticity by location filming as well as a story based on the experience of the scriptwriter Philip Chan, who had served with the Hong Kong police for many years before joining the film industry. The System was Peter Yung’s ground-breaking effort to hybridize a police and gangster film with its documentary style. I have to admit that at that time I was not at all knowledgeable enough to appreciate his experiment. It is reasonable to say, in hindsight, that the secret to success was shaking up the system. In short, one of their remarkable achievements was that a significant number of New Wave directors, such as Tsui Hark and Ann Hui, became mainstream, intervening the film industry from within in the 1980s. According to veteran Hong Kong film critic Sek Kei: The Hong Kong cinema in the ’80s not only recorded advances in technique, production values, and ‘packaging’ styles, but grew more daring in tackling social, political, and artistic concerns. However, this cinema has not gone deep enough into arts, politics, or society and has not come up with more mature examples than have been provided thus far. The Hong Kong New Wave, which surfaced in 1979, briefly captured world attention, but was soon eclipsed by ‘new wave’ movements in China and Taiwan.19

To this I partially agree. It is true that the Hong Kong New Wave was short-lived, but its experiments with styles and genres not only enhanced ‘advances in technique, production values, and “packaging” styles, but grew more daring in tackling social, political, and artistic concerns.’ The ‘Revisiting New Wave’ programme divided the film screenings into seven categories – ‘Questioning Genre’, ‘Violent Encounters’, ‘The Fire that Burns’, ‘The Spectral Dimension’, ‘Cops, Robbers and Sometimes Businessmen’, ‘Jade Girls No More’, and ‘Family Matters’ – which nicely elaborated the genres that the Hong Kong New Wave brought forth and/or revitalized. These categories exerted a profound impact on the diversification of film genres in Hong Kong in the 1980s. Arguably equally important is that these New Wave experiments provided opportunities to create cross-media synergies, through which new talents were able to emerge at that juncture. Take the synergy between pop music 19 Sek Kei, ‘Achievement and Crisis: Hong Kong Cinema in the ’80s,’ in Hong Kong Cinema in the Eighties: A Comparative Study with Western Cinema, ed. Law Kar (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1991), p. 60.

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and film as an example. Many New Wave directors liked using Cantopop as theme songs. The theme song ‘The Butterfly Murders’, for instance, was an innovative hybrid of the traditional image of the wuxia genre and the modern Western style of the singer George Lam, which matched very well with the film’s genre-crossing of sci-fi and wuxia (this was why I almost thought I was watching the wrong film when I heard the song at the beginning). The use of Cantopop as theme songs continued in the early 1980s (e.g., Patricia Chan’s ‘The Happenings’, Adam Cheng’s ‘The Sword’, and Michael Kwan’s ‘The Saviour’), paving the way for the up-and-coming cross-over of film and pop songs in the 1980s.20 Danny Chan’s ‘Encore’ is indeed one of the most remarkable examples. Multimedia stardom was perfectly achieved by this teen film of the same name, which allowed him to fully display his charm as a young idol. Similarly, Leslie Cheung also had opportunities to showcase his cross-media talents in Nomad (1982; he sang the theme song ‘Wandering’) and Drummer (1983; he sang several songs in the film). Opportunities were also available for other rising actors. When Yun-Fat Chow moved to the film sector after attracting attention in TVB dramas, his lacklustre performance did not make an impact until The Story of Woo Viet, although it was not a box-office hit. Nevertheless, Ann Hui’s film did successfully enhance his image as a film actor. Hui’s Boat People added fame not just to the male lead, George Lam, but also the supporting actor, the then young and rising star Andy Lau. Cherie Chung, among others, began to attract attention in The Story of Woo Viet, and operated in the limelight later in Clifford Choi’s Hong Kong, Hong Kong (1983), in which she had the chance to convince the audience that she was a star as well as an actress. Meanwhile, in Patrick Tam’s Love Massacre (1981), Brigitte Lin showed a brand-new style utterly different from those almost tacky images in her Taiwanese romantic stories in the 1970s. Simply put, the innovative and daring endeavours of the New Wave directors allowed these actors to explore possibilities, which effectively increased their popularity and hence enhanced their stardom. As the experiences of Hong Kong New Wave cinema have shown, although these films successfully contributed important dimensions to the Hong Kong imaginary, the problem of sustainability could not be solved without an evolution of mainstream genres as well.21 Furthermore, as Stephen Teo has convincingly argued: One is tempted to conclude that the distinguished work of the New Wave was the consequence of the talents and sensibilities of the individual 20 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 73–79. 21 Chu, Found in Transition, p. 122.

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directors themselves, and that such flowering of talent could only happen once in a generation…The outburst of remarkable work in TV in the latter half of the 70s constituted a period of enlightenment, an age of mature TV that seems like an accident of history. It no longer appears possible now for new directors to come from the training ground of TV in the same way.22

While the New Wave directors brought new subject matters to the industry, the traditional martial arts actioner and comedy were still the dominant genres, as evident in the box office records of 1981. Among the ten films that topped the chart that year, five were comedies (Security Unlimited, Chasing Girls, All the Wrong Clues, Beware of Pickpockets, and The Sweet and Sour Cops) and two were martial arts films (Dreadnaught and Instructors of Death). The other three were Challenge of the Gamesters (gambling actioner), Bewitched (witchcraft thriller), and Cream Soda and Milk (a New Wave social and family film).23 Another phenomenon worth noting is that the new film company Cinema City, after its successful 1980 debut of Laughing Times, had three films on the top-ten list: Chasing Girls, All the Wrong Clues, and Beware of Pickpockets. This was seen as starting a new chapter in the history of Hong Kong cinema, in which Cinema City took over Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest to be the market leader in the 1980s. By changing the rules of the game, Cinema City made a significant impact on the industry as well as multimedia stardom. The New Wave directors brought along their realist aesthetics, but more notably, in Stephen Teo’s view, ‘they brought along their consciousness of Hong Kong as a place with its unique identity, which was buttressed by language and psychology.’24 In the next section, I will offer a brief account of the impacts of the Hong Kong New Wave before moving on to discuss the new labels and their relationship with new film genres and new stars.

What the New Wave Brought Among the new film companies that contributed to the rise of the Hong Kong New Wave in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bang Bang was the forerunner. As previously mentioned, Jumping Ash was seen as the prelude to the 22 Stephen Teo, ‘Hong Kong’s New Wave in Retrospect,’ in Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After, p. 23. 23 Refer to ‘Hong Kong Movie Box Office Chart in the 1980s.’ 24 Teo, ‘Hong Kong’s New Wave in Retrospect,’ p. 19.

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Hong Kong New Wave, and it was the debut of Bang Bang Film Productions founded by Jimmy Ip. Having accumulated handsome prof its with his clothing brand Bang Bang, Ip developed his entertainment business and opened a film company and a record company using the brand ‘Bang Bang’ in 1976. After the big-budget, transnational, action spy thriller Foxbat (1977) (starring Henry Silva and Vonetta McGee), co-directed by Po-chih Leong, the pioneering company produced the first Hong Kong New Wave film The Extras, directed by Ho Yim. Its next project, The Servants (1979), a new-style police and gangster actioner co-directed by Philip Chan and Ronny Yu, was also a pioneer of the Hong Kong New Wave. It was acquired by Far East Group and rebranded into Bang Bang Motion Picture Limited in 1981, alongside the new production company Verdull Limited, which was mainly responsible for film productions. Although Jimmy Ip shifted his attention to founding his film circuit Luen Wah, and Bang Bang gradually phased out in the 1980s, Bang Bang played an important role in the early stage of the Hong Kong New Wave. It was also the distributor of The System and Kirk Wong’s The Club (1981), produced by Verdull, two of the representative works of the Hong Kong New Wave. Notwithstanding its short history and incomplete experiment, Bang Bang was the trailblazer that paved the way for a brand-new chapter in the history of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s. Jimmy Ip once made it clear that his company valued innovative filmmaking: ‘Through our connection to fashion and music, we keep up with the youths and are privy to their thinking, likes and dislikes, lifestyles and cultural backgrounds. We are never out of touch with the times, which is imperative for film-making.’25 Bang Bang kept Ip’s promise, providing opportunities for innovative New Wave directors to transform Hong Kong cinema. Century Motion Picture was another short-lived but worth noting film company that contributed significantly to the Hong Kong New Wave. Its debut, Man on the Brink (1981), bagged three major awards at the 19th Golden Horse Film Awards (1982) held in Taipei: Best Director, Alex Cheung; Best Leading Actor, Eddie Chan; and Best Scriptwriter, William Cheung. This was Alex Cheung’s second film after his directorial debut, Cops and Robbers, produced by Pearl City Film Production, and this film was hailed by the Hong Kong Film Archive as ‘one of the best of the Hong Kong New Wave’ that ‘successfully turn[ed] the story of an undercover cop into a new film 25 Mu Mu 木木, ‘New Avenues for Independent Cinema: Luen Wah Cinema Circuit’ 獨立製毕 新地盤：聨華線 (in Chinese), City Entertainment Magazine, Issue 31, 27 March 1980, p. 18; cited from Ha-pak Wong, ‘Bang Bang Films and Luen Wah Circuit,’ Hong Kong Film Archive Newsletter 91 (February 2020): 24.

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genre’.26 Century’s subsequent projects were also genre-redefining attempts: while The Imp (1981), directed by Dennis Yu, hybridized Chinese and Western supernatural horror films, Terry Tong’s Coolie Killer (1982) was: at once global and local – while its story features international assassins whose personas are taken after Hollywood gangster classics of the 1930s and Jean Pierre Melville’s French masterpiece Le Samoura (1967); yet the film’s conclusion is set specifically in Hong Kong’s Western District, to the point of the district of Sai Ying Pun being named in the Chinese title.27

That said, Century’s most important New Wave project was Nomad, directed by Patrick Tam. ‘A modern classic of the Hong Kong youth picture genre with uncanny signatures that foreshadow the postmodern studies of Wong Kar-wai’, Nomad was considered ‘one of those real turning-points of the New Wave in the early 80s’.28 As Stephen Teo astutely noted, it was ‘a virtual thesis on how Hong Kong is shaped by foreign influences into a creature that has to grapple with its Chinese identity’.29 Its nihilistic sentiment (as represented by Leslie Cheung’s saying in the film: ‘What society? We’re society!’) was not complete as the ending was not Tam’s – due to overruns in both time and budget, the ending was actually shot by Terry Tong. Compared with Century Motion Picture, Pearl City Film Production had a more continued impact on Hong Kong cinema after its debut of Cops and Robbers. The Saviour (1980), directed by Ronny Yu, and The Beasts, directed by Dennis Yu, were both controversially innovative ventures: the former was about a psychopathic serial killer of prostitutes and the latter a father’s violent revenge against a gang of thugs who killed his son and raped his daughter. Pearl City was also the producer of two Hong Kong New Wave classics: Ann Hui’s The Story of Woo Viet and David Lai’s Lonely Fifteen. The Story of Woo Viet was the second episode of Hui’s monumental Vietnam trilogy (the first being the episode ‘The Boy from Vietnam’ [1978] in RTHK’s Below the Lion Rock series [1972–1979] and the third the award-winning Boat People). 26 Cited from ‘Film Screenings: Man on the Brink,’ ‘Revisiting the New Wave’ presented by the Hong Kong Film Archive, 10 March 2019: https://www.f ilmarchive.gov.hk/en_US/web/hkfa/ programmesandexhibitions/2019mt-alexcheung/man-on-the-brink.html; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 27 Cited from ‘Film Screenings: Coolie Killer,’ ‘Revisiting the New Wave’ presented by the Hong Kong Film Archive, 30 April 2019: https://www.lcsd.gov.hk/CE/CulturalService/HKFA/en_US/ web/hkfa/programmesandexhibitions/rnw/film06.html; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 28 Teo, ‘Hong Kong’s New Wave in Retrospect,’ p. 19. 29 Teo, ‘Hong Kong’s New Wave in Retrospect,’ p. 18.

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When the impact of the Hong Kong New Wave gradually diminished in 1984, Pearl City continued to produce the films of several ‘Second Wave’ directors, including Stanley Kwan’s Love unto Waste (1986) and Tony Au’s Dream Lovers (1986). Another point worth noting is that Pearl City had a close working relationship with Yun-Fat Chow, who starred in The Story of Woo Viet, Love unto Waste, Dream Lovers, and Tony Au’s Last Affair (1983). This was a good example of the new film companies’ contribution to stardom (Yun-Fat Chow will be discussed in further detail in the next section). The Hong Kong New Wave was not restricted to new companies, and its influence spread to the two market leaders back then. Eyeing the potential of new film genres, Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest co-opted New Wave directors to work on new projects. Having been taken over by Golden Harvest in the late 1970s, Shaw Brothers wanted to try something new in order to lead the market again. They invited New Wave director Clifford Choi, among others, to test different genres, including teen romance in Teenage Dreamers (aka Lemon Cola) (1982) and social satire of illegal immigrants in Hong Kong, Hong Kong. They also invited Alex Cheung to make the sci-fi comedy Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (1983) and Ann Hui a love story adapted from Eileen Chang’s famous Love in a Fallen City (1984). Without the handsome budgets provided by Shaw Brothers, the expensive special effects of the former and the setting (a 1:1 replica of the Repulse Bay Hotel) of the latter would not have been possible. Even earlier than Shaw Brothers in investing in New Wave projects, Golden Harvest produced Patrick Tam’s The Sword, a new-style period wuxia actioner. However, the most spectacular project of Golden Harvest was Tsui Hark’s Zu: The Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983). Also a new-style wuxia film, it was unprecedented for a Hong Kong movie to spend so much money on special effects. Tsui’s astonishing combination of martial arts, traditional wire-work choreography, and state-of-the-art special effects was truly ground-breaking, raising the bar for excellence in special visual effects in Hong Kong films.30 Unfortunately, these ‘New Wave’ projects of Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest were not really successful in the end, in terms of both box office returns and film awards. Before long, New Wave films seemed to have lost their youthful vigour at a time of changing social atmosphere, as succinctly summed up by veteran film critic Ng Ho: 30 For related information about the special effects of Tsui’s works, refer to Wai-leng Ho, ‘From the Local to the Virtual: On Special Effects,’ in The Swordsman and His Jiang Hu: Tsui Hark and Hong Kong Film, eds. Sam Ho and Wai-leng Ho (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 2002), pp. 228–237.

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A big crisis was looming over Hong Kong and ‘everybody wanted to enjoy the peace before the storm.’ Youth at the peak of their lives could not always sit inside the four walls of cinema prison. Thus they took to the outside, engaging themselves in community activities, summer and winter camps, indeed even the Junior Police Call, to dilute the darkness in their hearts, to liberate their own selves in the light so that they may live healthier lives. Thus there appeared a gulf between my generation who were nihilists, anti-establishment, anti-government, and anti-society rebels, and the ‘Public Internets Youth’ or ‘Sunshine Youth’ generation. All of a sudden, the New Wave seemed to lose its youthful vigour.31

Notwithstanding this, the New Wave nonetheless brought Hong Kong cinema onto the world stage. As underscored by Tony Rayns, two quite different types of Hong Kong films – ‘the “art films” made by directors like Stanley Kwan and Ann Hui, and the comic action-adventures from Tsui Hark’s Film Workshop’ – ‘ha[d] gone beyond the festival circuit to win lucrative foreign sales.’32 In the midst of the New Wave, a new film company steadily gathered momentum. Based on Warriors Film, a small company founded by Karl Maka, Dean Shek, and Raymond Wong in 1979 that featured action comedy, Cinema City became one of the most influential studios in the multimilliondollar Hong Kong film industry, which, in its heyday, was compared to that of Hollywood. With the financial support of Kowloon Motor Bus General Manager Lawrence Louey, Cinema City won considerable attention with their debut of Laughing Times. As noted above, the box office records of its Chasing Girls, All the Wrong Clues, and Beware of Pickpockets entered the top-ten list in 1981. Besides Maka, Shek, and Wong, four other important members joined, and Cinema City quickly developed their business as the ‘brainchild of seven masterminds’: Karl Maka, Dean Shek, Raymond Wong, Teddy Robin, Tsui Hark, Nansun Shi, and Eric Tsang. ‘A rare breed in Hong Kong cinema history’, Cinema City adopted ‘a system that encouraged teamwork in both the scriptwriting and production processes’ and ‘made quality entertainment that constantly injected new ideas and a breath of fresh air to Hong Kong audiences’.33 Unlike other new film companies that 31 Ng Ho, ‘The Confessions of a Film Anarchist,’ in Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After, p. 58. 32 Tony Rayns, ‘‘Cultural Abnormalities’: A Distant Perspective on Hong Kong Cinema in the ’80s,’ Hong Kong Cinema in the Eighties: A Comparative Study with Western Cinema, p. 65. 33 Cited from ‘Introduction,’ ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Cinema City’ presented by Film Programmes Office, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Hong Kong, February 2016: https://

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focused on New Wave films, Cinema City was more ambitious from the start. Besides mainstream comedy, Cinema City also experimented with new genres similar to the works of other New Wave directors, including, among others, Once Upon a Rainbow (1982), directed by Agnes Ng (Andy Lau, playing a minor role, made his film debut in this movie), a coming-of-age adolescent romance. Peter Yung’s resurrection suspense thriller Life after Life (1981) and Po-chih Leong’s avant-garde slasher flick He Lives by Night (1982) were also innovative endeavours in Hong Kong cinema. Because of the diversity of its productions, it drew varied critical feedback, from ‘a kind of vulgar commercialism that Hong Kong critics have derided as the “Cinema City” style’ to ‘[t]he power and energy of the commercial industry in Hong Kong are exemplified by Cinema City.’34 No matter what side of the debate one is on, it would be reasonable to conclude that Cinema City was ‘a diverse melting pot of zany humour, wit, intrigue, adventure and the supernatural’.35

Cinema City: A New Film Titan First of all, Cinema City successfully used the big-budget comedy Aces Go Places, directed by Eric Tsang, to establish its leading role in the Hong Kong film industry. Aces Go Places was meant to be the work that set the trend for the upcoming 1980s. The seven masterminds understood clearly that they would need a signature film to make their brand stand out in a cluttered market. Bearing their mottos ‘glamorous sets and gorgeous cast’ and ‘matching the taste of the audience’36 in mind, they decided to use a bigbudget, star-studded action comedy to do this. As recollected by Raymond Wong, they originally planned to invite Yun-Fat Chow to take the leading role in Aces Go Places, but Chow declined due to a clash of scheduling. At the suggestion of Tsui Hark, they decided to spend big and invited Sam Hui from Golden Harvest to star in this James-Bond-style comedy co-starring Karl Maka. Already a superstar widely acclaimed for his comedies as well as Cantopop, Sam Hui asked for HK$2 million and an additional bonus in the Japanese market (back then a luxurious mid-level apartment cost only www.lcsd.gov.hk/fp/en_US/web/fpo/programmes/2016wwcc/index.html; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 34 The former cited from Stephen Teo, ‘Tsui Hark: National Style and Polemic,’ in At Full Speed, p. 143; the latter cited from Yingjin Zhang, Chinese National Cinema (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), p. 251. 35 ‘Introduction,’ ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Cinema City.’ 36 ‘Introduction,’ ‘The Wit and Wisdom of Cinema City.’

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about HK$0.5 million). In the end, Cinema City successfully convinced its investor Lawrence Louey and lured Sam Hui away from Golden Harvest, making history with a blockbuster that set a new record of HK$27 million at the local box office.37 Cinema City surpassed the then market leader at the box office by beating its blockbuster Dragon Lord (1982) starring Jackie Chan. This not only established the new company’s leading role in the Hong Kong film industry, Louey’s film circuit Golden Princess also moved from the bottom to the top of the business in 1982. In the subsequent year, Cinema City continued to replicate its successful formulae with Eric Tsang’s Aces Go Places 2 (1983), Teddy Robin’s All The Wrong Spies (1983), and Dean Shek’s The Perfect Wife?! (1983), the latter two of which were derivatives of All the Wrong Clues and Chasing Girls, respectively. On top of these projects, which adopted the ‘glamorous sets and gorgeous cast’ and ‘matching the taste of the audience’ mottos, Cinema City was ‘a diverse melting pot’. For example, Ringo Lam’s paranormal ghost romance Esprit d’amour (1983) was also an innovative genre that was well received, and it effectively enhanced Alan Tam’s stardom by his performance in the film as well as the theme song ‘Illusion’. In view of the popularity of its productions in Taiwan, Cinema City tested the market there with Send in the Clowns (1983) and Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing? (1983) helmed by Taiwanese directors Ching-chieh Lin and Kan-ping Yu, respectively. The latter was very popular in the Hong Kong market, which was a pleasant surprise for Cinema City as Taiwanese melodramas were considered outdated by Hong Kong audiences in the 1980s. Before his career-turning masterpiece A Better Tomorrow (1986), John Woo also directed The Time You Need a Friend (1985), targeting the Taiwanese market. With seven masterminds, Cinema City was walking with more than two legs. Their melting pot contained different series that catered to different tastes of different target audiences. The paranormal theme was one of their favourites. Besides Life after Life and Esprit d’amour mentioned above, they tried mixing different genres and styles – horror, crime, thriller, and comedy – with a paranormal story. Till Death Do We Scare (1982; directed by Kar-Wing Lau, a comic horror packaged with state-of-the-art [as per the standard of Hong Kong] special effects) was surprisingly well received in Taiwan. Heaven Can Help (1984), directed by David Chiang, was a noir comedy in which the bad-luck protagonist (starring Eric Tsang), after encountering 37 Raymond Wong 黃百鳴, The Cinema City Legend 新藝城神話 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Cosmos Books, 1998): https://blog.xuite.net/kenlin.shine/unique/19263347; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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the guardians of hell, had the opportunity to change his own deadly fate by protecting three strangers. Cinema City also co-opted New Wave directors to enrich their diversities. The Occupant (1984), directed by Ronny Yu, for example, was also a supernatural suspense thriller mixed with horror and comedy. (Dennis Yu also experimented with the musical film genre, which was no longer trendy after the 1970s, with The Musical Singer [1985]. Even though its reception among audiences was uninspiring, the Cantopop diva Anita Mui fully demonstrated her supreme talents in this rare music and dance film in the 1980s.) The hybridization of the paranormal theme with different genres was most successful in the film series Happy Ghost and A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). Besides the Aces Go Places series – a total of five episodes, excluding the 1997 version starring Alan Tam and Tony Chiu-wai Leung – released during the golden time of the Lunar New Year, Cinema City knew very well that they needed some other successful films and series to broaden its fan base. For Hong Kong film companies, the summer was as important as the Lunar New Year. Hitting the fancy of teenagers, Cinema City released Happy Ghost, directed by Clifton Ko, during the summer of 1984, recording a surprising HK$17 million at the box office. This teen comedy was centred around a ghost (starring Raymond Wong) from the Qing Dynasty who tried to help a group of students facing different problems in school and life. Young fans (especially male) soon became fascinated with teen actresses Bonnie Law, Loretta Lee (aka Rachel Lee), and Sandy Lamb. In the subsequent summer, Cinema City released the second episode Happy Ghost II (1985) (also directed by Clifton Ko), featuring a new group of teenage actresses branded as the ‘Happy Girls’: May Lo, Fennie Yuen, and Charine Chan. The third episode, Happy Ghost III (co-directed by Ringo Lam and Raymond Wong), which premiered in the summer of 1986, had turned into a major project for Cinema City, with rising star Maggie Cheung gracing the film. The series stopped for a while, and the fourth and fifth episodes, Happy Ghost IV and Happy Ghost V, resumed in 1990 and 1991, respectively, showing that its momentum had continued into the early 1990s. During the summer of 1987, Cinema City made another innovative attempt to repackage a Chinese classic, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, written by the Qing Dynasty writer Songling Pu, into a romantic comedy/horror/actioner directed by Tony Ching and starring Leslie Cheung, who had become a megastar through his Cantonese songs and A Better Tomorrow. The film grossed HK$18.8 million at the box office, and its sequels were later released in 1990 and 1991 (in the third episode, Tony Chiu-wai Leung was the male lead). Another signature series that brought Cinema City to new heights was A Better Tomorrow. Woo made his directorial debut with The Young Dragons

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(excluding his experimental films38) back in 1975. However, he did not follow the kung fu path of his mentor, Cheh Chang. After The Young Dragons, and besides some mediocre kung fu films, Woo also directed films of various genres in the 1970s, from the Cantonese Opera film Princess Chang Ping (1976) to the comedy Money Crazy (1977). Woo later had the opportunity to direct Cinema City’s debut comedy, Laughing Times. He reunited with Cinema City and directed The Time You Need a Friend, but apparently it was not his cup of tea. Although he had made various endeavours, the ‘John’ of all trades was of course best at action inspired by male bonding. He shot the warfare actioner Heroes Shed No Tears in 1983, which did not premier until 1986 owing to contract issues between Woo and the producer, Golden Harvest. In the same year, he released the gangster-hero thriller A Better Tomorrow, which was so successful that it launched a new genre of ‘gun-fu’ f ilms that won him international fame.39 The second episode, A Better Tomorrow II, was released in 1987, which was not as jaw-dropping but was equally popular. In the third episode, A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon (1989) directed by Tsui Hark (reportedly because Woo had different opinions from Cinema City), Anita Mui and Tony Ka-fai Leung replaced Leslie Cheung and Tommy Tam (aka Tik Lung) and ended the series in a promising manner. Besides the ‘gun-fu’ genre, A Better Tomorrow also triggered a series of hero films after the charismatic performance of Yun-Fat Chow as Brother Mark in the film. (For example, Chow’s Tragic Hero and its prequel Rich and Famous premiered in February and May 1987, respectively, which was a rare case that proved the impact of A Better Tomorrow.) It would not be exaggerating to say that A Better Tomorrow defined the taste of police and gangster actioners in Hong Kong cinema for the next fifteen years or so. Cinema City also produced some hero films, such as True Colours (1986), directed by Kirk Wong, The Killer’s Blues (1989), directed by Raymond Lee, and Triads: The Inside Story (1989), directed by Taylor Wong. These projects, however, were not as well-received as either the A Better Tomorrow series or Ringo Lam’s ‘on fire’ series, starting with City on Fire (1987), the best undercover cop film since Alex Cheung’s Man on the Brink. In that film, Yun-Fat Chow exhibited his distinctive charisma as an undercover cop who eventually turned to protect his fellow gangster friend Danny Lee. Ringo 38 The Evil One 惡者 (1968), Secret Killer 秘密殺手 (1968), Learning by Doing 學而時習之 (1969), Accidentally 偶然 (1969), and Dead Knot 死結 (1969) ; for details, refer to Robert K. Elder, ed., John Woo: Interviews (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2005), pp. xix–xx. 39 Man-Fung Yip, Martial Arts Cinema and Hong Kong Modernity (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), pp. 187–191.

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Lam continued to set the film market on fire with Prison on Fire (1987) and School on Fire (1988), although the latter, without the awesome Yun-Fat Chow, was less successful at the box office. (Ringo Lam also made the spy film Undeclared War [1990], with an international cast: this seemed to be the case in this series, according to the title in Chinese, but not in English.) It was undeniable that Cinema City’s creative momentum gradually slowed in the late 1980s. The unconvincing Aces Go Places V (1989), directed by Kar-Leung Lau, was a sign of Cinema City’s declining creativity and influence before the end of the decade. As noted by Pak Tong Cheuk, ‘Cinema City was running out of vitality, a vitality [that] could not, as it turned out, be restored,’ and therefore it is fair to say that ‘the film was identified as “a work of death” for Cinema City in the 1980s.’40 Cinema City’s projects had become less innovative, and its market-leading role was mainly sustained by its successful series, as well as Yun-Fat Chow (I will discuss his stardom further in the next section) and Johnnie To. Yun-Fat Chow’s participation in a series of films, from ‘gun-fu’ thrillers to comedies, helped Cinema City remain the market leader, but there were only a few new films that really won praise from audiences as well as critics. After the Lunar New Year comedy The Eighth Happiness (1988; a box-office winner, bringing in HK$37 million at the box office) and the mediocre police and gangster film The Big Heat (1988), I would argue that it was Johnnie To and Yun-Fat Chow’s All About Ah-Long (1989) that beautifully concluded Cinema City’s contribution to the Hong Kong film industry before the end of the decade.

The New Labels: D & B and Others While Shaw Brothers gradually faded out in the mid-1980s, Cinema City and Golden Harvest were the two market leaders of the Hong Kong film industry. There were new and ‘satellite’ film companies (see below), but the only one that could be compared with the two leaders was D & B Films Company, which was founded by Dickson Poon in collaboration with Sammo Hung and John Sham, who were at that point closely related to Golden Harvest. Actually, the inaugural film of D & B, The Return of Pom Pom (1984), was a sequel to Pom Pom (1984), produced by Bo Ho Films, a satellite company of Golden Harvest masterminded by Sammo Hung. Later, when Dickson Poon made new investments in film circuits and took over some circuits from Shaw Brothers in 1986, D & B became a competitor of Golden Harvest. D 40 Cheuk, Hong Kong New Wave Cinema, p. 25.

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& B was actually ‘walking with two legs’, with its mainstream commercial action comedies The Return of Pom Pom, Pom Pom Strikes Back (1986) and Where’s Officer Tuba (1986; starring Sammo Hung), to financially supplement their alternative experiments. Besides these action comedies, D & B also launched several commercially successful series, including Yes, Madam (1985) and its sequels Royal Warriors (1986), Magnificent Warriors (1987), In the Line of Duty III (1988), and In the Line of Duty IV: Witness (1989). The new female action star Michelle Yeoh, who was briefly married to Dickson Poon, the boss at D & B, stole the limelight with the first three episodes, and later won international fame as a Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). Besides these crime actioners, D & B also produced a series of Lunar New Year box-office hits: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World (1987), It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World II (1988), and It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World III (1989), which were comedies centred around a Hong Kong family that dreamed of being rich and emigrating before the handover. D & B also broadened its audience base with teen dramas, such as Conduct Zero (1986), Devoted to You (1986), Kiss Me Goodbye (1986), and Porky’s Meatballs (1987). It also initiated a trailblazing genre that targeted Hong Kong yuppies, including, among others, Heart to Hearts (1988), The Nobles (1989), and Happy Together (1989). On the one hand, D & B produced commercially profitable films, and on the other hand, it also made a great effort to distinguish itself from its mainstream rivals with its diverse, alternative, and often creative productions. As the soul of D & B, managing director John Sham explained in the seminar ‘A Different Brilliance: The D & B Story’, organized by the Hong Kong Film Archive, that he was willing to participate in the highly commercial comedy The Return of Pom Pom because he knew very well that without these blockbusters he would not have had the chance to produce other ‘quality’ films. 41 In its very first year, for instance, D & B released Hong Kong 1941 after the mainstream comedy The Return of Pom Pom. Written by Koon-Chung Chan and directed by Po-Chih Leong, this story – packaged as a love triangle among three good friends – was set on the eve of the Japanese occupation, using the falling city in 1941 as a metaphor for Hong Kong’s future after 1997. A survival horror flick, Po-chih Leong’s The Island (1985) was in a sense an extension, probably inspired by Kinji Fukasaku, of Hong Kong New Wave horror films such as The Beasts. D & B also excelled at local social critiques, such as The Lunatics (1986) and 41 Cited from the seminar ‘A Different Brilliance: The D & B Story’ 德寶源起座談會 (in Chinese), presented by the Hong Kong Film Archive, 17 August 2020: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9J-VV8lXllo; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Silent Love (1986), which defied traditional genres in Hong Kong cinema. The directorial debut of actor-turned-director Derek Yee, the former was a rare breed that dealt squarely with mental patients and the issues faced by them in the real world. That D & B was willing to let a new director handle such a topic spoke to its pioneering spirit. Silent Love also picked up a social issue glaringly left unexamined by mainstream films: deaf-mute youths and juvenile delinquency. Many fans, including me, were attracted by its diverse genres and styles. The innovative diversity of D & B films resembled to a certain extent the Hong Kong New Wave that subsided after 1984. In the meantime, Wonder Women (1987) and Final Victory (1987), directed by Kwok-Leung Kam and Patrick Tam, respectively, are also worth noting. Kam’s feminist comedy about beauty pageant contestants flashed the director’s wit and, at times, dark humour, whereas the renowned New Wave director Tam’s genre-subverting gangster film featured Eric Tsang as the anti-hero. That said, if I had to choose the most representative film of D & B, it would be An Autumn’s Tale (1987), directed by Mabel Cheung. The charismatic Yun-Fat Chow and gorgeous Cherie Chung turned this into an unusually successful case of a romantic comedy that won both box-office success and critical acclaim. It was surprising, however, that Cheung could not find an investor for the film until she had the chance to pitch her script to John Sham. Not an inexperienced director, Mabel Cheung had already directed The Illegal Immigrant (1985), which won critical acclaim in the US with its verisimilitudinous story of illegal immigrants (a hot topic in the 1980s in Hong Kong after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which would dictate the future of Hong Kong after its reversion to its motherland in 1997). But since The Illegal Immigrant was only a low-budget film that used a cast of untrained and non-professional actors, investors had reservations about this love story, which required a much bigger budget. According to Mabel Cheung, she insisted on using Yun-Fat Chow. Fortunately, they were able to get his signature before the premiere of A Better Tomorrow, or else it would not have been possible for them to afford his skyrocketing salary. 42 Mostly shot in New York, this story about a Hong Kong immigrant and a young woman studying fine arts in New York was named Best Film at the 7th Hong Kong Film Awards and raked in HK$25 million at the box office (ranked fifth in 1987). This managed to ‘shed light on a particular time (the late 1980s) and a particular historical phenomenon (the “brain drain” [because of the anxiety towards Hong Kong’s future]) in an easy yet 42 Mabel Cheung said this in ‘A Different Brilliance: The D & B Story.’

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profound manner’, to borrow the words of Stacilee Ford.43 As can be seen from the above examples, 1987 was D & B’s best year. According to John Sham, Dickson Poon and he had different opinions about production after Magnificent Warriors (especially In the Line of Duty III), and in the end he left D & B peacefully. 44 D & B continued to produce some successful films after his departure, but it had less creative genre-bending experiments before closing down in 1992. As a fan of the Hong Kong New Wave, Cinema City and D &B, I came to understand the profound remark of French New Wave luminary Claude Chabrol: ‘There are no waves; there is just the sea.’45 The ecology of Hong Kong cinema changed significantly in the 1980s, beginning with Shaw Brothers gradually phasing out as producers. The industry was dominated by f ilm circuits, and the outsourcing system pioneered by Golden Harvest became the new rule of the game. 46 Shaw Brothers leased its film circuit to D & B in 1984, and together with Golden Princess and Newport Circuit, established later in 1988, the three circuits dominated the local film market. In this context, Golden Harvest funded and/or outsourced its productions to ‘satellite’ film companies, such as Jackie Chan’s Golden Way Films, Sammo Hung’s Bo Ho Films, and Tsui Hark’s Film Workshop. As previously mentioned, Cinema City was supported by Golden Princess and D & B by Sammo Hung and John Sham, who were originally with Golden Harvest. As perceptively noted by Stephanie Chung, it was a new, flexible operational logic that different teams (e.g., Jackie Chan and his comrades, Sammo Hung and his comrades, the seven masterminds of Cinema City, etc.) were financially supported by film circuits to co-produce films, which was utterly different from the studio system represented by Shaw Brothers in the 1960s and 1970s. 47 Funded by film circuits, (some of) these satellite film companies enjoyed the privilege of experimenting with different genres. For example, Bo Ho Films produced the crime classic Long Arm of the Law (1984), directed by Johnnie Mak, which established the subgenre of cross-border mainlander crime thrillers that were extremely 43 Stacilee Ford, Mabel Cheung Yuen-Ting’s An Autumn’s Tale (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), p. 85. 44 John Sham said this in ‘A Different Brilliance: The D & B Story.’ 45 Cited from Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze, Claude Chabrol’s Aesthetics of Opacity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press , 2018), p.9. 46 Stephanie Chung 鍾寶賢, ‘Vertical and Horizontal Alliance: The Rise and Decline of Hong Kong Film Industry in a Century’ 合縱與連橫：香港電影業的百年盛衰 (in Chinese), Media Digest, Radio Television Hong Kong, 1 January 2005: https://app3.rthk.hk/mediadigest/content. php?aid=366; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 47 Chung, ‘Vertical and Horizontal Alliance.’

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well received in the late 1980s and the 1990s. While Golden Way Films took an active role in Jackie Chan’s blockbusters, it had also produced, among others, the monumental paranormal love story Rouge (1988), directed by Stanley Kwan. Besides its participation in the A Better Tomorrow series and A Chinese Ghost Story, Film Workshop’s inaugural film, Shanghai Blues (1984), was a romantic comedy set in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, which was a creative metaphor for the situation to be faced by Hong Kong after the handover. The adventure spy film Peking Opera Blues (1986), set in the warlord era in the Republic of China, was a similar metaphor with different effects, showcasing beautifully the charismatic stardom of three divas – Brigitte Lin, Cherie Chung, and Sally Yeh – in the midst of hero films dominated by male stars. Furthermore, Sammo Hung was named Best Actor at the 2nd Hong Kong Film Awards for his performance in Carry On Pickpocket, the inaugural film of Always Good Films masterminded by Frankie Chan and funded by Golden Princess. Always Good also produced the police and gangster thriller Law with Two Phases (1984), with which the director-cum-actor Danny Lee won the same award two years later. Although Always Good Films was not as big as Cinema City, nor was it as pioneering as D & B, it produced some small to mid-scale films which were popular enough to enrich diversity – in terms of not just genres but also production budgets. Always Good’s romantic comedy The Other Side of a Gentleman (1984), for instance, offered an opportunity for Cantopop star Alan Tam to sparkle in this love story that he starred in with Brigitte Lin. By the way, he also took part in a number of films produced by Movie Impact, such as The Story Behind the Concert (1986), directed by Sing-Pui O, and Love Soldier of Fortune (1988), directed by Stanley Fung. Movie Impact also had a close working relationship with Andy Lau, who was the male lead in The Truth (1988), directed by Taylor Wong, and Runaway Blues (1989), directed by David Lai. There were numerous new film companies in this golden decade, but given the limited scope here, I will end this particular discussion by briefly mentioning Win’s Movie Productions, which was established in the late 1980s and made an important contribution to Hong Kong cinema in the 1990s. Founded by Charles Heung and Jimmy Heung in 1987, Win’s Movie Productions quickly established its status in the industry with the big-budget romantic comedy The Romancing Star (1987), starring Yun-Fat Chow and Maggie Cheung, a collaborative project produced by Movie Impact. Win’s did not begin to be active until the last year of that decade, and among the many films it produced that year, the one that stood out was undoubtedly God of Gamblers (1989), directed by Jing Wong, a gambler actioner mixed with

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comic elements. Topping the box office in Hong Kong with HK$36.3 million (beating Jackie Chan’s high-concept Miracles [aka Mr. Canton and Lady Rose] [1989]), this pushed Yun-Fat Chow’s career to new heights. Another gambler actioner, Casino Raiders (1989), co-directed by Jing Wong and Jimmy Heung and released earlier that year, ranked fifth at the box office with a very promising record of HK$23.3 million, humbling Cinema City’s blockbusters A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon and Aces Go Places V, which ranked sixth and seventh, respectively. Not only did these two films revitalize the gambler genre but they also showed that a new chapter of Hong Kong’s film history would be written by Win’s in the 1990s.

Starry, Starry Decade Thanks to the swiftly growing market and the diversification of genres, there were many bright stars lighting up the sky of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s. Sam Hui was among the few stars from the 1970s who continued to glow, arguably even more brightly, in the 1980s. Hailed as the God of Cantopop, he was one of the most celebrated singers in the territory at that time, but his singing career did not develop significantly in the 1980s. In the film sector, however, he got out from under the shadow of his brother Michael Hui and became a real superstar with the top box-office grosses in Hong Kong with the Aces Go Places series. The adventure comedy turned him into a humorous and charismatic Hong Kong spoof of James Bond. In the 1970s, Hong Kong cinema picked up momentum with two main film genres, best represented by Bruce Lee’s kung fu films and the Hui Brothers’ comedies. While Sam Hui upgraded typical Hong Kong comedies with high-concept James Bond-style stunts, Jackie Chan successfully hybridized the two in his career-changing action comedies Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and Drunken Master (1978), directed by Woo-ping Yuen. He then signed with market leader Golden Harvest, and after another highly popular action comedy, The Young Master (1980), he eyed the international market by making the Hollywood productions The Big Brawl (1980) and The Cannonball Run (1981). With its star-studded cast, including Bert Reynolds, Roger Moore, and Farrah Fawcett, the latter was a big-budget transnational production that aimed high but fell short of expectations. Therefore, Jackie Chan turned his attention back to the quickly developing market of Hong Kong cinema (except for The Cannonball Run 2 [1984]), directing his efforts mainly to big-budget, high-concept action comedies and police and gangster actioners (but also filled with gags), including, among others, Project A (1983), Wheels

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on Meals (1984), Police Story (1985), Armour of God (1987), Dragons Forever (1988), and Miracles. Jackie Chan and Golden Harvest had the ambition to lure the international market, and some of these projects, such as Wheels on Meals and Armour of God, were shot overseas with foreign casts. Jackie Chan won international fame, but he had to wait till the 1990s to successfully enter the Hollywood market. Action comedy was the predominant genre of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s, and besides Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, his big brother at the China Drama Academy, a Peking Opera school, was another important figure who paid an indispensable role in the ‘blockbusterization’ of this distinctive genre. Sammo Hung was related to Cinema City and D & B, but his major contributions to acting and directing were action-comedy blockbusters throughout the 1980s, which were so influential that they earned him the title of ‘Big Big Brother’ in Hong Kong cinema. As discussed above, one of the key genres of Hong Kong New Wave films was youth films, and these new creative projects provided opportunities for budding talents in diverse areas. Regarding this, one of the most representative examples of a Hong Kong New Wave film is Clifford Choi’s Encore, in which new teen idol Danny Chan enthralled audiences with his elegance and musical talent. However, perhaps because his idol persona overshadowed his acting ability, he did not focus on films. Another young star eclipsed by Danny Chan in Encore, Leslie Cheung did put a dual emphasis on singing and acting. Before he became a superstar with his Cantopop (refer to Chapter 3), he also showed his potential of being a pop idol in Nomad, Teenage Dreamers, and Drummer. After his career-changing golden hit ‘Monica’ in 1984, his film career also further developed quickly with brilliant performances in films such as A Better Tomorrow, A Chinese Ghost Story, and Rouge. There were also new teen girl idols, such as Cinema City’s ‘Happy Girls’ mentioned above. Given the limited scope of this chapter, let me use Cinema City as an example to show how the new film company made different kinds of film stars in the 1980s. Besides the Happy Ghost series, which gave the ‘Happy Girls’ a chance to steal the limelight, Cinema City also tested a rare genre – sport film – with United We Stand (1986), directed by Kent Cheng. Inspired by the real story of world-class female Chinese sprinter and jumper Chi Cheng (bronze medallist in the women’s 80-meter hurdles and finalist in the 100-meter sprint at the 1968 Olympics), who was hailed as the ‘Flying Antelope’ (the Chinese tile of the film), this film featured many teen actresses, such as Gigi Lai, the first generation of ‘Happy Girls’ Fennie Yuen and Bonnie Law, and former Miss Hong Kong-cum-Hong Kong High Jump Record Holder Olivia Cheng as the trainer of the female athletes. Notwithstanding the unremarkable results of this combined sport and youth film, the young girls

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won more fame. Cinema City, as briefly discussed above, was very good at genre diversification as well as commercial calculation. Prior to United We Stand, for example, City Hero (1985) was testing a similar formula with young actresses and a different genre. Directed by Dennis Yu, this was a film about the handsome and macho Special Duties Unit (aka Flying Tigers) rookies, including Michael Wong, Mark Cheng, and Anthony Tang, coached by Dean Shek. Although this film garnered neither critical acclaim nor box-office success, it did pave the way for the later development of the film subgenre Special Duties Unit in the 1990s and beyond, with Michael Wong as one of the mainstays of the elite police squad. Young idols can broaden fan bases, but in order to hit the fancy of the majority of adult audiences, the film industry needs superstars. Raymond Wong made it very clear that casting was one of the most important concerns of the rising film company, and therefore Cinema City was willing to gamble big with the very expensive Sam Hui in the first episode of Aces Go Places.48 Besides instant stardom such as Sam Hui’s, they also knew very well that they had to make more superstars. As noted by Raymond Wong, Cinema City had brought fame to, in addition to the teen actresses mentioned above, Alan Tam, George Lam, and most importantly, Yun-Fat Chow, who utterly changed his career with A Better Tomorrow. 49 It is undeniable that A Better Tomorrow defined a genre while making stars, including Chow, Leslie Cheung, and Tommy Tam, as well as the star director John Woo. Cinema City also thought outside the box and experimented with new projects besides hero films that helped male stars dominate the industry in the 1980s. Peking Opera Blues offered a chance for beauties Brigitte Lin, Cherie Chung, and Sally Yeh to co-star in an action spy film with their gorgeous charm. There were of course other famous actresses in the 1980s, such as Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau, and Rosemund Kwan, but more often than not they played supporting roles to male actors. Anita Mui was an exceptional case, but not unlike Maggie Cheung, who really took centre stage in Stanley Kwan’s Center Stage (1992), she did not outshine male actors until the 1990s with Kawashima Yoshiko (1990) and Au Revoir, Mon Amour (1991), directed by Eddie Fong and Tony Au, respectively. There were paradigmatic changes in the 1990s, such as Johnnie To’s The Heroic Trio (1993), featuring three female superstars – Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh, and Maggie Cheung – as well as Brigitte Lin’s androgynous role in Tsui Hark’s phenomenal Swordsman III: The East Is Red (1993), but this topic extends beyond the scope of this book. 48 Wong, ‘Cinema City Legend.’ 49 Wong, ‘Cinema City Legend.’

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In Chinese Film Stars, edited by Mary Farquhar and Zhang Yingjin, five stars are included in the section ‘Hong Kong and Transnational Cinema’: Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Yun-Fat Chow, Leslie Cheung, and Jet Li.50 While Bruce Lee brought Chinese cinema to the world in the 1970s, Jet Li rose to international stardom in the late 1990s with Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). In the 1980s, he was still showcasing his martial art skills in mainland kung fu films, through which he accumulated fame, but he did not become a widely acclaimed star until Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China series in the 1990s. The other three – Jackie Chan, Yun-Fat Chow, and Leslie Cheung – were among the stars who dominated Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s. I have briefly mentioned Jackie Chan above. Leslie Cheung will be further discussed in the chapter on Cantopop, but it should be emphasized here that without films like A Better Tomorrow, A Chinese Ghost Story, and Rouge, he would not have established a sound basis for his acting career, which matured in Kar-Wai Wong’s Days of Being Wild (1990) and Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (1993). (In the section ‘Taiwan Cinema’ in Chinese Film Stars, the actresses Ivy Ling [aka Ling Bo] and Brigitte Lin actually gained stardom, at least partially, through Hong Kong cinema. Ivy Ling’s Shaw Brothers films from the 1950s to the 1970s earned her fame across Asia, and Brigitte Lin, albeit having become famous with her Taiwanese romantic melodramas in the 1970s, further developed her stardom with a variety of stylish and classy performances in Hong Kong films, such as Love Massacre, All The Wrong Spies, The Other Side of a Gentleman, and Peking Opera Blues mentioned above.) For the sake of brevity, I will only very briefly discuss Yun-Fat Chow here. Unlike other international Hong Kong film stars like Jackie Chan, who stunned the world with actioners, Yun-Fat Chow touched on various genres from the start of his film career. In her ground-breaking study of Chow’s stardom, Lin Feng called Chow ‘a versatile actor who has starred in films spanning a wide range of genres, including but not limited to melodrama, comedy, thrillers and Westerns’.51 Known locally as ‘box office poison’ due to the unpopularity of his early films, such as Massage Girls (1976) and Miss O (1977),52 he was not actually able to get rid of his bad name even after he became even more popular in the television sector and more productive 50 Mary Farquhar and Zhang Yingjin, eds., Chinese Film Stars (London and New York, Routledge, 2010). 51 Lin Feng, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), pp. 1–2. 52 Feng, Chow Yun-fat and Territories of Hong Kong Stardom, p. 34.

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in the early 1980s. His TVB drama The Bund (1980), for example, was a masterpiece, but his film career did not benefit from his television glitz, at least in terms of the box office. Although his outstanding performance in The Story of Woo Viet and Hong Kong 1941, among others, made him a much sought-after actor among local directors, Chow did not completely turn his career around until A Better Tomorrow. As noted above, Mabel Cheung said he could afford to be cast in An Autumn’s Tale because A Better Tomorrow had not yet premiered when he signed the contract. Although A Better Tomorrow inaugurated a new genre of ‘hero films’ in Hong Kong in the late 1980s, Chow continued to be a versatile actor, starring in, on top of his signature hero films, comedies such as The Eighth Happiness, melodramas such as All About Ah-Long, and the biopic Cherry Blossoms (1988). In the last year of the decade, he also had two important films, God of Gamblers and The Killer (1990). The former injected comic elements into a gambler thriller, which brought the genre to new heights. As regards to international impact, however, it was his collaboration with John Woo in The Killer that paved the way for his Hollywood career in the 1990s.53 In this Woo signature ‘gun-fu’ film, among those which triggered the second American reception of Hong Kong action cinema,54 Chow’s acting talent and, perhaps more critically, spectacular shooting gestures fascinated Western audiences, which prompted The Los Angeles Times to hail him as ‘the coolest actor in the world’ in the 1990s, and in recognition of his success, the Mayor of Chicago in the United States designated both 10 February 1990 and 12 January 1998 as ‘Yun-Fat Chow Day’.55 These achievements perfectly sum up the impact of Hong Kong film stars in the 1980s, which helped the film industry scale new heights, becoming ‘the coolest Asian cinema in the world’ towards the end of this decade of pop.

Not Yet a Fallen City After an unprecedentedly swift growth, the momentum of Hong Kong cinema started fading before the end of the 1980s. The total box office record 53 For a detailed analysis of The Killer, refer to Kenneth E. Hall, John Woo’s The Killer (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009). 54 Poshek Fu and David Desser, ‘Introduction,’ The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 4; for a detailed discussion of the first American reception, refer to David Desser, ‘The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception,’ in The Cinema of Hong Kong, pp. 19–43. 55 Chu, Found in Transition, pp. 42–43.

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of Hong Kong films dropped from HK$1,024,767,649 in 1988 to $878,568,564 in 1989. Although it briefly bounced back to HK$1,240,173,432 in 1992, it fell again in the 1990s. Year

Total Box Office

No. of Films

Audience Attendance

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997

184,303,468 241,911,574 404,116,470 411,229,507 560,817,765 608,754,954 640,352,200 777,252,569 1,024,767,649 878,568,564 936,274,104 1,038,493,508 1,240,173,432 1,146,149,208 973,496,699 785,270,344 686,363,824 545,875,933

143 120 107 112 103 97 87 75 117 119 121 126 210 234 187 153 116 88

22,558,564 23,039,198 32,775,058 30,082,627 34,682,608 35,127,233 32,372,721 38,862,628 45,044,732 35,612,832 35,670,848 35,001,449 37,581,013 32,285,893 23,457,752 17,450,452 13,837,980 15,121,217

‘The box office of overall Hong Kong movies (including both local production and co-production with Mainland partners) reached a record high of HK$1,240 million in 1992,’ to borrow from a document prepared by the Research Office of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region that summed up the trend, ‘but it then plummeted by a cumulative of around 80% in the next fifteen years to a low of only HK$220 million in 2007.’56 As for audience attendance, it went into decline from its historical high of 45,044,732 in 1988, and by 1992 it bounced back to only 37,581,013 before dropping again.57A structural problem had appeared, 56 Cited from Chi-Fai Cheung, ‘Challenges of the Film Industry in Hong Kong,’ Research Office, Information Services Division Legislative Council Secretariat, 23 March 2016: https://www.legco. gov.hk/research-publications/english/essentials-1516ise13-challenges-of-the-film-industry-inhong-kong.htm. 57 Figures cited from Ching-Wai Chan 陳清偉, The Structure and Marketing Analysis of Hong Kong Film Industry 香港電影工業結構及市場分析 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Film Bi-Weekly Publishing, 2000), p. 36.

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which some attributed to the proliferation of compact discs while others to the shoddy quality of crudely made films. After the Hong Kong New Wave, Cinema City, D &B and other pioneers pushed Hong Kong film production to new heights at the box office, critical acclaim and international fame, Hong Kong cinema began to slow down in the 1990s although, indeed, its glorious era did not end in 1989. If the death of Hong Kong television was a hot topic around 1990, as mentioned in the previous chapter, that of Hong Kong cinema came a bit later, which, when compared to television, showed a similar trajectory with a slightly delayed decline phase. In 1995, the November issue of Ming Pao Monthly featured a special issue entitled ‘The Death of Hong Kong Cinema’. (Some critics said that ‘the death knell of Hong Kong cinema had already begun to toll’ in 1993 ‘when Jurassic Park beat out local films to dominate the box office.’58) All in all, while the 1980s saw an unprecedented proliferation of Hong Kong films, the beginning of the end of a glorious era of Hong Kong cinema was also felt towards the end of the decade. Having said that, bookended by two major incidents, the 1980s was a decade of uncertainties and anxieties. After Sir Murray MacLehose, the then Hong Kong Governor, made his visit to Beijing in 1979, the 1997 handover issue loomed over Hong Kong. Before the end of the decade, the June 4th Incident generated a new wave of emigration in Hong Kong. In between was the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in December 1984, which wrote the future of Hong Kong after 1997 on the wall. Perhaps because stars shine brightest in the darkest nights, the 1980s was a time when Hong Kong’s multimedia stardom glowed undimmed through the decade and beyond. ‘The sense of crisis is no longer a hidden danger but a pressing reality,’ as rightly noted by veteran Hong Kong film critic Sek Kei in his recapitulation of the achievements and crises of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s, and ‘it has fostered a sense of common purpose – that people in the same boat must help each other – and the idea that a common medium is needed to give vent to collective feelings. This common medium is the cinema.’59 During the course of the decade, Hong Kong cinema provided a medium through which the collective feelings of the people were presented and represented in 58 Helen Hok-Sze Leung, ‘Love In The City: The Placing of Intimacy in Urban Romance Films,’ in Esther M.K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti and Esther C.M. Yau (eds.), A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), p.265. In a slightly different sense, Stephen Teo argued that The Wicked City (1992) directed by Peter Mak and produced by Tsui Hark ‘marked the end of Hong Kong cinema.’ Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film Institute), p.252. 59 Sek, ‘Achievement and Crisis,’ p. 54.

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various manners. Tsui Hark’s nihilistic Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980), which was about a distraught generation of Hong Kong youngsters at a shaky juncture when the city did not know the precise shape of its future, captured audiences with its distressed, restless Hong Kong in the film. Ann Hui’s The Story of Woo Viet and Boat People, both about Vietnam, were seen as metaphors of the future of Hong Kong at that juncture. Home at Hong Kong (1983), directed by Hoi-Lam King, tackled reality from another perspective. Branded as the ‘1st movie that takes up the issue of the future of Hong Kong’,60 this film (starring Andy Lau) touched sensitive issues related to the Communist takeover, Hong Kongers’ emigration, and illegal mainland immigrants, exposing the harsh reality faced by Hong Kong people who were deeply unsettled by Sino-British negotiations on their future after 1997. The year 1984 was an important year to note indeed. If Home at Hong Kong was the first chapter of Hong Kong cinema’s blatant consideration of the city’s future and its people’s anxiety, the productions in 1984, in the heat of the Sino-British negotiations, dealt squarely and openly with the city’s future after its reversion to China. There were different imaginaries, ranging from the metaphor of the ‘fallen city’ (such as the Hong Kong in Love in a Fallen City and Hong Kong 1941 and the Shanghai in Shanghai Blues) and mainland-phobia (such as cross-border criminals in Long Arm of the Law) to the mainland root-searching trip in Ho Yim’s Homecoming (1984). In the subsequent year, Mable Cheung’s The Illegal Immigrant touched the raw nerves of Hong Kong people who had come to feel the need to consider leaving the territory because of the uncertainties after the signing of the Joint Declaration. This issue was picked up by Henry Fong in his semidocumentary-styled Just Like Weather (1986), which was about a couple who had different opinions towards emigration to the United States (the literal translation of the Chinese title is ‘American Heart’). It was against this historical backdrop that A Better Tomorrow inspired Hong Kong people when Yun-Fat Chow told his big brother Tommy Tam that he had struggled hard because he wanted to take back the things that he had lost. Towards the end of the film, Chow had the chance to flee, but he decided to return to save Tam, and – I remember vividly my experience of this in a full theatre – the audience was overly exuberant when Chow made a U-turn on his speedboat. Although Chow died in the film, Hong Kong, at least Hong Kong cinema, seemed to see a better tomorrow. Not only did A Better Tomorrow launch Yun-Fat Chow full-throttle into the world of film 60 Cited from Wei Junzi 魏君子, Sprays in Light and Shadow: Memories of Hong Kong Movie Contexts 光影裏的浪花：香港電影脈絡回憶 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa, 2019), p. 53.

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stardom, it also marked the beginning of a series of Hong Kong imaginaries in its sequels as well as other ‘hero’ films. A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon, directed by Tsui Hark, in which the director took the story back to Saigon where he was born and raised, is a good example. The cryptic Chinese subtitle – the literal translation is ‘Song of Sunset’ – seems to tell something more about the anxiety of Hong Kong people. Interestingly, at the beginning of the decade, Yun-Fat Chow fled from Vietnam as Woo Viet in Ann Hui’s masterpiece, and at the end of the decade, he returned to Saigon as Brother Mark. Hong Kong people were still deeply concerned about their future after the 1997 handover, but Chow and Hong Kong cinema had already acquired international fame throughout the decade. The female lead, Anita Mui, had also sparkled brightly despite (or because of) the gloomy future of the city. Although the Cantopop diva had been named Best Supporting Actress at the 4th Hong Kong Film Awards with Behind the Yellow Line (1984), she did not turn her lacklustre performance in the film sector around until Stanley Kwan’s Rouge, which won her Best Actress awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Film Festival in 1988 and the 1989 Asia-Pacific Film Festival. Adapted from Lilian Li’s eponymous novel, Rouge was a paranormal romance between a courtesan and a playboy in the 1930s. They committed suicide due to family pressure, but in the end only Mui died. More than 50 years later, she came back to look for her lover because she could not find him in the underworld. By reason of time setting, there were many contrasts between the Hong Kong in the 1930s and the Hong Kong in the 1980s. In this sense, Rouge was among the most representative ‘nostalgic’ Hong Kong films, and it was ‘nostalgic’ not, as astutely noted by Rey Chow, ‘for the past as it was; rather they are, simply by their sensitivity to the movements of temporality, nostalgic in tendency’: ‘Only the sense of loss it projects is definite.’61 This sense of loss spawned a sense of nostalgia, on the one hand, and an aura of fin de siècle, on the other, which prompted many Hong Kongers to flee the territory before the handover, as evinced in the It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World series. Hong Kong’s glamorous stardom in the 1980s was built in a blissfully uncertain, if not decadent, atmosphere. If we borrow Leo Ou-fan Lee’s argument about decadence and romances in a fallen city,62 ‘glamorous decadence’ was also a key notion to understanding Hong Kong cinema in the 61 Rey Chow, Ethics After Idealism: Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 147. 62 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 232–305.

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1980s. Yun-Fat Chow’s special traits as ‘the coolest actor in the world’ were displayed, at least in part, in the special historical context of the 1980s: from the diasporic Woo Viet to the playboy in a fallen city, from Brother Mark who wanted to take back all that he had lost to a Hong Kong immigrant in New York. Brother Mark, among others, enthralled countless fans across the world with his determination to reclaim what he had lost in addition to, of course, his charismatic style. Quentin Tarantino, the self-proclaimed ‘student of Hong Kong cinema’ who watched many Hong Kong action flicks when he was working at the video rental store Video Archives in Manhattan Beach in the 1980s,63 made it clear in an interview that he was fascinated by Brother Mark’s style: ‘If an action movie is doing its job, you should want to dress like the hero. After I saw Chow Yun-Fat in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow Part II, I immediately bought a long coat and glasses and walked around with a toothpick in my mouth.’64 So did many Hong Kong fans. It is well known that Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) was inspired by the final section of City on Fire (a similar example would be Robert Rodriguez’s gunplay scenes in The Killer in his Desperado [1995]).65 To sum up by borrowing Law Kar’s words in his introduction to the study of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s, it was a decade of prosperity: ‘There were advances in technique, production values and in the broadening of the market. The world, too, was gradually paying attention to Hong Kong cinema.’66 Having witnessed these advances, I came to take great pride in being a big fan of Hong Kong cinema.

63 Kavita Daswani, ‘Quentin Tarantino, Self-proclaimed ‘Student of Hong Kong Cinema’ Talks the Making of The Hateful Eight,’ South China Morning Post, 15 February 2016. 64 Cited from an interview with Playboy in 1994, The Quentin Tarantino Archives: https://wiki. tarantino.info/index.php/Playboy_Interview_1994; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 65 Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover, City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema (London and New York: Verso, 1999), p. 35. 66 Law Kar, ‘Introduction,’ Hong Kong Cinema in the Eighties, p. 12.

3

The Sound of Chinese Cool: Do You See the City Sing? In its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, Cantopop defined the look, feel and – with its lush, ultra-refined production values – even the sound of Chinese cool.1

Abstract The 1980s saw a surge in Hong Kong’s pop music scene, which witnessed a paradigm shift on several fronts: idol business, cross-media and crosscultural hybridizations, and the concert industry. Having gathered enough momentum in the 1970s, Cantopop became firmly established as a pop music product for the consumption of the majority of the listening and viewing public in Hong Kong, as well as Chinese communities across the world. Hong Kong Cantopop, while unabashedly commercial, remained diversified and hybridized, possessed of creative agency. This chapter examines how Cantopop turned into the trendsetter of Chinese pop music, becoming a multibillion-dollar pop industry acclaimed as “the Chinese cool”. Keywords: hybridizations, megastars, music awards, concert industry, music magazines

The Making of a New Epoch 1984 was an important year in the history of Hong Kong, as I have argued elsewhere.2 A taxi strike, during which angry drivers ‘occupied’ main roads 1 Geoff Burpee, ‘As Sun Sets on British Empire in Hong Kong, Industry Gears for Return to China,’ Billboard 108, no. 43 (October 26, 1996): APQ-1. 2 This chapter is an expanded and revised version of Yiu-Wai Chu, ‘Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong Cantopop: 1984,’ in Made in Hong Kong: Studies in Popular Music, eds. Anthony Fung and Alice Chik (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), pp. 21–32; parts of it have also appeared in

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_CH03

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to protest against a proposed steep increase in registration and license fees, triggered a night of rioting in Mong Kok, the busiest district in Hong Kong, on 13 January. It was the first major riot since 1967 in the territory. In fact, the social unrests plaguing it had been brewing for years. The early 1980s was a time of uncertainty for the city and its people, as their future after 1997 was still under negotiation. The infamous tumble of Margaret Thatcher, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on the steps of the Great Hall of the People after her meeting with Deng Xiaoping, the then leader of the People’s Republic of China, in Beijing on 24 September 1982 was seen as presaging the fall of British governance in Hong Kong. The people’s confidence in the city’s future hung by a thread, and subsequently the stock and property markets plummeted to rock bottom. The Sino-British Joint Declaration was formally signed by the People’s Republic of China and the United Kingdom on 19 December 1984, and Hong Kong people finally faced the reality that the then British colony’s return to its motherland in 1997 was inevitable. Despite the Hong Kong people’s anxiety about their future throughout that year, however, Ackbar Abbas’s famous notion about Hong Kong – ‘doom and boom’ (‘the more frustrated or blocked the aspirations to “democracy” are, the more the market blooms’3) – was perfectly applicable to the development of Hong Kong pop culture back then. I have argued that 1974 was the watershed of the history of the development of Cantopop (Cantonese pop songs). 4 Following that year, Cantopop, which was generally seen as fundamentally inferior to English and Mandarin pop songs, began to develop into the dominant music genre not only in Hong Kong but also in Chinese communities across the world. It is commonly believed that the received grass-roots image of Cantopop of the 1950s and 1960s was transformed by Sam Hui and Sandra Lang in 1974, when their ‘Games Gamblers Play’ (on Hui’s eponymous album) and ‘A Love Tale between Laughter and Tears’ (aka ‘A Fatal Irony’ on Lang’s album Luckily It’s Sunday Again) saw success out of the blue. However, it is necessary to note that in the same year, Sam Hui still released English pop songs for his English album The Morning After. Also in 1974, Joseph Koo won the first Hong Kong Pop Song Contest organized by Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) with his ‘Shau Ha Ha’ Chapter Four ‘An Age of Glory: The 1980s,’ Yiu-Wai Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), pp. 69–104. 3 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 5. 4 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, p. 8.

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(sung by Sandra Lang in Mandarin and English), and the runner-up was the English song ‘L-O-V-E Love’ (sung by The Wynners; melody and lyrics by James Wong). The winner of the second Hong Kong Pop Song Contest in 1975 was Chelsea Chan’s English song ‘Dark Side of Your Mind’, and most of the other entries were English pop songs as well. The International Federation of Phonographic Industry Hong Kong (IFPIHK) introduced the first Gold Disc Awards presentation in 1977, in which only four of the sixteen gold discs were Cantopop albums – The Private Eyes, Jumping Ash, G-Men 75, and Happy Every Year – and the others were two Mandapop (Mandarin pop songs) and ten English albums. It was true that the rapid economic development in the early 1970s in Hong Kong ‘led to the rise of a local popular culture expressed in film, music and television shows’, and ‘[m]any local people became proud of Hong Kong’s hybrid status.’5 However, the localization of Hong Kong pop music – the rise of Cantopop being sung in the mother tongue of most Hong Kong people – was also seen as a creative hybridization of different music cultures, and thus it was a localization with global characteristics. Alan Tam, who kicked off his singing career with the local band The Wynners and later became a Cantopop King in the 1980s, was a good example of this localization (see below). In 2014, Guangdong Radio and Television masterminded a Cantonese music show entitled More Echo the More I Sing in Cantonese. The consultants of the show, veteran Hong Kong lyricist Peter Lai and disc jockey and producer Siu-Bo Chan, said that they wanted to promote Cantopop with the show: ‘Singing Cantopop classics is related to the mood of the age – not only do we have the songs of “that epoch,” we also invite singers of “that epoch” to sing them.’6 The age that they were referring to was the 1980s, the golden epoch of Cantopop. In 2015, veteran Hong Kong disc jockey Lawrence Cheng hosted a new radio programme for Voice of Guangdong Cities FM103.6, and the lyrics of its theme song, ‘More Echo the More I Sing in Cantonese’, were penned by Cantopop lyric master Kok-Kong Cheng (composed and sung by George Lam): ‘The spectacular pomp of pop was unforgettably epoch-making.’7 In regard to ‘epoch making’, it is widely agreed among Cantopop researchers that 1974 was the watershed of a new epoch, thanks to the unexpectedly well-received Cantopop sung be Sandra 5 John Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Lanham: Rowman & Littlef ield, 2007), pp. 168–169. 6 Cited from ‘The Guangdong Version of I Am a Singer’ 廣東版我是歌手 (in Chinese), Top Magazine, 14 December 2014: http://topmagazine.hk/?p=889; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 7 My translation from the Chinese lyrics of ‘More Echo the More I Sing in Cantonese’ 粵唱 越響.

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Lang and Sam Hui.8 Although there were Cantonese songs long before 1974, they were generally seen as inferior to English and Mandarin songs, and it was not until 1974 that Hong Kong audiences saw the dawning of a new epoch. Having said that, it is also important to note that this new epoch was by no means made at one stroke. There is no denying that the year 1974 turned a new page in the history of Cantopop, but in the mid- to late 1970s, English and even Mandarin songs were still fashionable, albeit they were gradually taken over by Cantopop. The unofficial anthem of Hong Kong, ‘Below the Lion Rock’, sung by Roman Tam (melody by Joseph Koo and lyrics by James Wong), was released in 1979, which was a symbol of the formation of Hong Kong cultural identity, as well as the dawning of a new epoch of Hong Kong pop culture. The latter half of the 1970s was a time when Cantopop gradually accumulated momentum, and the 1980s was a time when it matured and further developed later into the ‘Chinese cool’. In other words, it followed a largely similar upward trajectory as in Hong Kong cinema. In the late 1970s, the Hong Kong Cantopop industry developed very quickly. The huge expansion of its market size and activity gave birth to new institutions such as the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong Ltd. (CASH; 1977), and new Cantopop programmes and pop charts such as Radio Television Hong Kong’s (RTHK) Top Ten Gold Songs were established. The hybridization of Cantopop was also boosted by cross-media synergies. ‘Games Gamblers Play’ and ‘A Love Tale between Laughter and Tears’ were theme songs of the film and television programme bearing the same titles, respectively. The massive popularity of television programme theme songs directly triggered the Cantopop craze in the mid-1970s, whereas the Hong Kong New Wave in the film industry, generated by young directors who first developed their careers in the television sector, sparked widespread enthusiasm for film songs. Michael Kwan’s ‘An Extra in Life’ (on the album Extras by various artists, 1978) and George Lam’s ‘The Butterfly Murderers’ (on his album The Passenger, 1979), among others, were good examples of the theme songs of the Hong Kong New Wave. However, owing to the fact that television theme songs were predominant back then, a number of Cantopop singers were actually television stars, such as Adam Cheng and Liza Wang. Even Sam Hui, Sandra Lang, and other pop singers such as Roman Tam were veterans. In the late 1970s, record companies found that 8 For example, James Wong (aka Jum-sum Wong 黃湛森), The Rise and Fall of Cantopop: A Study of Hong Kong Popular Music 1949–1997 粵語流行曲的發展與興衰：香港流行音樂研究 1949-1997 (in Chinese), PhD dissertation (Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong, 2003).

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they had an exceptional opportunity to test the swiftly expanding market for new rising stars. Eyeing the enormous market of teenage fans, they made concerted efforts to nurture young Cantopop idol singers towards the end of the 1970s. Danny Chan and the legendary Leslie Cheung were among the most successful cases of a rising generation of Cantopop stars. The film Encore (1980), which featured the two rising stars (Leslie Cheung did not have a chance to fully reveal his exceptional talents until a few years later though) was a perfect example of the creative synergies of film, Cantopop, and the rise of teen idols. At the turn of the decade, there were new singers, new composers and lyricists, and new genres that injected new vitality into an industry that had almost been in retreat by then. If the upsurge in interest in Cantopop began in 1974, it was in the 1980s that ‘a gradually built and soon matured stardom-making system reigned Hong Kong’s entertainment industry.’9

New Stars and New Cross-media Synergies Thanks to the groundwork laid in the 1970s, Cantopop had begun its upward path by the late 1970s. The fresh and vigorous cross-media and cross-cultural exchanges in the 1980s provided the right ambiance for the rise of Cantopop stars. These stars brought unprecedented success to the industry, developing it into a highly profitable cross-media industry: film, television, commercials, and idol worshipping. With the synergies among different media, new Cantopop superstars had more energy and power to dazzle Chinese audiences worldwide. To echo my discussion on television, I will begin with young idol singers Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the momentum of the quickly developing television industry gradually slowed down in the late 1970s. Closely related to television, the Cantopop industry also had to find new energies to further develop, so young idol singers such as Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung, who were handpicked by music companies during music competitions hosted by TVB and Rediffusion Television (RTV), had a chance to release their debut albums in the late 1970s. Danny Chan completely stole the limelight with his debut album, First Love/Tears for You (1979), comprised of six English and six Cantonese songs, among which the main plug Cantonese love song, ‘Tears for You’ (melody by Danny Chan and lyrics by Kok-Kong Cheng), was awarded 9 Klavier J. Wang, Hong Kong Popular Culture: Worlding Film, Television, and Pop Music (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 372.

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one of RTHK’s Ten Gold Songs of the year. Chan really set the Thames on fire with his subsequent Cantopop album, Encore (aka A Few Minutes Date with Danny Chan, 1980), which won the Platinum Disc title (with sales of more than 50,000 copies) at the 5th Hong Kong Gold Disc Awards presentation in 1981. This album was a good example of the synergy generated across pop music and cinema in the early 1980s. The two major plugs on that album, ‘Encore’ and ‘A Few Minutes Date’, were especially well received among young fans like me, and both were in one way or another related to Danny Chan’s films. ‘Encore’ (melody by Danny Chan and lyrics by Kok-Kong Cheng) was the theme song of the eponymous teen film starring Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung, and Paul Chung, and ‘A Few Minutes Date’ was later included in Chan’s subsequent film Job Hunter (aka On Trial) (1981; co-starring Leslie Cheung). Other songs in that film, such as ‘Having You’ and ‘Sunflower’, were included in his 1981 album Danny Chan. Danny Chan was so adored by young fans that TVB invited him to star in its teen drama Breakthrough, and the theme songs ‘Breakthrough’ and ‘Ripples’ were collected in his award-winning album Danny Chan’s Breakthrough and Greatest Hits (1982). The making of the young idol singer was completed with the 1982 album Confiding, in which his creative Cantonese rendition of the 1957 Mandarin classic ‘Take Care of Yourself Tonight’ (melody by Fu-ling Wang and lyrics by Kok-Kong Cheng) won the AGB (Audits Great Britain) Audience Survey Most Popular Song Award at the 1st Jade Solid Gold Awards presentation (1983; held in January 1984). Danny Chan fully displayed his personal charisma by modernizing an oldie with elegance and style. Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung were two remarkable young stars rising in the same period, but the latter was eclipsed by the former until his album The Wind Continues to Blow (1983). In the subsequent year, Leslie Cheung released his career-turning album Leslie, in which the massive hit ‘Monica’ turned him into a long-time contender of Alan Tam throughout the rest of the decade. The much-rumoured rivalry between the two megastars created, in my own opinion, a positive atmosphere for the development of the Cantopop industry. While their prominence continued to rise, Cantopop reached its highest glory, with fans across the world. After winning second prize at the Asian Music Contest held by RTV with his interpretation of Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ in 1977, Leslie Cheung entered the entertainment business as a singer and an actor. As RTV had always lagged behind market leader TVB in terms of viewership ratings, he did not receive due attention either as a signer or as an actor. To start his career as an underdog in the market, Leslie Cheung had a steep mountain to climb. His first two albums in 1977 were both English ones: the single I Like Dreamin’ and the album

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Leslie-Daydreamin’. In 1979, he released his first Cantopop album, Lover’s Arrow, the title of which was drawn from the theme song of an RTV martial arts drama. Out of the twelve songs on the album, five were theme songs of RTV dramas. As RTV was far less accepted than TVB, it was not surprising that, even with Leslie Cheung’s talent, the album was not well received. He did have eye-catching performances in the film sector with, among others, Encore, Job Hunter, and Nomad (1982) (he sang the theme song of Nomad – ‘Wandering’ [melody by Violet Lam and lyrics by Long Shek]), but as a teen idol, he had to develop his entertainment career in the shadow of Danny Chan in the early 1980s. The wind began to change when he moved to TVB and the Capital Artists record label in 1982. He had more chances to play a major role in swiftly developing Hong Kong cinema, also singing the theme songs of films in which he was the male lead, such as Drummer (1983). In 1983, Leslie Cheung released one of his greatest hits ‘The Wind Continues to Blow’ – a cover version of Momoe Yamaguchi’s classic J-pop (Japanese popular music) song ‘The Other Side of Goodbye’ – in an album bearing the same title in 1983. That album also included the theme songs of the film Drummer, which were also quite successful. He effectively built up a new image in that year, but, contrary to its huge popularity, ‘The Wind Continues to Blow’ did not win any awards at the end of the year. During a 1989 talk show co-hosted by James Wong, one of the godfathers of Cantopop, Leslie Cheung made it clear that he thought – and so did I – he could win an award with that song, but in the end, he was greatly disappointed.10 It was fortunate for Hong Kong music fans that he turned his bitter disappointment into phenomenal success in the subsequent year. 1984 was an important year in the career of Leslie Cheung, and it was also a defining stage of the Cantopop industry. Cheung’s performance in the TVB drama Once upon an Ordinary Girl and the film Behind the Yellow Line (co-starring Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui and produced by Jimmy Lo) were both able to win audience recognition. With respect to his music career, the star passed the acid test with his first golden hit, ‘Monica’, and the cream rose to the top at long last. After the spectacular performance of his award-winning ‘Monica’ at the Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Awards presentation in 1984, Leslie Cheung, unlike other award winners who sang an additional new song, chose to sing ‘The Wind Continues to Blow’. And the wind did continue to blow, even after he committed suicide after a long struggle with depression, plunging 10 Leslie Cheung, ‘Leslie Cheung 1989 Interview’, Celebrity Talk Show《今夜不設防》(in Chinese), ATV, 25 June 1989: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM-vYonPZHk; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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to his death from the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong on 1 April in 2003. His heightened charisma later emerged as the posthumous fandom Hou Rongmi (‘post 1 April Leslie fandom’).11 In the 1980s, the Cantopop industry witnessed the dawning of a new era of two rival megastars: Leslie Cheung and Alan Tam. Alan Tam embarked on his music venture with the local band The Wynners, performing English songs at first. He later developed his career as a television and film actor in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Having released his first solo Cantopop album, Naughty Boy, which was quite successful in sales (it won the IFPIHK Gold Disc award in 1979), he had the chance to move to Taiwan after the success of If I Were for Real (1981), the film that earned him the Best Actor award at the 18th Golden Horse Awards. He did not give up the Cantopop market during his tenure in Taiwan, releasing his second and third Cantopop albums Crazy in Love with You and Can’t Forget You in 1980 and 1981, respectively. The title song of the latter, ‘Can’t Forget You’ (a cover version of ‘Lover’ by the Japanese vocalist Mayumi Itsuwa), was a great success, and ‘Imagining the Future’ won him an RTHK Top Ten Gold Songs award. Can’t Forget You won the Platinum Disc award (50,000 units), with a sales volume of more than four times that of the minimum requirement. However, his fourth album, My Darling, My Goddess, compared with his previous ones, was less well received, although the song ‘Rain and Sorrow’, a cover version of the Japanese song ‘Revival’, composed by Mayumi Itsuwa, was very well-liked by audiences. With his fifth Cantopop album, Spring . . .The Late Spring, the greatest hit was the title song ‘The Late Spring’, which was, again, a Japanese cover version. The theme song ‘Illusion’ for the film Esprit d’amour (1983) was also included in the album, contributing a creative synergy between his film and music careers. Alan Tam’s subsequent album, Fog of Love, was released on 28 January 1984, just two weeks after the night of violence in Mong Kok. This album ‘not only turned a new page in his career but also a new chapter in the history of Cantopop’,12 as seven out of the eleven songs entered pop charts. His background in Western music, band culture, and Taiwanese media, together with cover versions of English, Japanese, and Korean songs, contributed to a creative hybridization of different musical and cultural elements in his Cantopop, and hence his upward momentum. For example, ‘The Late Spring’ – title track of Spring…The Late Spring – was 11 Yiman Wang, ‘A Star Is Dead: A Legend Is Born: Practicing Leslie Cheung’s Posthumous Fandom,’ in Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, eds. Sean Redmond and Su Holmes (London: Sage, 2007), p. 333. 12 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, p. 78.

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a cover version of Inaba Akira’s Japanese pop song ‘Thanks Summer’ (see below for more discussion). The year 1984 saw a continued increase in the upward momentum of Alan Tam, if not the Cantopop industry as a whole. The impact of his album Root of Love, released later in July of that year, was even greater than his previous one, and seven out of the ten songs flew up pop charts. Root of Love also relied heavily on cover versions: Japanese, Korean, as well as Italian. At that time there were two major pop music awards presentations: the government broadcaster RTHK’s Top Ten Gold Song Awards and TVB’s Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Awards. Alan Tam had two gold song awards (‘Love in Late Autumn’ and ‘Root of Love’, both on the album Root of Love) in the former and three in the latter – the two mentioned plus ‘Illusion’ – resulting in his being the biggest winner of the year. TVB, the market leader in the television industry, formally christened him a new megastar by presenting him its first ever Most Popular Male Singer award at the1984 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Awards presentation (held in January 1985). This was TVBs second award ceremony, and there were no Most Popular Singer awards in the first one that was held in January 1984. In other words, 1984 was the first time TVB had hosted a pop music awards presentation, and it was also later in that year that it decided to launch the Most Popular Singer awards, which were not abolished until 2017. The Cantopop diva Anita Mui was the brightest female star alongside Leslie Cheung and Alan Tam. After winning the 1st New Talent Singing Competition hosted by TVB in 1982, Mui signed with Capital Artists and therefore had many chances to thrive in TVB-related projects. Although she showed enormous potential with her first hit, ‘Debt of the Heart’, the theme song of the 1982 TVB drama Soldier of Fortune, the record company did not show full confidence in the production of her first album, Debt of the Heart. Side B of the album included the songs of The Little Tigers, a Hong Kong boy band that had also participated in the New Talent Singing Competition. It is interesting to note that in 1983, the Cantopop diva sang the theme song of a TVB-purchased programme based on the Japanese manga Dr. Slump. Although the song did not match perfectly with the mature style of the songstress, it earned her increasing fame, and this influenced the decision by Capital Artists to direct resources to developing her career. Anita Mui did not need long to unveil the talents as a gifted singer. Her first genuine solo album, Crimson Anita Mui (1983), reached five times the sales volume of a platinum disc as per Hong Kong standards. Dubbed ‘Little Paula Tsui’ by the media (because she won the New Talent Singing Competition with Paula Tsui’s classic ‘The Season of Wind’), Anita Mui showed her potential of

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becoming a sui generis ‘ever-changing’ queen before long. While the album featured the hit ‘Dedicate My Heart’, the theme song of the TVB drama Woman on the Beat, and the cover versions of the theme songs of Momoe Yamaguchi’s The Crimson Doubt and The Crimson Shock (TVB-purchased Japanese television dramas), she also showed her flair in handling different styles in the theme songs of the TVB Japanese manga series Queen Millenia. The title of her next album, Leaping in a Spotlight (1984), spoke volumes for her being a gifted stage performer. Her versatility was further proved in the subsequent album entitled Anita Mui (Homecoming) (1985). The album included six theme songs from the TVB drama Summer Kisses Winter Tears, in which Anita Mui was the female lead. The major hit of the album, ‘Homecoming’, the theme song of renowned New Wave director Yim Ho’s film of the same title, was a cover version of the Japanese master Kitarō’s ‘Delight’. Anita Mui handled the tenderness of ‘Homecoming’, almost the opposite of the strong dance beat of ‘Leaping in a Spotlight’, extremely well, which made evident her versatility. Another big hit on that album was ‘Dream Embrace’, the cover version of George Michael’s masterpiece ‘Careless Whisper’. She wore a man’s suit in the music video for ‘Dream Embrace’, and the well-received image was also used for the album cover, which paved the way for her ‘ever-changing’ images in subsequent albums. ‘Bad Girl’ (the album sold eight times more than the average platinum disc) won her not only the title of ‘Madonna of the East’ but also the Most Popular Female Singer at music award ceremonies, and she had a stranglehold on the title in the latter half of the 1980s. With the help of her friend and image designer, Eddie Lau, she turned into an ever-changing diva – from a wicked girl to a lady (her songs ‘Wicked Girl’ and ‘Lady’, respectively) and from tango to samba (her songs ‘Fiery Tango’ and ‘Lost Carnival’, respectively), among others. Anita Mui successfully created a revolutionary image for Cantopop songstresses, which appealed not only to teens but also to mature audiences. As the Hong Kong f ilm market grew rapidly, Cantopop found extra discursive space in Hong Kong cinema. Cross-media synergies, important factors behind the success of Cantopop megastars, had also enhanced the creative hybridizations of their songs. As 1984 was an important year for the development of Cantopop, let me use this as an example. The craze of television songs continued in 1984, although it was gradually replaced by that of film songs. Alan Tam’s ‘Who Can Change?’ (on his album Root of Love) and Leslie Cheung’s ‘Finally You’ll Get Good Luck’ and ‘Once upon an Ordinary Girl’ (both on his album Leslie) were theme songs of TVB dramas. Alan Tam’s ‘Illusion’ (on Fog of Love ) and ‘Root of Love’ (the title track of Root of Love) were the theme songs of the films Esprit d’amour and The Other Side

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of a Gentleman (1984) respectively, in which Alan Tam was the male lead.13 In the towering album Leslie, the song ‘Behind the Yellow Line’, co-sung by Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui (on Leslie Cheung’s 1985 album All Because of You: Summer Best Collections), was the theme song of the 1984 romantic film bearing the same title, starring Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Maggie Cheung. Samantha Lam’s ‘An Encounter’ (on her 1984 album bearing the same title), Julie Sue’s ‘Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale’ (on her 1983 album Papa Can You Hear Me Sing? Original Soundtracks), and Sam Hui and Jenny Tseng’s ‘Love Is Invincible’ (on Sam Hui’s 1984 album Love You Most) – from the 1984 film A Family Affair – were also film songs. Using the 4th Hong Kong Film Awards as an example, the Best Film Song was awarded to ‘An Encounter’, and the other nominees – ‘Homecoming’, ‘Illusion’, and ‘Root of Love’ – were also all-time Cantopop classics. In sum, there were four and five film songs on the winners’ lists at the Top Ten Gold Song Awards and the Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Awards, respectively. As a big fan of both film and popular songs, I was utterly enchanted by the synergy of image and sound in these films.

Institutionalization: New Discursive Spaces Cantopop also found additional space to reach audiences through various media in the 1980s. In July 1982, TVB held the 1st New Talent Singing Competition, which was won by Anita Mui, and it worked closely with the Capital Artists record label thereafter. This competition developed into a platform for new singers, such as David Lui, Alex To, and Andy Hui, to enter the showbiz world throughout the 1980s. Two of the most important new singers were certainly Leon Lai and Sammi Cheng – the second-runner ups at the 5th and 7th Competitions in 1986 and 1988, respectively – who later became a Heavenly King and Queen of Cantopop in the 1990s. As singing competitions were an effective channel to find new talents and increase influence in the music industry, other major media also followed suit. In 1984, RTHK organized the 1st Hong Kong Eighteen Districts Amateur Singing Competition, and it was won by another Heavenly-King-to-be, Jacky Cheung. The champion of the 2nd Competition (renamed Hong Kong Nineteen Districts Amateur Singing Competition), Hacken Lee, also became one of the most important Cantopop singers in the next three to four decades. Asia Television Limited (ATV), a competitor of TVB, also joined the race 13 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 76–78.

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in 1986 with its 1st Future Idol Contest. A noteworthy point is that most contestants chose to sing English songs in singing competitions in the 1970s (such as Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung), but in the 1980s, the majority selected Cantopop, which had become the predominant pop music genre in Hong Kong. Music programmes were no longer restricted to radio stations. TVB’s flagship Cantopop programme Jade Solid Gold, which premiered in October 1981, put the emphasis on Chinese pop songs. Back in 1967, TVB had already produced a programme for young fans entitled Star Show, hosted by the local band Lotus, of which Sam Hui was the mainstay. In the 1970s, there were also other music shows such as RTV’s The Wynners’ Weekly and TVB’s The Wynners’ Rhapsody, but English songs still dominated the music programmes. Jade Solid Gold marked a new and important chapter in Cantopop television programming. The 1st Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Awards was held in January 1984, and the 1984 version (held in January 1985) presented the first awards for the most popular male and female singers. Thereafter, the Jade Solid Gold Awards became the rival of RTHK’s Top Ten Gold Songs Awards. Another important radio station, Commercial Radio, had also organized its 1st Chinese Song Arena Awards based on their pop chart ‘Chinese Song Arena’. After veteran disc jockey Winnie Yu took up the post of general manager of Commercial Radio in 1988, the pop chart was rebranded into ‘Ultimate Song Chart’, and the 1st Ultimate Song Chart Awards presentation (1988) was held in January 1989. These pop charts and awards ceremonies became the key venues at which Cantopop singers measured their own popularity. Furthermore, TVB also launched the new music video programme ‘Your Choice on Sunday’ (later changed to ‘Your Choice on Saturday’ in 1989) in January 1984. The synergy between the images and the songs, which was further enhanced by music videos,14 contributed significantly to the charismatic images of idol singers such as Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung, Alan Tam, and Anita Mui, pushing Hong Kong multimedia stardom to new heights. The swiftly growing market provided incentives for new record labels to enter the Cantopop industry. The late 1970s was a time when many international labels started eyeing the Cantopop market. While big labels such as PolyGram (rebranded from Polydor in 1979), Warner Music Hong Kong (founded in 1978), EMI (founded in 1953, but not really active in Cantopop until signing Roman Tam and Danny Chan in 1979), and CBS Sony (founded in 1978) continued to be market leaders in the 1980s, there were also new 14 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, p. 74.

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local record companies that had entered the Hong Kong market. There were indeed local record companies before the 1980s, such as Crown Records, Wing Hang Records, and Man Chi Records. These companies specialized in veteran Cantopop singers such as Adam Cheng, Liza Wang, and Paula Tsui. In the 1980s, more new local companies had found new opportunities in the expanding market. Some of them were new collaborative projects, which normally had more resources to nurture and/or attract superstars. Capital Artists, for example, was widely known to have a close relationship with TVB. Founded back in 1971, it was restructured in 1982 and later featured rising stars such as Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui. Cinepoly Records, which was founded in 1985 and signed Leslie Cheung in 1986, was a subsidiary of PolyGram and Cinema City the then leading film company in Hong Kong. With Danny Chan as the ‘flagship’ singer, DMI Records was a joint venture between EMI and the listed company Dickson Concepts, which owned the film company D & B Films founded in 1984. Contec Sound was the Cantopop project of the listed company Conic Investment Co., which also owned Conic TV led by TV tycoon Robert Chua. Contec Sound made a big impact on the Cantopop market in the early 1980s by luring superstars Sam Hui, Paula Tsui, and Michael Kwan in 1982, 1983, and 1984, respectively. It was especially well known for its generous investments in path-trailing packaging and promotional strategies. For example, the extravagant double cover of Contec’s debut Cantopop album, Paula Tsui’s New Hits 1982, was a paradigm shift of Cantopop album designs. In addition, Cantopop vinyl discs became ‘colourful’: while Leslie Cheung’s For Your Heart Only was in white, David Lui’s debut album, David Lui (1985), was transparent, and Susanna Kwan’s A New Page was in pearl. Besides new labels supported by large corporations, there were also new labels established by singers, such as Jenfu Records, founded by Jenny Tseng in 1980 (which sounded like the Cantonese name ‘Gold Music Notes’ and was also a combination of Jenny’s name, shortened to Jen, and her husband’s [Alexander] family name, Fu), and Black and White Records, founded by Tina Liu in 1985. Small labels such as IC Records and Sancity Records also had a chance to enter the market, contributing to a greater diversity of music styles. For example, IC Records issued the first album of the band Island in 1985, which, together with the duo Raidas of Sancity Records and other groups, such as Beyond and Tat Ming Pair, triggered a wave of bands and groups in the latter half of the decade. The appearance of new music magazines was also good evidence of the thriving market. In 1975, one year after the 1974 watershed of the history of Cantopop, the inaugural issue of Good Time Magazine was

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published. The f irst issue included mainly news of The Wynners and Chelsea Chan, as the publisher was their manager, Pato Leung. In 1984, a new magazine was founded – the publication of the first issue of New Time Magazine signalled a new era of Hong Kong pop music. After one decade, Good Time Magazine had developed into a leading music magazine that covered a variety of news related to Hong Kong pop music, but New Time Magazine contended against the fame enemy with full-colour printing. In the heat of the J-pop wave, Kyoko Koizumi was selected to appear solo on the cover of its inaugural issue.15 Last but not least, the first Cantopop compact disc for commercial release, Capital Artists Laser Top Picks Vol. 1, was issued in November 1983. 16 It was a collection of greatest hits by Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, Agnes Chan, and Eliza Chan. In 1984, compact discs became more common in Hong Kong and opened new possibilities for the industry, predating the era of the dominance of compact discs. Simply put, the flourishing of multiple discursive spaces in the new media greatly boosted creative hybridizations and multimedia stardom in the Cantopop industry. The above-mentioned institutional developments did provide more discursive space for Cantopop stars to develop, but profit-wise, the concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum wrote the most important chapter of the Cantopop industry in the 1980s. When the time came, the Cantopop wind began to blow, and things seemed to follow it. The inauguration of the Hong Kong Coliseum, a multipurpose indoor arena originally designed for sports activities in 1983, provided an unforeseen opportunity for the entertainment business to further develop, paving the way for Cantopop to usher in a new era in the 1980s.17 In the early 1980s, the growing attractiveness of Cantopop stars made their concerts highly profitable. There were more concerts, but because of the lack of a large-capacity venue, they had to perform at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium, which opened in 1980 with a seating capacity of 3,500. In 1982, for example, Teresa Teng, Michael Kwan, Alan Tam, Danny Chan, and Sam Hui held their own series of concerts there. At that time, the Cantopop concert industry needed a more sizeable venue to fully develop, so to speak. Unexpected at the outset, the Hong Kong Coliseum helped develop a highly prof itable concert industry in 15 For details on these two issues, refer to the Facebook page ‘Hong Kong Old Comics: Collective Memories of the 1970s and the 1980s’: https://www.facebook.com/224780794781790/photos/pc b.301475237112345/301472620445940/?type=3&theater; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 16 Ha-Pak Wong 黃夏柏, Roaming in the 1980s: The Good Old Days of Listening to Cantopop 漫 遊八十年代：聽廣東歌的好日子 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Fei Fan Book, 2017), p. 229. 17 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 82–83.

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Hong Kong, and it later became the pop venue for Hong Kong people. With 12,500 seats, the Hong Kong Coliseum immediately attracted the attention of superstars. After Sam Hui held the first-ever concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum from 5 to 7 May 1983, the venue quickly became the shrine of Cantopop, where singers were ‘fully baptized into stardom’.18 Sam Hui’s concerts were followed by George Lam’s in July and Danny Chan’s in September, and the legendary Teresa Teng was the first female star to hold solo concerts at the Coliseum. In December 1983, she held six concerts there to celebrate the fifteenth year of her singing career. After that, more and more Cantopop stars held their concerts there, followed by Cantopop superstars who staged hundreds of concerts, thus becoming a highly profitable business. 1984 was the year when Alan Tam introduced his record-setting Hong Kong concerts. From 4 to 9 August, he hosted six concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum, which reportedly set a record of attendance at 72,000, thanks to the four-sided stage design, and a megastar was born. (Jenny Tseng held seven concerts from 11 to 17 May 1984, with less attendance caused by her three-sided stage). Emulating the success of Japanese concerts at first, these ‘musical-like concerts’ effectively added local elements and became one of the most distinguishing features of the Hong Kong pop music scene.19 In the mid- to late 1980s, superstars such as Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Paula Tsui held hundreds of concerts at the Coliseum, and the record for the number of consecutive concerts held there was broken almost every year. After Alan Tam’s six consecutive concerts in August 1984, Paula Tsui soon leapfrogged the record, with eight consecutive concerts in February 1985, and then George Lam took the lead, with thirteen consecutive concerts in April 1985. Alan Tam reclaimed the record by holding twenty consecutive concerts in July of the same year. From December 1987 to January 1988, Anita Mui held a then record-breaking twenty-eight consecutive concerts. To sum up the swift development of Cantopop concerts, 1989 was an important year, in which Leslie Cheung held thirty-three shows of his farewell concert, Final Encounter Concert, in December, and Paula Tsui also set a record of thirty-three concerts from 1989 to 1990. In the same year, the highest number of total performances, at thirty-eight, was set by Alan Tam. In the 1980s, Alan Tam held in total more than a hundred 18 Yiu-Fai Chow and Jeroen de Kloet, Sonic Multiplicities: Hong Kong Pop and the Global Circulation of Sound and Image (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2013), p. 111. 19 Arthur Bernstein, Naoki Sekine, and Dick Weissman, The Global Music Industry: Three Perspectives (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 219.

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concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum. ‘Assuming that each ticket [cost] HK$125 on average, the ticket sales for the aggregate attendance of 1,350,271 for the year 1989 amount[ed] to HK$168 million, about half of the total record sales for local songs’20 (not including the HK$2 million from the 3,600-seat Queen Elizabeth Stadium). The concert business had a creative synergy with the music industry indeed. For example, the Leslie Cheung 85 concerts were closely related to Leslie Cheung’s album For Your Heart Only (1985) and the eponymous film. Major hits such as ‘For Your Heart Only’ (melody by Ching Y. Wong and lyrics by James Wong), ‘I Do’ (melody by Michael Lai and lyrics by Kok-Kong Cheng), and ‘Wild Wind’ (melody by Yoshiyuki Ohsawa and lyrics by Richard Lam) effectively enhanced the charming image of Leslie Cheung, which culminated in his concerts. As pointedly noted by Wai-Chung Ho, ‘the emphasis of this type of “show business” [was] on “buying” the visual enjoyment of the entertainers’ stage performance.’21 The Hong Kong Coliseum concerts played a key role in Cantopop’s paradigm shift from audio to visual. When Yiu-Wing Cheung, hailed as the Godfather of Concerts in Hong Kong, passed away in April 2013, many Hong Kong singers mourned bitterly for him. According to Serena Chen, the former agent of Faye Wong and Eason Chan, it was Cheung who had brought Cantopop concerts to another level.22 In short, he was willing to spend big and emulate the success of J-pop concerts, hybridizing Cantopop with them into audio-visual spectacles yet to be experienced by Hong Kong music fans. Cheung’s Yiu-Wing Entertainment continued to organize countless concerts for Cantopop singers, including the Four Heavenly Kings in the 1990s, pushing Cantopop concerts to new heights. However, as regards innovativeness in promoting stardom, it was the concerts in the 1980s that set the stage for Cantopop singers. Actually, the 1980s had also paved the way for some more cross-media synergies, such as commercials and karaoke, which peaked in the 1990s. Given the focus on the 1980s here, I will move on to another important factor of the 1980s: cross-cultural hybridizations, of which J-pop-inspired concerts were good examples.

20 Kai-Cheung Chan, ‘The Media and Telecommunications,’ The Other Hong Kong Report: 1990, eds., Richard Y.C. Wong and Joseph Y.S. Cheng (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1990), p.534. 21 Wai-Chung Ho, ‘Between Globalisation and Localisation: A Study of Hong Kong Popular Music,’ Popular Music 22:2 (May 2003): p. 148. 22 Stuart Lau and Vivienne Chow, ‘Hong Kong’s “Father of Concerts” Cheung Yiu-wing Dies,’ South China Morning Post, 25 March 2014.

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Cross-cultural Hybridizations: Local with Global Characteristics The hybridizations of local and global music elements were not restricted to Cantopop concerts; it was actually behind the rise of Cantopop in the 1970s. Sam Hui, for example, successfully hybridized local Cantopop with global rock and roll, producing creative songs that successfully turned Cantopop into the dominant pop music genre. Cross-cultural hybridizations were also behind the phenomenal rise of Cantopop in the 1980s. Although there were more original songs in the industry in the 1980s, Cantopop still relied heavily on cover versions. Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, and many other pop music award winners were also deeply influenced by foreign pop music. Sam Hui, Michael Kwan, George Lam, and Danny Chan all kicked off their singing careers with English pop songs. Jenny Tseng, Julie Sue, and Sally Yeh used to sing Mandapop before turning to Cantopop. Some of the all-time golden hits mentioned above, such as ‘The Late Spring’, ‘The Wind Continues to Blow’, and ‘The Crimson Doubt’, were adapted from J-pop, and others such as ‘Love in Late Autumn’ and ‘Dream Embrace’ were adapted from Korean and English pop songs, respectively. By virtue of the charisma of these stars, Cantopop effectively appropriated different music cultures and hybridized them into their own creative products, adding a welcome dimension of heterogeneity to the otherwise monotonous mainstream Cantopop industry. The early 1980s was a time when the impact of Japanese pop songs was intensely felt in Hong Kong. Let me use this as an example to briefly illustrate this. ‘Associated with a yearning for a middle class lifestyle which was in line with Japanese popular cultural products’,23 J-pop was well received in Hong Kong, and its Cantonese renditions successfully broadened the fan base of Cantopop. Many of Alan Tam’s and Leslie Cheung’s golden hits were cover versions of J-pop. The two ‘Songs of the Century’24 elected by fans in 1999 – Alan Tam’s ‘Fog of Love’ and Leslie Cheung’s ‘Monica’ – were both cover versions of J-pop songs: ‘For You…’, sung by Mariko Takahashi, and ‘Monica’, sung by Koji Kikkawa, respectively. Out of the eleven songs on Fog of Love, two were cover versions of Kisaburo Suzuki’s melodies (also one from Taiwanese pop and the other eight originally written by local 23 Carolyn S. Stevens, Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity and Power (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 29. 24 In 1999, RTHK masterminded a ‘Song of the Century’ contest for fans to vote for the top ten songs of the twentieth century, and Leslie Cheung’s ‘Monica’ and Alan Tam’s ‘Fog of Love’ were elected, both of which were released in 1984.

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composers), and out of the ten songs on Root of Love, five were Cantonese renditions of J-pop (also one by Italian songwriter Pierluigi Giombini, one by Korean songwriter Hojoon Lee, and the other three originally written by local composers). Out of the twelve songs on Leslie, five were cover versions of J-pop. The use of cover versions was an effective means to meet quickly increasing demand.25 While it is reasonable to say that ‘a Japanese melody line offered the right balance of newness and familiarity,’26 it is equally important to note that although Cantopop was profoundly influenced by J-pop, as perceptively argued by James Wong,27 the Cantopop industry was able to assimilate different elements and styles from different music cultures. Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung, among others, successfully localized these genres with new arrangements and Cantonese lyrics. Although they sang many J-pop cover versions, their English pop song backgrounds gave them the advantage of being able to localize different cultures. In the end, cross-cultural hybridizations provided the impetus for the rapid growth of Cantopop at that important juncture. The influence of foreign music cultures was not just limited to J-pop. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a wave of city folk songs generated by the Taiwanese modern folk songs campaign across the Strait, and these songs created an atmosphere for the emergence of Hong Kong city folk songs. Some Cantopop talents, such as Samantha Lam, attracted the limelight with her folk songs on the album Hong Kong City Folk Songs (1981). The popularity of her folk-pop ‘Kite’ and ‘Episodes of Love’ collected in Hong Kong City Folk Songs Encore (1982) paved her way for entering into the mainstream music industry. Although the craze of folk songs slowed down quickly in 1983, sensitivity towards the city had already exerted an impact on mainstream Cantopop, which was later carried further forward by bands such as Tat Ming Pair in the late 1980s. 1984 was also the year when the prelude of local bands was heard. Shortly after this, a wave of local bands emerged, which later witnessed the rise of band groups such as Beyond and Tat Ming Pair. Besides underground group Blackbird’s East is Red/Generation 1997 and Cicada’s On the Big Road, there was also an important collection entitled Xiang Gang (aka Hong Kong Guitar Competition Compilation) published in 1984. This self-funded album produced by the 25 Bernstein, Sekine, and Weissman, The Global Music Industry, p. 253; see also Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 94–95. 26 Masashi Ogawa, ‘Japanese Popular Music in Hong Kong,’ in Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos, and Aesthetic Industries, eds. Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter, and Brian Shoesmith (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 147. 27 Wong, The Rise and Fall of Cantopop, p. 175.

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music journal Guitar collected the works of winning groups at the Guitar Players Festival held the previous year, in which Beyond and Tats Lau of Tat Ming Pair grabbed the attention of music fans. In 1985, ‘Her Heart’ from the band Island entered RTHK’s Chinese songs pop chart, which marked the entry of not-mainstream bands into the mainstream music industry. Because of the alternative images of these bands and groups, their songs experimented with different music styles and subject matters. For example, the heavy metal of Beyond and the British electronic music of Raidas were rarely heard in mainstream Cantopop before then. As these groups and bands had their own lyricists, who were young and not in the mainstream music industry, their songs injected new sensitivities into Cantopop (e.g., Raidas’s Lin Xi [aka Albert Leung] and Tat Ming Pair’s Keith Siu-kei Chan). To sum things up, the band wave contributed new styles and feelings to the Cantopop industry, which had not just resulted in a ‘heteroglossic’ scene in Hong Kong but also significantly expanded the pop music market in the late 1980s. Within the mainstream music industry, lyrics master Jimmy Lo launched an unofficial ‘non-love songs campaign’ in 1983. Since its advent in the mid-1970s, the Cantopop industry had been dominated by romantic pop songs, and due to the small market size compared with that of the West, the mainstream was so overriding that other subject matters and genres could scarcely survive. In the midst of sentimental love ballads that had overwhelmed mainstream Cantopop for years, Lo decided to force producers to take one ‘non-love song’ for every four songs they asked him to write.28 Alan Tam’s ‘Unyielding’ (on his Fog of Love), one of Lo’s ‘non-love songs’ released in 1984, was a big hit alongside Alan Tam’s romantic ballads on the same album. In addition to Lo’s ‘non-love’ masterpieces, the campaign was echoed by RTHK in 1984 with a ‘Non-Love Lyrics Writing Contest’.29 The winner of the contest, Lin Xi, later became one of the most influential lyricists in not only Hong Kong but also Chinese communities across the world. This showed that, notwithstanding the unabashed commercialization of Cantopop, there was still discursive space for non-mainstream endeavours which, interestingly, made significant contributions to the mainstream in the long term. With the benefit of hindsight, 1984 was an important year as Hong Kong pop songs officially entered the mainland after the ‘open door policy’ in 28 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, p. 88. 29 Chi-Wah Wong 黃志華, Selected Commentaries on Jimmy Lo’s Lyrics 盧國沾詞評選 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co, 2015), p. 113.

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1976 initiated a new era of modern China. Ming-men Cheung, recognized for his Mandarin patriotic songs in Hong Kong, was invited by China Central Television (CCTV) to perform at its Spring Festival Gala, arguably the most influential show in China. According to the director, the 1984 version impressed him the most: ‘When Ming-men Cheung sang this song on the show, everyone there welled up with tears. And next day, everyone was humming the song.’30 Although Ming-men Cheung sang the Mandarin song ‘My Chinese Heart’ (on his 1983 album bearing the same title; melody by Fu-ling Wang and lyrics by James Wong), this was indeed ‘a milestone to have a Hong Kong singer on the stage of CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala at that time’.31 As underscored by the lyricist of ‘My Chinese Heart’, Hong Kong pop music entered the era of ‘two sides of the Strait’32 in 1984. At first, Hong Kong was the centre of Chinese pop music in this new era. From then on, there were more and more interactions between the mainland and Hong Kong. Without a crystal ball, no one could foresee at that time that in less than twenty years the mainland would become the most coveted market of Chinese pop music. In a nutshell, that Cantopop rose to an unrivalled position as the leader in Chinese pop music worldwide could be attributed to the creative hybridizations of different musical and cultural elements, including, among others, cover versions of Western as well as Asian pop songs, alternative music genres, cross-media synergies, and other related activities such as concerts and music award ceremonies. These factors spurred market growth, enabling the emergence of non-mainstream styles such as city folk and band songs, which exerted positive impacts on the diversification of mainstream pop songs. They also facilitated the rise of not only many Cantopop stars but also, more importantly, megastars such as Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, and Anita Mui, who captured and enthralled Chinese music fans across the world with their unmatched charisma. Simply put, Cantopop picked up momentum in the mid to late 1970s, and different dispositions converged to bring it to an unparalleled height in 1984. The rise of Cantopop in the 1970s was ‘a result of its increased hybridity’: ‘the use of cover versions, the hybridization of Chinese and Western elements, the coexistence of Cantonese, classical, and modern Chinese in its lyrics, and the crossover of genres […] changed its soundscape.’33 In other words, 30 Dan Ben-Canaan, ‘The CCTV Spring Festival Gala – 30 Years’ Collective Historical Memory,’ Global Times, 10 February 2010. 31 Ben-Canaan, ‘The CCTV Spring Festival Gala.’ 32 Wong, The Rise and Fall of Cantopop, p. 7. 33 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, p. 68.

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Cantopop was enhanced by multiple hybridities generated by the creative hybridizations of different media genres and music cultures. Hong Kong pop in the 1980s told us that hybridity was ordinary, to paraphrase Raymond Williams’ famous saying. It was not ‘made in Hong Kong’ but ‘hybridized in Hong Kong’, so to speak.34 These hybridities were vital elements behind many Cantopop singers’ meteoric rise to stardom. In this sense, this was no longer ‘the age of hybridity’ as noted by Kwai-cheung Lo: ‘The 1970s was an age of genuine hybridities, and later as local culture matured “hybridities” had become a concept of identification, through which a collective Hong Kong cultural identity was formed.’35 However, the 1980s was a time when cultural hybridizations coexisted with brandings, when the pop music industry could still be creatively hybridized even though its operation was unabashedly commercial. Arjun Appadurai has perceptively noted that as music, the novel, television, and tape cassettes begin to enter the fields of the epic, the folksong, and traditional performances generally, what is emerging is a whole new series of hybrid forms: disco-garba, semi-classical ghazal, cinematized epics, tape-recorded devotional hymns and songs, wedding videos, and a host of other hybrids.36

One of the most important reasons behind the rise of the 1980s into the glorious decade of Hong Kong pop was its secular creativity, which took commercial operational logic into its stride and hybridized various emerging forms of pop songs.

Those Were the Stars I have already discussed the rise of megastars Leslie Cheung, Alan Tam, and Anita Mui. In the latter half of the 1980s, they continued to dominate the pop music scene of not just Hong Kong but also neighbouring regions in Asia. After ‘Monica’, Leslie Cheung became the main rival of Alan Tam, and almost all pop charts in Hong Kong were overwhelmed by their golden hits. 34 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 92–98. 35 Kwai-Cheung Lo 羅貴祥, ‘Introduction’ 前言 (in Chinese), in Age of Hybridity: Cultural Identity, Gender, Everyday Life and Hong Kong Cinema 雜嘜時代：文化身份、性別、日常生活 與香港電影1970s, eds. Kwai-Cheung Lo and Eva K. Man (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 5–6. 36 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Afterword,’ in Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions, eds. Arjun Appadurai et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), p. 474.

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Let me use the 1986 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards presentation as an example. Both had two gold songs: Leslie Cheung’s ‘The Love Then’ and ‘Who Feels the Same?’ and Alan Tam’s ‘Speechless Gratitude’ and ‘Friends’. While Alan Tam was the Most Popular Male Singer, Leslie Cheung won the major Gold Song award. Their fierce competition created a positive aura for the Cantopop industry, but it turned negative when the rivalry between their countless fans got ugly at times. In February 1988, Alan Tam announced at RTHK’s 10th Top Ten Gold Songs Awards presentation ceremony that he had decided to quit all pop music award ceremonies. One of his reasons was that he had been fed up with endless idle talk in the music industry. He did not specify what he meant by that, but it was clear that he was referring to his competition with Leslie Cheung. Without a rival, Leslie Cheung won all the major awards, but his enthusiasm flagged. To the surprise of all his music fans, he announced his very early retirement from the music industry at the summit of his career in 1989. After his Final Encounter album and 33 farewell concerts – he was 33 years old at the time – at the Hong Kong Coliseum, he waved goodbye to the music industry.37 At the 1986 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards presentation, Anita Mui was another singer who bagged two Gold Song Awards: ‘Dream Partner’ and ‘Breaking the Iceberg’. She swept five Top 10 Jade Solid Gold Best Female Singer awards between 1985 and 1989 and won the 1989 Jade Solid Gold Gold Song award with ‘Sunset Melody’. Soon after the end of this glorious decade of Hong Kong pop, she followed the retirement of her best partner, Leslie Cheung, and announced hers in 1991, signalling the end of the golden age of Cantopop. In a nutshell, the trio – Leslie Cheung, Alan Tam, and Anita Mui – were the megastars that lit up the night sky of Cantopop in the 1980s. Besides megastars and young idols, there were other old and new stars who also shone in unfettered splendour. The expanding market could accommodate singers with target audiences different from those of the megastars Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, and Anita Mui. Veteran singers from the 1970s, such as Roman Tam, Jenny Tseng, George Lam, and Michael Kwan, continued to attract large audiences in the 1980s. With an eye towards the big potential of the developing market, record companies were willing to experiment with singers of different styles. As previously mentioned, there were young rising stars such as Danny Chan who fascinated teen fans, and there were also performers such as Johnny Yip who attracted mature audiences. There were dance kings/queens, such as Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui, and there were also performers who focused solely on singing, such 37 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 78–80.

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as Michael Kwan and Paula Tsui. While songstresses such as Elisa Chan, Teresa Carpio, and Deanie Ip performed Cantopop with the sensibilities of mature women, teens such as Priscilla Chan and Sandy Lam also had an opportunity to realize their potential. Priscilla Chan stood out with her first major hit, ‘Forgotten Promise’, among the three teenage girls on an album packaged as Girl Magazine (1984). Given the limited scope of this chapter, I will choose two 1984 music award presentations as examples. Besides Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung, there was a brilliant display of different kinds of stars. While the Cantopop diva Jenny Tseng received awards for ‘Love Is Over’ (on her 1984 album The Charming Month of May), Anita Mui became the new Queen of Cantopop, albeit actually crowned a year later, with the theme song of the 1984 film Homecoming at both presentations. The other two songs that won awards at both presentations were Michael Kwan’s ‘Voice from Heaven…Star River Legends’ (on his 1983 album Voice from Heaven) and Samantha Lam’s ‘An Encounter’. The former was a philosophical reflection sung by a veteran singer, whereas the latter was the theme song of the 1984 film A Certain Romance. The affective feelings of this teenage love story were utterly different from those of other romantic ballads, showing that Cantopop had a fairly broad fan base. This was further attested by other award winners, including Sam Hui (co-singing a song with Jenny Tseng), Danny Chan, George Lam, Sally Yeh, and Julie Sue. Sam Hui and George Lam were well known veteran singers, Danny Chan was an adorable idol among young fans, and Sally Yeh was a rising songstress who later succeeded Anita Mui to become the most popular female Cantopop singer in Hong Kong. Taiwanese songstress Julie Sue won an award for her Mandapop song ‘Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale’, and Danny Chan’s gold song ‘Reaching for the Stars’ was the theme song of the anti-drug campaign designed by the Narcotics Division of the Security Bureau of Hong Kong, which were good examples of the diversity of mainstream Cantopop in that year. If 1984 were a night sky, it was a majestic one that contained many stars shining alongside the two brightest ones. This could also be seen as an example of the diversity of Cantopop stardom – from young to mature singers – in the 1980s. Some new singers who commenced their singing careers in the 1980s began to glow in the 1990s. Indisputably the Four Heavenly Kings – Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, and Aaron Kwok – were the best examples. Three of them embarked on their Cantopop ventures in the 1980s. Among the Four Heavenly Kings, Andy Lau was the first to win TVB’s Jade Solid Gold Most Popular Male Singer award in 1990. He was also the first to kick off his entertainment career at TVB back in the early 1980s. As noted in

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Chapter 1, he was one of the Five Tigers who were up-and-coming television actors in the early 1980s. It was very common at that time for television and film actors to pursue a singing career to boost their reputation. With an eye towards developing his career in the swiftly growing Cantopop industry in the mid-1980s, Andy Lau released his debut album, Just Know I Still Love You Now, with TVB’s sister company Capital Artists in 1985. Because of a contract controversy with TVB, he later signed with EMI. Although he committed more effort to his film career in the late 1980s as Cantopop showbiz was dominated by Leslie Cheung and Alan Tam, he managed to have some chart-topping hits, such as ‘Forbidden Zone of Love’ and ‘Back to You’. The album Forbidden Zone of Love (1987) sold more than 50,000 copies, winning him his first Platinum Disc award. In the late 1980s, Andy Lau directed more emphasis towards his singing career, owing perhaps to the fact that the Cantopop industry needed new superstars to fill the gaps left behind by Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung. It was perfect timing for him to win the Most Popular Male Singer award in 1990, which signalled that he had formally picked up the baton from Leslie Cheung and Alan Tam. Jacky Cheung commenced his music career after winning the Hong Kong Eighteen Districts Amateur Singing Competition in 1984. He signed with PolyGram and released his debut Cantopop album, Smile, in 1985, which reportedly sold a mind-blowing six-times platinum (more than 300,000 copies), an amazing amount for a rookie, and his second album, She is Afar, Amour, reportedly sold more than eight-times platinum. He won the Best New Artist award at the Eighth RTHK Top 10 Chinese Gold Songs Awards, and his golden hits included, among others, ‘Love Is Gone’, ‘Half Moon’, and ‘She Is Afar’. Jacky Cheung’s first four Cantopop albums sold more than two million copies in total, and he held six consecutive concerts at the Hong Kong Coliseum in 1987, just the third year of his music career. It was unexpected, however, that he went from hero to zero after the sales of his fifth album, In My Dream Last Night, dropped to a miserable 20,000 copies. Jacky Cheung blamed early fame exposure for his unruly attitude, which brought him to the lowest point in his career. The problem of negative media reporting (such as becoming dependent on alcohol) delved deeper into the continued struggles of the rising star in 1988, and it was not until 1989 that he escaped his career doldrums with One Love One Life. It was perfect timing for Jacky Cheung to bounce back at this particular juncture, which paved the way for a turning point in his music career in the 1990s. Leon Lai, born in Beijing, moved to Hong Kong at the age of four and kicked off his entertainment career after winning the Bronze Award at the New Talent Singing Competition organized by TVB in 1986. However,

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he did not have a chance to release his first Cantopop album, Leon, until 1990. He spent several years as a TVB actor after signing a singing contract with Capital Artists. Although his performance in the television sector was reasonably good, he did not have an opportunity to start his singing career until his well-liked Taiwanese television drama, A Turbulent Era, aired. Reportedly due to contract problems, Leon Lai was shut out by TVB, and he thus had to shoot a Chinese Television Company drama in Taiwan. His insert Mandarin hit ‘Cloud of Dust’ in the drama allowed the Cantopop industry to see his great potential and brought him back from Taiwan in 1990. Finally, Aaron Kwok was the latest to embark on his Cantopop venture among the Heavenly Kings. He was a dancer-turned-actor for TVB, but he mainly played supporting roles in TVB dramas. Aaron Kwok turned his career around for the better with a Taiwanese motorcycle TV commercial in 1990. Riding on his instant fame, Aaron Kwok decided to move his base back to his hometown in 1992, as Hong Kong was clearly the trendsetter of Chinese pop music then. There were also heavenly Cantopop queens in the 1990s, whose potential had already been glimpsed in the 1980s. Faye Wong embarked on her new singing venture in Hong Kong back in the late 1980s, using the name Shirley Wong (in Cantonese ‘Ching-Man Wong’). Born in Beijing, Faye Wong moved to Hong Kong in 1987 to join her father who was working there. Actually, she had commenced her singing career before she left Beijing. In 1985, she was selected by a record company in Beijing to release her first album, Where Does the Wind Come From?, featuring the songs of Teresa Teng, who was the most widely heard pop singer in the mainland then. From 1985 to 1987, she released a total of six cassettes before she moved to Hong Kong where she gradually picked up Cantonese, and after two years of lessons with a renowned Hong Kong music teacher who had previously tutored Leon Lai, she was introduced to Cinepoly Records, a subsidiary of PolyGram. Faye Wong grabbed the limelight by winning the Bronze Award at the Asia-Pacific Popular Song Contest in 1989 with ‘Still the Old Sentence’, a typical love ballad, which was later included on her first Cantopop album, Shirley Wong, the new Hong Kong-style name given to her by the record company to replace her ‘mainland-sounding’ name. In 1990, she went on to release two big sellers, Everything and You’re the Only One, which won her the Bronze Award for Best Female Singer at the Commercial Radio Annual Awards. Although Sammi Cheng was perhaps too young to win big fame in the 1980s, she entered the industry with Capital Artists after she won the Bronze Award in the New Talent Singing Competition at the age of fifteen in 1988. Because of her age, in the next couple of years she had just two

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duets with David Lui, a New Talent winner who was already an established singer then, which were songs from the TVB martial arts drama Secret of the Linked Cities. In 1990, Sammi Cheng was mature enough to release her Cantopop debut, Sammi, subsequently developing into a heavenly queen of Cantopop who was often compared with Faye Wong. The 1980s witnessed too many Cantopop stars to be mentioned here. I will end by referring to some ‘alternative’ stars: the bands that emerged on the mainstream music scene in the late 1980s. With respect to mainstream recognition back then, Tat Ming Pair and Raidas were the most representative as they were the only bands to have Gold Disc awards in the late 1980s; for example, two and three awards in 1988 for Tat Ming Pair and Raidas, respectively. Not only were the images of the pair – long-haired Anthony Yiu-ming Wong and short-haired Tats Lau – very attractive to young fans, the earlier works of Tat Ming Pair, such as ‘Roller Skating Gang’, ‘Angels on the Road’, and ‘Car Lost in the Night’, voiced the feelings of this lost generation in the face of a future marred by 1997, using the cityscape of Hong Kong as the backdrop for their chorus of bewilderment. Another ‘pair’ – Thomas Chan and Yiu-Kwong Wong – of Raidas captured fans with their electronic music and lyrics penned by Lin Xi, who later became the leading Cantopop lyricist for more than three decades. In a sense, they should have been considered the trio who captured Hong Kong fans with their original, sensitive accounts of love and friendship. ‘Legend’, for example, deconstructed romantic love by juxtaposing love stories in traditional Chinese literature with those of modern people, something like T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece ‘The Waste Land’. Equally important was the song’s hybridization of Chinese tunes and modern electronic music arrangements. In respect of sales, the albums of the legendary rock band Beyond may not have been as convincing as those of Tat Ming Pair and Raidas, but after the underground heavy metal band entered the mainstream in 1986, they effectively rocked the industry with their call to arms in songs such as ‘Goodbye My Dream’, ‘Forever Waiting’, and ‘Metal Maniacs’. The end of this band wave was considered to have occurred after the disbanding of Tat Ming Pair in 1990 (Raidas disbanded even earlier in 1988), but Beyond continued to speak truth to power for the Hong Kong people, and, more remarkably, their social consciousness went from local to global in songs such as ‘Amani’ and ‘Days of Glory’ (a tribute to Nelson Mandela). Even after the tragic death of Ka-Kui Wong in a stage accident in Tokyo in 1993, Beyond continued to rock the music scene in the 1990s. The legacy of the band wave injected alternative energies into the Cantopop industry, and some of these bands added alternative dimensions to mainstream stardom.

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Beyond had die-hard fans, and the legendary Ka-Kui Wong continues to have posthumous fandom similar to that of Leslie Cheung mentioned above. In the meantime, Tat Ming Pair has continued to be influential throughout the years, as evidenced by their reunion concerts in 1996, 2005, 2012, and 2017 to celebrate their anniversaries. In summary, Hong Kong Cantopop and its stardom in the 1980s were genuinely diversified. That said, as cultural critic Chun-Hung Ng has rightly noted, because of the quickly expanding market, the media industries accommodated diverse styles in the 1980s, but the golden decade seemed to have forgotten that the subsequent one might not be as golden: ‘Everything was possible in the 1980s, but future possibilities were also buried in that decade.’38

The Chinese Cool While it has been widely argued that 1974 was the watershed of the history of the development of Cantopop,39 this chapter chronicled the 1980s as the decade that wrote a new, if not the most successful, chapter for Cantopop. Throughout the 1980s, Hong Kong Cantopop gained enormous momentum which took the industry far into the 1990s. Up until the mid1990s, Cantopop was the leader in the pan-Chinese pop music industry, having developed into a multibillion-dollar pop industry – ‘the Chinese cool’40 – that attracted those who did not speak Cantonese. Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui, among others, enthralled countless music fans in Asia and beyond, and not only their songs but also costumes, hairstyles, and makeup became the trend of Chinese pop. As rightly noted by Longman Leung, director cum scriptwriter of the biopic Anita (2021), Anita Mui was and still is the icon of the golden era of Hong Kong pop culture. That was the reason that he wanted to spend a big budget on the re-presentation of the 1980s of Hong Kong – such as Lee’s Theatre, the Nathan Road and Jordon Road junction, and Tsim Sha Tsui East – with state-of-the-art computer graphics in his biopic of the Cantopop Queen. 41 It was Anita Mui and her 38 Cited from Emilie Choi 蔡倩怡, ‘The 1980s That Will Never Come Again’ 無法重來的80年 代 (in Chinese), Ming Pao Weekly, Vol. 2505, 12 November 2016, p. 15. 39 For example, see Wong, The Rise and Decline of Cantopop, and Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop. 40 Burpee, ‘As Sun Sets on British Empire in Hong Kong, Industry Gears for Return to China,’ APQ-1. 41 Refer to the interview of Longman Leung in ‘The Making of Anita: Part 1,’ Edko Films Ltd., 30 September 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fECkl3L2iCs; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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contemporaries who helped turn Hong Kong into the trendsetter of Asian pop in this golden era. Cantopop was the leader in Asian music industries for almost two decades, exerting a profound influence on pop music made locally in East Asian Chinese-speaking counterparts, such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Mainland China. 1984 should be highlighted as the most important year of that decade. It was one of those rare years in the history of Cantopop when the industry witnessed a paradigm shift on several fronts: idol business, cross-media and cross-cultural hybridizations, and the concert industry. The year was terrible for Hong Kong but productive for Cantopop. There is arguably no more critical year in its history than the events of 1984, because these events had a lasting influence on its later development throughout the late 1980s and the early 1990s. In addition to the industry’s success, it was also a pivotal year for new Cantopop megastars Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung. Thatcher’s slip – and Deng Xiaoping’s firm stance on resuming Hong Kong’s sovereignty in 1997 – might have ended Hong Kong people’s hope for an extension of British rule after 1997, but it was the gloomy social atmosphere that triggered a burst of positive energy in the cultural industries. Meanwhile, 1984 is often seen as the best year of global pop music as well.42 While megastars Michael Jackson, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Boy George, and Madonna were glittering brightly, the thriving atmosphere was well suited to the flourishing of different music styles: ‘New Wave, R&B, hip-hop, mascara’d hard rock and “Weird Al” Yankovic all crossed paths on the charts while a post-“Billie Jean” MTV brought them into your living room.’43 It was therefore a critical juncture for Asian pop music to develop. While a J-pop boom was sweeping across Asia, Hong Kong took the opportunity to step up as the centre of Chinese pop music in the region as well as the world. Fortune always favours the well prepared. In the previous decade, Cantopop gradually gathered momentum before its spectacular surge in Asia in 1984. Unlike George Orwell’s classic,44 the 1984 of Cantopop was a pivotal year for the industry to turn into the trendsetter of Chinese pop music worldwide in the next decade or so. It seems not a sheer coincidence that Alan Tam’s ‘Root of Love’ inspired new Hong Kong directors in the 2010s. The original 42 Alan Light, ‘Why 1984 Was Pop Music’s Best Year Ever,’ Billboard, October 24, 2014: https:// www.billboard.com/articles/news/6296392/1984-best-year-of-pop-music-ever-essay; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 43 Caryn Ganz et al., ‘100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop’s Greatest Year,’ Rolling Stone, 17 September 2014: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-best-singles-of-1984-pops-greatestyear-163322/corey-hart-sunglasses-at-night-169256/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 44 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin, 1949 [2000]).

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Chinese title of Adam Wong’s She Remembers, He Forgets (2015) was reportedly Root of Love. While the main theme of the film was ‘remembering the original intention’, the chorus of the theme song ‘We Almost Fly’ (on She Remembers, He Forgets: Original Soundtracks) highlighted the importance of imagination: ‘We still believe there are new imaginations in this city.’ Interestingly enough, the first line of ‘Root of Love’ – ‘The sky besides the meteor is my home’ – has begged many questions about its mysterious meaning over the years. The lyricist Andrew Lam explained in his own special collection LMCC that actually the line was simply a Chinese translation of the English phrase ‘once upon a…’ (the Cantonese pronunciation of the first line is similar to ‘once upon a sky’), 45 but the meaning remained mysterious, nonetheless. Regardless of this, the ‘once upon a…’ inspired the Hong Kong theatre group Ronin to produce a play entitled Once Upon a Time in 2016 (the Chinese title is the first line of ‘Root of Love’), which was based on Alan Tam’s album. Once upon a time in Hong Kong – in 1984 – Cantopop had countless possibilities of new imaginations, and the voice of the city was flourishing in not just Hong Kong but also Chinese communities across the world. The 1980s is not seen here as a successful model for Hong Kong Cantopop, which could be adopted to revitalize a declining industry. What matters is a reconsideration of how the creative hybridizations were possible in that particular context. Inspired by Ping-Kwan Leung’s large-scale project on Hong Kong literature and culture in the 1950s, 46 I wanted to trace the momentum of Hong Kong Cantopop by focusing on the 1980s, the decade in which the Cantopop wind began to blow with rising superstars. After Alan Tam quit attending music awards ceremonies, and Leslie Cheung announced his retirement, the decade of Cantopop seemed to have ended, but actually it did not. The momentum of the decade was unexpectedly strong as it took the industry way into the 1990s, and it had set an excellent stage for more Cantopop megastars, such as the Four Heavenly Kings, to continue to captivate Chinese audiences worldwide before Cantopop was taken over by Mandopop in the new millennium, if not earlier. The 1990s, however, was ‘the best of times’ but also ‘the worst of times’ for Cantopop,47 making the 1980s the sui generis decade of Hong Kong pop, at least pop music. 45 Andrew Lam, LMCC: Lam Man Chung Collection (Hong Kong: Universal Music [Hong Kong] Limited, 2009). 46 Refer to Ping-Kwan Leung 梁秉鈞 (aka Yesi 也斯), Yesi’s 1950s: Essays on Hong Kong Literature and Culture 也斯的五○年代：香港文學與文化論集 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Chunghwa, 2013). 47 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 105–144.

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As can be seen from the title of his doctoral thesis ‘The Rise and Decline of Cantopop: A Study of Hong Kong Popular Music (1949-1997),’ James Wong considered 1997 as the end boundary for the timeline of Cantopop. In this sense, it followed almost exactly – with approximately a two-year lag – the same downward trajectory of Hong Kong cinema. Anyhow, having heard and seen Cantopop becoming the voice of the city, I remain an inveterate fan all these years.

4

The Importance of Being Chic: Fashion, Branding, and Multimedia Stardom It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.1

Abstract This chapter explores how the rise of fashion brands and the proliferation of the spectacular images of rising stars helped Hong Kong firmly established its role as a trendsetter in the 1980s. Not only did stars like Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui become style icons who dictated trends, a generation of Hong Kong fashion designers also came to the fore, proving that Hong Kong had developed into a centre of fashionable chic. Joyce and Esprit, which introduced a host of high-end fashion labels and targeted mainly at the younger generation, respectively, are used as examples to showcase the diversity of Hong Kong fashion in the 1980s. Keywords: Hong Kong chic, fashion icons, designer labels, Joyce Boutique, Esprit

Fashioning the City Fashion and lifestyle are effective benchmarks against which the image of a metropolitan city is measured. Fred Davis cited the above as the epigraph of the first chapter of his Fashion, Culture, and Identity, in which he begins with this statement: ‘That the clothes we wear make a statement is a statement 1 Oscar Wilde, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume 3, ed. Joseph Bristow (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 25.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_CH04

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that in this age of heightened self-consciousness has virtually become a cliché.’2 While Davis was referring to the relationship between fashion and the cultural identity of individuals, his statement perfectly fits that of cities as well. Usually New York, Paris, London, Milan, and Tokyo top the familiar list of cities that conjure up the image of high fashion, and a ‘big city look’ is deemed as revealing a certain distinctive type of metropolitan chic.3 Hong Kong has taken pride in being compared with these global cities. For example, when the January 2008 issue of TIME magazine (Asia Edition) coined the term ‘Nylonkong’ to tell the stories of the three connected cites that ‘drive the global economy’, Donald Tsang, the then Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), considered Hong Kong as playing a similar role in Asia as New York in North America and London in Europe, echoing the term ‘Nylonkong’. 4 As Richard Florida argued in his Who’s Your City?, however, ‘personal’ characteristics are pertinent factors that make a city attractive in the age of the global economy.5 Whether Hong Kong could develop its own distinctive characteristics was much more important than the term itself. Because the field of culture is increasingly seen as a strategic asset in/for a balanced development of cities, fashion is an important urban development strategy.6 When it comes to fashion, the Hong Kong Government simply considers it a subcategory of ‘design’ (the design domain covers a wide range of specialized design activities, including interior and furniture design; multimedia, visual, and graphic design; fashion and accessories design [including jewellery design]; and industrial design) – one of the eleven component domains of the cultural and creative industries in Hong Kong, which are ‘among the most dynamic economic sectors in Hong Kong, contributing to both economic growth and job creation’.7 Fashion is indeed much more than just a part of ‘design’. It 2 Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture, and Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 1. For an informative account of the changed fashion landscape of the new millennium, refer to Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson, ‘Introduction,’ in Fashion Cultures Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, eds. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2013). 3 Vincent Roppatte and Sherry S. Cohen, Big City Look: How to Achieve That Metropolitan Chic (New York: William Morrow, 1998). 4 Michael Elliott, ‘A Tale of Three Cities,’ TIME (Asia Edition) 171:4 (2008), pp. 30–33; Yiu-Wai Chu, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), p. 69. 5 Richard Florida, Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life (New York: Basic Books, 2009). 6 See, for instance, Vincent Pandolfi, Fashion and the City: The Role of the ‘Cultural Economy’ in the Development Strategies of Three Western European Cities (Delft: Eburo, 2015). 7 Refer to Census and Statistics Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, ‘The Cultural and Creative Industries in Hong Kong,’ Hong Kong Monthly Digest of Statistics,

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is comprised of, to say the least, six component parts, as noted by Angela McRobbie: ‘manufacture and production; design; retail and distribution; education and training; the magazine and fashion media; and the practices of consumption’.8 More importantly, fashion designers and creatives can make a city stylish. As incisively noted by Richard Dyer, ‘Wearing haute couture bespeaks luxury, wealth, refinement and, less obviously, power.’9 To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s words, ‘the true mystery of a city is the visible’ – the clothes it wears. In this chapter, I will delve into fashion entrepreneurship and branding, which made Hong Kong one of the most fashionable cities in the world in the 1980s. As I have argued elsewhere, the Hong Kong Government has been trying to brand the SAR into ‘Asia’s World City’, but it is exactly because of its special trait as a world city that it has started to diminish in the new millennium.10 According to Opportunities and Challenges for Hong Kong’s Fashion Design Services Industry published by the Research Department of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council in 2008, the ‘Hong Kong fashion industry is increasingly focusing on innovative design and brand development. The industry is not only setting trends for the Chinese mainland market, but also closing the gap on Tokyo as the fashion design capital of Asia.’11 Be that as it may, that this industry of innovative design and brand development had to sell its chic to the Greater Bay Area in the ‘Chic HK．Guangzhou’ campaign must have sounded ironic to many Hong Kong people who had witnessed the rise of once-world-famous fashion brands in the 1980s. In this sixteen-month campaign that commenced on 1 May 2020, which ‘serve[d] as a platform to position Hong Kong as “Asia’s world city” to Guangzhou where Hong Kong’s own unique trends and brands [were] introduced to the marketplace’, the Trade and Industrial Organization Support Fund of the June 2020, p. 10. The eleven component domains of the cultural and creative industries are as follows: art, antiques, and crafts; cultural education and library, archive, and museum services; performing arts; film, video, and music; television and radio; publishing; software, computer games, and interactive media; design; architecture; advertising; and amusement services. 8 Angela McRobbie, In the Culture Society: Art, Fashion, and Popular Music (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 41. 9 Richard Dyer, ‘Social Values of Entertainment and Show Business,’ PhD dissertation, Contemporary Cultural Studies Centre, Birmingham University, 1972, p. 339; cited from Gaylyn Studlar, Precocious Charms: Stars Performing Girlhood in Classical Hollywood Cinema (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2013), p. 216. 10 Chu, Lost in Transition, pp. 69–89. 11 Research Department of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Opportunities and Challenges for Hong Kong’s Fashion Design Services Industry (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Trade Development Council, 2008), blurb.

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Trade and Industry Department and the Hong Kong Brand Development Council sponsored a series of activities to promote the collective image of Hong Kong brands.12 Back in the 1980s, it was the world that came to Hong Kong, possibly one of the most fashionable cities in Asia. It is a crying shame that the trajectory of fashion was similar to that of Hong Kong cinema and Cantopop, which began to gather momentum in the 1970s, reached their heydays in the 1980s, and then declined in the late 1990s. In Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia published in 2019, for example, Hong Kong was eclipsed by Vietnam, China, and Korea, which were covered as the new emerging Asian centres of fashion and beauty.13 ‘Despite being a British colony, Western-style dress was not at all common in Hong Kong until the latter half of the twentieth century,’ as Annie Haunung Chan noted, and Western-style clothing ‘took Hong Kong’s youth by storm’ together with pop music and Hollywood films in the 1960s through stars such as Josephine Siao.14 The promotion of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council in the 1970s helped bring young local designers such as Diane Freis, Judy Mann, Walter Wai-ming Ma, Ragence Lam, Benny Yeung, and Eddie Lau into the limelight.15 Growing up in the 1970s, I was too young back then to appreciate the rise of local designers, but in the 1980s, I was lucky enough to witness signature brands that made Hong Kong one of the most fashionable cities in the world. Fashion has a complicated criss-crossing with notions such as ‘clothing’, ‘dress’, and ‘style’, but in this chapter, I will only examine it as defined by Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture: ‘the cultural construction of the embodied identity’.16 As Roland Barthes famously argued in The Fashion System, fashion is a system of signs that converse non-verbal meanings about individuals and groups.17 As such, it is a reflection of the world. I will limit my discussion here to the 12 Refer to the website of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council for details of the activities: http://www.hktdc.com/ncs/chichk2020/sc/main/index.html; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 13 S. Heijin Lee, Christina H. Moon, and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, eds., Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia (New York: New York University Press, 2019). 14 Annie Hau-nung Chan, ‘Shopping for Fashion in Hong Kong,’ in Consuming Hong Kong, eds. Gordon Mathews and Tai-lok Lui (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), pp. 144–145. 15 Arthur Tam, ‘The History of Hong Kong Fashion,’ TimeOut, 10 September 2014: https://www. timeout.com/hong-kong/shopping/history-of-hong-kong-fashion; last accessed on 28 October 2022. ‘Designers would get sponsored trips to go overseas to learn about fashion and the media had a focus to help give local designers coverage – a stark contrast to how it is now.’ 16 Malcolm Barnard, Fashion as Communication (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 10–12. 17 Roland Barthes, The Fashion System (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1990).

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city of Hong Kong in the 1980s and try to show how this emerging system of signs conversed new meanings for not just the city but also its people. In the next section, I will first provide a brief introduction to the rise and decline of Hong Kong fashion before moving on to two representative brands – Joyce and Esprit – which exemplified very trendy, albeit different, styles. Those brands also told a similar story of the trajectory of Hong Kong chic in the 1980s. Hong Kong fashion brands were once trendsetting in Asia, and fashion and lifestyle could function as effective symbolic gestures that reshaped one’s sense of self.18 I will then briefly discuss three signature examples of Hong Kong fashion icons in the 1980s. As forcefully argued by Pamela Church Gibson, ‘the relationship between fashion and celebrity culture needs to be carefully examined.’19 This aptly applies to the situation of Hong Kong in the 1980s, when fashion and multimedia stardom generated creative synergies in the city. Designer labels (such as those introduced to Hong Kong by Joyce) as the elite form of fashion are not as ‘popular’ as the three examples of mass media discussed in the previous chapters, at least insofar as the ‘masses’ were concerned, and therefore I will not adopt the ‘fashion-as-culture’ approach which sees consumers as agents and fashion as ‘a marker of individuality, and a celebration of the transformative powers of agency’.20 What I am going to highlight are the creative synergies effectively generated between these fashion brands and pop cultures, and hence multimedia stardom. Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung, and Anita Mui, in my own opinion, could be considered ‘the Holy Trinity’ of Hong Kong pop and fashion icons in the 1980s, whose stardom contributed to, and benefited from, these synergies.

Hong Kong Chic It is well known that capital as well as the labour force brought by new immigrants who fled the mainland for political reasons after 1949 helped Hong Kong evolve from an entrepôt into an industrial city in the 1950s. ‘The favourable circumstances generated by this influx, coupled with the benefits of the preferential tariff treatment offered by countries of the British 18 See, for example, Rebecca Arnold, American Look: Fashion and the Image of Women in 1930’s and 1940’s New York (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009). 19 Pamela Church Gibson, Fashion and Celebrity Culture (London and New York: Berg, 2012), p. 1. 20 Chan, ‘Shopping for Fashion in Hong Kong,’ p.151; see also Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (London: I. B. Tauris, 1985), p.244.

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Commonwealth, laid a solid foundation for Hong Kong’s garment industry.’21 Furthermore, Western style had taken over traditional Chinese style at that juncture; for instance, ‘[m]en in their 50s generally opted for Western attire, with shirts and trousers worn during the day and traditional long robes gradually disappearing,’ and it was in the 1950s that ‘big department stores such as Wing On and Sincere began to stock Western-style suits featuring jackets with large lapels paired with waistcoats.’22 Fashion modernity continued to develop in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Renowned Hong Kong actress Patricia Lam, one of the important figures before Josephine Siao (mentioned above) and her rival Connie Chan, played a leading role in popularizing fashion in the early 1960s. She showcased the fashion of her own company, Teen Fashion, in the newspaper Daily Pictorial every day. Later on, modelling became more popular, and newspapers such as South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Standard, China Mail, and Star published daily photos of fashion models.23 Hong Kong had developed into an industrial powerhouse in that decade, and textile and clothing production was one of the leading manufacturing activities. This was also a decade of rapid economic growth as well as social turmoil, in which, to borrow Poshek Fu’s words, ‘the advent of capitalist modernization generated a new web of mass production and mass consumption that accelerated the erosion of long-standing sociocultural values.’24 Owing at least partly to the irresponsive policies of the British Hong Kong Government, large-scale riots broke out in 1967. In the midst of riots and bombs, the Federation of Hong Kong Industries hosted the Festival of Fashion from 30 October to 3 November 1967 in Hong Kong, with a reported budget of over HK$1.13 million – ‘more than the entire Federation budget for 1966’. It was successful: in ‘less than a decade, garments – as distinct from textiles or piece goods – became Hong Kong’s most important export commodity in value, volume and employment’.25 From this, it was also observed that back in the 1950s 21 Cited from ‘The Evolution of Hong Kong Fashion,’ Hong Kong Heritage Museum: https:// www.heritagemuseum.gov.hk/documents/2199315/2199706/Fashion_Attitude-Fashion_History. pdf; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 22 ‘The Evolution of Hong Kong Fashion.’ 23 Buddy 畢地 (Peter Dunn), ‘Modelling: The Early Days’ (in Chinese), City Magazine, July 1983, pp. 66–67. 24 Poshek Fu, ‘The 1960s: Modernity, Youth Culture, and Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema,’ in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, eds. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 71. 25 Cited from ‘The Festival of Fashions 1967: Designing a Hong Kong Identity,’ in Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, eds. Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1994), p. 104.

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and 1960s, while Hong Kong’s manufacturing industry was booming, it was limited mainly to textiles and piece goods. The Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong took an active role in promoting the textile industry to the world, which brought a great deal of capital into the territory, but it was not until the late 1960s and early 1970s that the industry had the chance to transform itself. It is generally agreed that after the 1967 riots, the British Hong Kong Government rolled out new policies to curb pro-Communist and anti-colonial sentiments by enhancing Hong Kong people’s local sense of belonging so that they would consider themselves different from Mainland Chinese. This not only improved the living standard of Hong Kong people but also provided a juncture for Hong Kong modernity to take shape. The Festival of Fashion was seen as an event to ‘design’ a new image for the city. In other words, ‘Hong Kong’s modernity did not evolve during the Sixties, it was designed. Nowhere is this more evident than on the creation of modern Hong Kong fashion.’26 In this sense ‘fashion as culture’ – modernity, self, and identity – gradually took shape in the late 1960s.27 In 1968, for example, Margaret Tancock opened possibly the first boutique in Hong Kong, Things (later renamed Birds), at the corner of D’Aguilar Street and Wellington Street in the Central District.28 All in all, ‘[t]he 1960s was a period of change for Hong Kong fashion. As demand for Western-style casual wear grew, department stores such as Lane Crawford started selling imported fashions.’29 Although the Festival emphasized Hong Kong design, it ‘proved impossible to put into practice, so originality had to be imported’.30 In other words, it was about the image of the city more than fashion, let alone fashion design. The 1970s was a decade of transformation for not only the cultural, as argued in the previous chapters, but also the manufacturing industries. It was also a time when Hong Kong had transformed itself into a modern metropolis. Because of economic growth and hence an improved living standard, the new generation of Hong Kong youngsters who were born and grew up in Hong Kong had more resources to spend on consumer goods. In this context, there was a soaring demand for fashion. Sisters, ‘one of Hong Kong’s first fashion lifestyle magazines’, was established in 1970, and it ‘would come out with weekly coverage of popular trends while giving a shout out 26 ‘The Festival of Fashions 1967,’ p. 102. 27 Chan, ‘Shopping for Fashion in Hong Kong,’ p. 151. 28 Koon-chung Chan, Afterwards: A Chronicle of Hong Kong Culture 事後：本土文化誌 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 65. 29 ‘The Evolution of Hong Kong Fashion.’ 30 ‘The Festival of Fashions 1967,’ p. 105.

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to local talent’; in spite of this, however, ‘Hong Kong was engaged mainly in garment processing during this period. The concept of original design was still very weak.’31 As mentioned above, young local designers came onto the scene, but David Sheekwan Tong is worth special mention here as he played an important role in changing the field. Having experience in the fashion industry in Paris and New York, ‘he returned to Hong Kong in the late 1970s starting his own design house and garment manufacturing factory David & Davids. He ha[d] trained many local talents over the years’ and also built his own brand DAVID SHEEKWAN.32 As will be discussed in Chapter 6, fashion was among the most important topics covered by City Magazine in the late 1970s. Frederick Leung’s fashion sense enabled the magazine to become a pioneer in the field. In its November 1978 issue, for example, City Magazine featured a section on fashion designer labels, such as Kenzo, Claude Montana, Gianni Versace, and Giorgio Armani, and the major trends of fashion in the next decade, which proved to be foresighted.33 The fashion editorial inaugurated in the March 1979 issue of the magazine marked the beginning of a new chapter of Hong Kong fashion culture. As the demand for fashion continued to grow during this decade, new local brands were born to test the market. Manufacturers like Goldlion and Crocodile built their own brands, but their tacky images did not hit the fancy of the younger generation. Among the local brands that hit the fancy of young customers, Bang Bang and Michel Rene were two of the more well-known examples. As mentioned in Chapter 2, after making significant profits with its clothing business (mainly jeans), Bang Bang entered the f ilm and pop music sectors with the brand ‘Bang Bang’ in 1976. At that point there was a certain creative, albeit short-lived, synergy between clothing and entertainment brands. Although local brands were reasonably popular, celebrity-approved fashion labels were still restricted to international brands. The most important fashion moment of the 1970s in Hong Kong was possibly the establishment of Joyce Boutique, which ‘started at a humble corner of Wing On Department Store but soon moved 31 ‘The Evolution of Hong Kong Fashion.’ 32 ‘David Sheekwan is one of the first Hong Kong fashion designers. He ran a design studio in Paris for soft furnishings and fashion. For a few years after that he designed fabrics for the renowned New York house Concord Fabrics. Famous local designers like Walter Wai-ming Ma, William Chang and Tony Au worked for him during one stage or another of their careers.’ For more details, refer to ‘The Evolution of Hong Kong Fashion.’ 33 Refer to City Magazine, November 1978, pp. 25–41, especially Dick To 狄圖, ‘The Next Ten Years’ 下一個十年 (in Chinese), pp. 27–29; see also Isabel Nee 亦舒, ‘Boutique Review’ (in Chinese), p. 25.

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and took up space at the Mandarin Oriental’.34 It later developed into a shrine of Hong Kong fashion. Esprit was another fashion label that took root in Hong Kong in the 1970s, which later became a phenomenon among Hong Kong youngsters in the 1980s. Originated from a label founded in San Francisco by Susie and Douglas Tompkins in 1968, it was brought to Hong Kong by Michael Ying in the early 1970s. Not unlike the media industries discussed in the previous chapters, the fashion sector gathered significant momentum in the 1970s because demands for style changes tended to follow the heels of economic growth, paving the path for Hong Kong to witness ‘the Golden Era’ of its fashion in the 1980s. ‘Our consumption as well as our production of fashion was at its peak [in the 1980s],’ as succinctly put by Janice Wong, fashion and beauty consultant and author of My Fashion Odyssey of 25 Years: I think about 40 percent of labourers were in garment making. As you know, we have the skills for it. Also, during this time, we finally started having fashion editorials and the wider public was getting in touch with fashion.35

In the 1980s, manufacturers turned from low- and middle-range products to high-end fashion. ‘From 1984 to 1985 Hong Kong was the world’s number one garment exporter,’ but China’s reform policy at that time ‘prompted the beginning of the end for Hong Kong manufacturing’.36 1984, the year of the ‘doom-and-boom’ of Hong Kong culture, was also really important in Hong Kong fashion. Lydia Dunn, the then chairperson of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, made it clear in an interview in that year that Hong Kong clothing manufacturers had to come up with a new export strategy, ‘one born of necessity [owing to tightening garment quotas]: they are promoting their own fashion designers’.37 As local designers continued to grow and thrive, and new talent such as Vivienne Tam, Lulu Cheung, and William Tang began to accumulate fame, the Hong Kong Fashion Designers Association was founded by a group of successful local fashion designers in 1984, which was seen as a milestone in the historical development of Hong Kong fashion. It was also in that year that Cosmopolitan came to Hong Kong, followed by Elle in 1987 and Harper’s Bazaar in 1988, showing that 34 35 36 37

Tam, ‘The History of Hong Kong Fashion.’ Cited from Tam, ‘The History of Hong Kong Fashion.’ Tam, ‘The History of Hong Kong Fashion.’ Pamela G. Hollie, ‘Hong Kong Fashion Strategy,’ New York Times, 23 January 1984, p. 10.

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the modern metropolis had become a fashion capital in Asia. Throughout the 1980s, more and more world-class luxury brands entered the Hong Kong market, including, among others, Joyce and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and the host of labels they brought after they opened their office in Hong Kong in 1987. It was ‘a perfect storm’ for Hong Kong pop and chic in the 1980s, as the entertainment and fashion industries reached new heights, and the stylistic nightscape constructed by discotheques (more in Chapter 5) generated unprecedented synergies. ‘The 80s was a wonderful time for fashion,’ as aptly put by renowned designer Walter Wai-ming Ma: ‘People were into the disco and party scene and people were so daring yet put together with what they wanted to wear.’38 As this book focuses mainly on Hong Kong pop in the 1980s, the Joyce and Esprit brands were chosen to be further discussed below to illustrate how they contributed to Hong Kong chic and hence enhanced the fashionable image of Hong Kong as a modern metropolis. Columnist Terence Yun has pointedly noted that two pieces of news – the privatization of Joyce and subsequent delisting from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the closure of all Esprit branches in Asia – on 27 April 2020 struck a raw nerve in Hong Kong: those events, sadly, signalled the end of the glorious days of Hong Kong fashion.39 Both Joyce and Esprit took root in Hong Kong in the 1970s, rose to fame in the 1980s, became listed companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1990 and 1993, respectively, and went downhill in the new millennium. Their trajectories were very much similar to that of the media industries discussed in the previous chapters, if not the story of Hong Kong per se.

Amazing Joyce: Branding/Blending Fashion ‘Not so much a shop as a fashion institution’, 40 Joyce Boutique was founded by Joyce Ma and her husband Walter King-wah Ma in 1970. Before the opening 38 Cited from Tam, ‘The History of Hong Kong Fashion.’ There are two Walter Ma’s in this chapter who could easily be mixed up. Walter Wai-ming Ma was a local fashion designer, and Walter King-wah Ma was the husband of Joyce Ma. Cf. Richard Martin and Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf, Contemporary Fashion (Jefferson: St. James Press, 2002), p. 433. 39 Terence Yun, ‘JOYCE and ESPRIT Reconsidered: Looking at the Glorious Age of Hong Kong’ 回顧JOYCE、ESPRIT：看香港的輝煌年代 (in Chinese), VJ Media, 27 April 2020: https://www. vjmedia.com.hk/articles/2020/04/27/205983/回顧joyce、esprit-看香港的輝煌年代; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 40 Cited from Hong Kong: With Macau and the South China Cities (20th ed.) (New York: Fodor Travel Publications Inc., 2007), p. 133.

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Figure 4.1  Joyce Boutique@New World Tower, Hong Kong; 2019

of the first official branch of Joyce Boutique in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the Central District, ‘Asia’s empress of fashion’ embarked on her venture with the small fashion counters Diamond 7 (for young swingers) and Joyce (for more wealthy swingers) in 1969 in the Wing On Department Store owned by her grandfather. 41 Joyce Boutique brought the new concept of designer labels to the city, importing luxury brands such as Lanvin and Yves Saint Laurent to Hong Kong as well as Asia. According to Peter Dunn, 41 Aristide J. Papineau, Papineau’s Guide to Hong Kong, and Spotlight on Macau (Singapore: Andre Pubns, 1972), p. 108; Yeu-Gynn Yeung, ‘Joyce Ma – 5 Things to Know about Asia’s Empress of Fashion,’ South China Morning Post, 26 May 2020; for a personal interview about her career, refer to https://myjoycema.com/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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one of the co-founders of City Magazine (refer to Chapter 6), who did an interview with Joyce Ma in 1982, Joyce Boutique stood out among its peers because the stocks of luxury brands boutiques in Hong Kong back then, such as Swank and Lane Crawford, were too formal and proper, lacking a sense of vigorously pioneering boldness. The birth of Joyce Boutique effectively redefined ‘trendy style’. by standing at the forefront of the trend with an additional ‘dash of sophisticated funkiness’. 42 In Joyce Ma’s own words, Joyce Boutique was not high fashion: ‘I would say it’s more like trendsetter of fashion.’43 In the next couple of decades, Joyce Boutique introduced the best of world-class designer labels to the city. Hong Kong interior designer Alan Chan, whose company designed the brand image of the legendary Canton Disco (see Chapter 5), succinctly summed up the contributions of Joyce Boutique to the chapter of Hong Kong fashion history with his personal experience: I worked at the advertising agency located at Prince’s Building in 1970. I have been very particular about my outfit. I earned less than one thousand dollars a month at that time, so I would wait and shop only during big sales. I bought my first blazer at Diamond 7 Boutique inside the Wing On Department Store in Central, which was opened by Joyce Ma. Later on Joyce Boutique was launched. Bringing fashion and lifestyle into Hong Kong, Joyce Ma is truly a unique and influential legend, also ‘Very Very Hong Kong’. 44

Joyce Ma soon ‘left Wing On and opened her wholly owned 700 square feet multi-label Joyce Boutique at the Mandarin Hotel,’ and, featuring designer labels including but not limited to Yves St Laurent, Balenciaga and Lanvin, it ‘became successful overnight.’45 In 1974, she went on to open her second boutique at The Peninsula Hotel, and exclusively brought more labels such as Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Prada, and Versace to Hong Kong.46 Big spenders were not the only target of the boutique, although customers had to dig deep into their pockets in order to get their favourite items at that fashion shrine. The boutique was so successful that it opened its own standalone 42 Peter Dunn, ‘Joyce Ma: At Long Last Joyce’ (in Chinese), City Magazine, Aug 1982, p. 7. 43 Dunn, ‘Joyce Ma: At Long Last Joyce,’ pp.8-9. 44 Cited from ‘Very Hong Kong Very Hong Kong,’ Fashion, 2017: http://52.220.219.146/2017/ assets/pdf/eng/fashion_en.pdf; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 45 Cited from https://myjoycema.com/1970s/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 46 For more details, refer to https://myjoycema.com/1970s/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 4.2  New World Tower, Central District, Hong Kong; November 2019

store in New World Tower on Queen’s Road Central in the buzzing central business district in 1979, which turned a new page in the fashionable history of Hong Kong. After the flagship store opened in the heart of the Central District, the giant split-level store was a must-visit place for both local and foreign fashion fans. Joyce Boutique later continued to expand and contract with the business cycle. Although the New World Tower store was still standing elegantly on Queen’s Road Central until September 2022, it has lost its soul: Joyce Ma, who single-handedly changed how Hong Kong people dressed, with her acquisition of must-have labels from around the world. Hailed as Asia’s number one buyer, Joyce Ma had her own unique taste, to which the success of her boutique was largely attributed. She hand-picked almost everything sold at her boutique, and on top of her exceptional fashion sense, she was also good at finding new labels for the fashion market of Hong Kong as well as Asia. In the 1970s, she successfully introduced world-class designer labels, such as Giorgio Armani, Donna Karan, Dolce & Gabbana, Jil Sander, and Romeo Gigli, to Hong Kong, which soon tempted competitors to follow suit. In the 1980s, she continued to introduce highprofile international designers and collections to the city. As fashionable Hong Kong women’s cravings for European designs faded, she turned to

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emerging world-class designer labels, such as Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and Comme des Garçons, which triggered a new wave of Japanese vogue. Besides her unrivalled fashion sense, determination and hard work were also key to Joyce Ma’s success. It was reported that she spent nine months every year on merchandizing around the world, and in order to get into Issey Miyake’s agency, she waited for three days at the entrance of the studio of the Japanese guru. It was therefore not an exaggeration that, to cite her own words: ‘I hand-pick[ed] with sweat!’47 This was also one of the major reasons behind her success: ‘It would be an understatement to say that this fashion pioneer has influenced, if not taught, a generation of Hongkongers to dress elegantly and playfully.’48 Joyce Boutique became so successful that visiting it and the designer label stores it operated was a ‘spiritual’ experience for many Hong Kong fashion fans: ‘In the 80s and 90s, almost every fashion and lifestyle enthusiast would visit Joyce Boutique religiously to take note of her curated looks and style’; Joyce Ma was hailed as an ‘Asian Fashion Guru’ and her flagship store ‘the boutique of Hong Kong people’. 49 Not only did Joyce Ma introduce new designer labels at her flagship boutique, she also opened specialty stores for designer labels. For example, the first Giorgio Armani store in Hong Kong, which opened its doors in the Central District in 1981, was masterminded by Joyce Ma. When I first ‘made a pilgrimage’ to the store, I was still a secondary school student who could not afford anything in the store. I can still remember that I was totally astonished by the jaw-dropping price tags! Admittedly, its major role was to provide exclusive items to socialites, and many, if not most, Hong Kong people could not afford spending there. In this sense, it was not really ‘mass’ culture, but thanks to the chic taste for style and fashion it brought to the city, not just its patrons but also many places across the territories looked more beautiful. Even more crucially, as Joyce Ma and her fashion business was spoken of with great respect in the fashion world, Hong Kong was pinned on the map of world fashion capitals. It was not about manufacturing, not even design, but trendsetting: Joyce Boutique made profound impacts on fashion trends in Asia. Although I could not afford to spend there, I learned how to take pride in the cutting-edge fashion style of my city. 47 Cited from Dunn, ‘Joyce Ma: At Long Last Joyce.’ 48 Cited from ‘Very Hong Kong Very Hong Kong.’ 49 Cited from ‘Very Hong Kong Very Hong Kong’; see also ‘Those Were the Years: The Boutique of Hong Kong People’ 那些年，屬於香港人的時裝店 (in Chinese), Jet Magazine, Vol. 192 (August 2018): https://jet.my-magazine.me/article/detail/fashion/10511; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 4.3  The Galleria, Central District, Hong Kong; April 2021

As result of rapid economic growth and rising living standards, the Joyce business was massively prof itable. It was therefore not surprising that Joyce Boutique Holdings was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1990. However, there are always pros and cons in all cases. Although Joyce Ma did not stop finding emerging avant-garde labels for the Hong Kong and Asian markets, and Belgian designers such as Dries Van Noten and Ann Demuelemeester enthralled countless fashion fans, there were many more concerns once the boutique became a listed company. Having tapped extra capital, the chain further expanded at an increased pace. ‘The World of Joyce’, a superstore featuring not just fashion but also Joyce Living and Joyce Café, was launched at The Galleria, also on Queen’s Road Central, in 1992. At that time, it stole the limelight from the New World Tower store with its revolutionary concept of one-stop shopping for both boutique and living goods. No longer a fashion boutique, ‘The World of Joyce’ was meant to be something more: not just dressing but also living style. With the benefit of hindsight, the expansion was not a blessing for the ‘the most forward-thinking fashion in the world’, to borrow the term of Milan-based architect and designer Paola Navone, who masterminded the full-scale

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renovation of Joyce Central in 2016.50 Some labels, such as Giorgio Armani and Prada, which were introduced to Hong Kong by Joyce, started running their own business, and more deep-seated problems surfaced when the Asian financial crisis hit the luxury goods market badly in the late 1990s. In 2000, Wheelock and Company Limited became the largest shareholder by acquiring a 51% stake of Joyce Boutique Holdings (later sold to the family trust of local tycoon Peter Woo), while Walter King-wah Ma still held 23%. In 2005, the 16,000-square-foot Joyce flagship store at New World Tower was redesigned by the Dutch architect Gert Voorjans and American artist Michele Oka Doner (and later a 10,000-square-foot upper floor was added), with antique furniture handpicked by Joyce Ma.51 However, she kept her management role only until 2007. As Joyce Ma had been synonymous with luxury brands in Hong Kong for more than thirty years, Joyce was no longer Joyce without her. Once upon a time in Hong Kong, paying a visit to the Joyce Boutique – ‘the most beautiful name of Hong Kong chic’ – was ‘already an experience in itself’.52 But it had become just another luxury goods retailer without the empress of Asian fashion. Later, Joyce Boutique ‘merged’ with Lane Crawford, a heritage luxury retailer owned by the family trust of Peter Woo. Although Andrew Keith, the then president of Joyce who took up the additional role of the new president of Lane Crawford in 2011, said that it was not really merging, and that ‘both Joyce and Lane Crawford had their own identities and continued to operate independently,’53 many inveterate patrons felt that Joyce had lost its uniqueness as some labels appeared in the shops of both brands. According to Peter Dunn, the positioning of Joyce became embarrassing: ‘the “orthodox” famous labels went to Lane Crawford, whereas Joyce focused on the “heterodox”, “alternative”, and “avant-garde”.’54 The group might have had in mind a kind of ‘intra-business group synergy’, which was believed to have saved Gucci (which had lost its way because of the loss of control of its manufacturing and retail distribution), with a 50 Cited from Cynthia Rosenfeld, ‘Paola Navone’s Perfect Imperfection,’ Surface, 9 January 2017: https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/design-paola-navones-perfect-imperfection/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 51 Refer to Joyce Boutique Holdings Limited Annual Report 2006/2007, p. 11. 52 Sigrid Chan, ‘JOYCE: The Most Fashionable Name in Hong Kong’ JOYCE 香港風尚最美麗 的名字 (in Chinese), Art and Piece: https://artandpiece.com/joyce-香港風尚最美麗的名字/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 53 Meimei Song, ‘Andrew Keith Becomes President of Lane Crawford,’ Hong Kong Tatler, 18 January 2011: https://hk.asiatatler.com/style/andrew-keith-becomes-president-of-lane-crawford; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 54 Peter Dunn, ‘Joyce Boutique’ (in Chinese), City Magazine, November 2016, p. 10.

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‘ten-year renaissance’.55 Apparently, the Lane Crawford Joyce Group might have had a similar kind of synergy, but, despite both being luxury brands retailers, they were so different that it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to generate creative synergies. One of the major reasons was that Joyce Boutique embodied a culture of its own. It was unfortunate that the fashion industry has also changed a great deal in the new millennium because of the rapid expansion of global capitalism. In such a context, ‘fashion, even at the top end of the scale, is increasingly about big business. Designers are admirably creative people, but they work for an ever-shrinking number of global conglomerates.’56 The vision of this new business model, I surmise, is something fundamentally different from that of Joyce Ma’s. As Hong Kong fashion designer William Tang reminded us, it would be a total misunderstanding if Joyce Ma was considered simply the godmother or empress of fashion: ‘the most significant impact of Joyce was not its business, but its life culture. It enlightened a whole lot of people, enhancing their sense of fashion and self-image, which was a culture geared to international standards.’57 Back in 1995, Joyce Ma became the first Asian to be honoured at Italy’s Fashion Hall of Fame for her contributions to bringing Italian style and design to Asian fashion. When she gave her acceptance speech after being decorated with the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest honour in recognition of her contribution to cultural exchange in 2005, Kenzo Takada, one of the first designers brought to Hong Kong by Joyce Boutique, was ‘moist-eyed’, and Dries Van Noten ‘recalled Ma’s first visit to his showroom when her sure fashion eye picked out key pieces in under three minutes’.58 When Joyce Central reopened after renovation in 2007, Yohji Yamamoto and his mother, among others, added glamour and style to the ceremony. These were all excellent reminders of Joyce Ma’s exceptional fashion sense as well as the personal relationships that she had established with talented designers, which spanned across three decades. Although the boutique could not but be a commercial business, Joyce Ma breathed life into her own label. Her own cosmopolitan vision – Paris, London, New York, and, most important of all, Hong Kong – enabled her to hybridize her 55 Christopher M. Moore and Grete Birtwistle, ‘The Nature of Parenting Advantage in Luxury Fashion Retailing: The Case of Gucci Group NV,’ International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 33:4 (April 2005), pp. 256–270. 56 Mark Tungate, Fashion Brands: Branding Style from Armani to Zara (London and Philadelphia: Kogan Page, 2012), p. 4. 57 William Tang, ‘Fashion Empress Leading Asia-Pacific Fashion Taste for Several Decades’ 時尚女皇Joyce Ma 帶領亞太時尚品味數十載 (in Chinese), Sky Post 晴報, 7 December 2018. 58 Suzy Menkes, ‘Joyce Ma Honored,’ New York Times, 1 March 2005.

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own unique sense of taste. The brand may have been commercial, but it was always exquisitely civilized. During its heyday, Joyce made Hong Kong one of the most fashionable cities in the world, which was far from easy for other cities to emulate, no matter how many parvenus they had. Fashion branding is not just about luxury, but also style and history.59 Without the noble elegance of this high priestess, which was culminated by education, personal connections, vision, and taste,60 Joyce would not have been so successful.

D’Esprit and the Cult of Youth As mentioned above, besides the privatization of Joyce Boutique Holdings, the news about the closure of all Esprit branches in Asia on 27 April 2020 also made Hong Kong fashion fans deeply upset. For Hong Kong fashion fans who could not afford spending big at Joyce Boutique, Esprit might be their salvation. What started as a quintessential American-style brand became an international success story. Brought to Hong Kong by Michael Ying in the early 1970s, Esprit was a mid-price fashion label targeted mainly at the younger generation. Ying was born in Hong Kong and began his career in a garment factory, and he later had a chance to work as the sourcing agent of Esprit. He founded the Esprit Far East Group with Susie and Douglas Tompkins in 1971, and he gradually developed it into an international brand based chiefly in Germany (its global headquarters) and Hong Kong (its financial base and listing). Although it was, strictly speaking, not a Hong Kong brand, it was one of the most representative brands to write its own legendary story in Hong Kong. After the Tompkins divorced, Michael Ying bought their shares and founded Esprit Holdings Limited in 1989, which was later listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1993. As for performance in the stock market, Esprit was far more successful than Joyce. The company started soaring in the late 1990s and later became a blue-chip stock in 2002. Esprit was seen as a typical Hong Kong success story, which was riding on the full momentum of Hong Kong’s development in the 1970s and 1980s. 59 See, for instance, Joseph H. Hancock II, Gjoko Muratovski, Veronica Manlow, and Anne Peirson-Smith, eds., Global Fashion Brands: Style, Luxury and History (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2014). 60 Christopher Lai, ‘A Kind of Noble Called ‘Joyce Ma’’ 有一種貴族叫Joyce Ma (in Chinese), Ming’s, 15 June 2018: https://www.mings-fashion.com/joyce-ma-joyce-富二代-12427/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 4.4  Esprit@Hing Fat Street; mid 1980s

Esprit ushered in a new era after the famous logo with interrupted lettering, inspired by a shipping container’s stencil, was designed by John Casado in 1979. The 1980s was a decade of soaring growth for Esprit, with Hong Kong an important base. In 1983, having accumulated a handsome turnover and having built a broad fan base, Esprit opened its first free-standing, directly operated equity store in Hong Kong. The Hing Fat Street store later became a part of collective pop memory of Hong Kong people, as praised by the Cantorap duo Softhard Boys (who had worked for Esprit as window display designers before entering the entertainment business) in ‘Comme des Garcons vs Yohji Yamamoto’ (1991). As their song about consumer fetishism in Hong Kong went: ‘we’ll forever miss the Esprit shop on Hing Fat Street.’ Located in a quiet and secluded neighbourhood on the margin of Causeway Bay, the city’s buzzing stylish shopping district, the Esprit shop on Hing Fat Street had to do something to draw the attention of the shopaholics who were used to hanging out near Paterson Street on the other side of the shopping district, which was crowded with famous brand names and

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signature Japanese department stores back then. ‘The Esprit concept store on Hing Fat Street in Causeway Bay was at the time a sensation in Hong Kong. The cultural landmark where fashion, home decors and lifestyle met was made possible by an avant-garde team led by Shiro Kuramata,’61 as local designer Alan Chan aptly summarized. Widely known as one of the most signif icant Japanese interior and furniture designers of the twentieth century, Shiro Kuramata was famous for his innovative expression of immateriality. The innovative – timeless and placeless – design with acrylic and aluminium offered a brand-new shopping experience for Hong Kong fashion fans: ‘At a time when fashion was still something that the West did to other cultures, here was something that seemed to be entirely new, and somehow placeless, not obviously Western or Eastern but at home in both traditions.’62 That the Kiyotomo sushi bar designed by Shiro Kuramata in 1988 was acquired by M+, Hong Kong’s flagship museum for visual culture, in 2015 to highlight its growing collection of design and architecture proved that Esprit’s choice was tasteful and far-sighted. The genuinely avant-garde design of the concept store was a major part of the brand launch, but it had to be supplemented by other image-building promotion plans. To tell a long story short, let me share my experience about this shop. Before the Esprit shop on Hing Fat Street opened, I did not know anything about the brand. As the flagship store was located in the middle of nowhere in Causeway Bay (to be accurate, it was in Tin Hau), my friends and I did not care to pay a visit because it was not easily accessible, especially for those who were not living on that side of Victoria Harbour (the Island line of the Mass Transit Railway [MTR] was not yet completed). The company knew this very well. At first, they provided a free shuttle bus service every day, which was probably unprecedented in Hong Kong, carrying customers from Central, Admiralty, and Food Street (central Causeway Bay) to Hing Fat Street. It was a very clever marketing strategy indeed. The shuttle buses with Esprit logos travelling on busy streets were actually moving outdoor advertisements themselves. I can still remember riding in one of those buses with my friends one day after school, heading towards Hing Fat Street, an area that we had never visited before. The journey was a brandnew experience, but it was totally surpassed by the eye-opening venture into the Hing Fat Street store. No sooner had we entered the shop than we 61 Cited from ‘Very Hong Kong Very Hong Kong.’ 62 Deyan Sudjic, ‘In Search of Shiro Kuramata,’ Interwoven: The Fabrics of Things: http:// kvadratinterwoven.com/in-search-of-shiro-kuramata; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 4.5  Interior design of the Esprit concept store; 1983

understood why the company chose to open its flagship store there. In the gigantic 14,000-square-foot, two-level, 20-feet ceiling space (especially as per the then standard in Hong Kong), I enjoyed an unbelievable shopping experience (actually, we did not buy anything in the end) which would be remembered forever – sharing wholeheartedly the feelings of the Softhard Boys mentioned above. Although I lacked sufficient knowledge to appreciate its distinctive style, I was caught in awe by the interior design. The shopping experience itself was completely different too. Free lockers were provided near the entrance so that customers could enjoy a ‘burden-free’ shopping experience. The choice of Hing Fat Street and hence the much lower rent was evidently wise in that regard. My experience was perfectly summed up by the following remarks by a local columnist: ‘Besides if you can afford to buy’, Esprit further added ‘if you dare to enter the shop’, and visiting Esprit became the preliminary examination for visiting Joyce for that generation of Hong Kong youngsters.63 Besides the shop itself, that customers had a real blast at Esprit@Hing Fat Street could also be attributed to the creative team that built the overall image of the brand, including, among others, the image director Tina Liu, 63 Kam Shing 金成, ‘Struggling Before Entering the Causeway Bay Esprit Flagship Store’ 步 入銅鑼灣Esprit總壇的掙扎 (in Chinese), The News Len 關鍵評論, 6 May 2020: https://www. thenewslens.com/article/134653; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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who was the actress-cum-executive editor of City Magazine, the trendiest magazine in town (more in Chapter 6). In order to provide an exclusive image and store experience for the brand, she flew to the headquarters of Esprit in San Francisco, familiarizing herself with the image of the culture of the brand before designing a whole set of promotional activities prior to the launching of the flagship store. Thanks to the vision and taste of the Tompkins, the creative design, and reasonable pricing, as recollected by Liu, that was the prime time of Esprit, and she was simply provided with the best stuff and creative space.64 Tina Liu was in charge of almost everything related to the brand image, including promotion, public relations, posters, lighting, music, and even the appearances and images of the frontline staff. ‘We had even to pick the smell of air-conditioning system,’ she said, as ‘everything that the customers can see, touch, smell, and feel must be taken good care of.’65 She simply picked the best stuff, at least the best for the brand. Besides inviting Andrew Bull, the disc-jockey of the then trendiest discotheque in town (see Chapter 5), to tailor-mix music for different times of the day, she also carefully chose the models as well as the sales staff. Their outlooks were even more attractive than some film stars. Dressed in Esprit costumes, they were simply living signboards. Besides the model-looking (some of them really were fashion models) sales staff, I also remember seeing large posters advertising the brand in MTR stations. In the early 1980s, MTR (the first section opened on 1 October 1979) was still new, which nicely matched the young and energetic image of the emerging fashion brand. More remarkably, the models were not only young and good-looking but also energetic and gracious, which was quite different from the images of other brands. The ads were so eye-catching that the attention of even a non-fashion fan like me – I was also young at that time – was caught in no time. The shop and the brand were so hip that young Hong Kongers took pride in working at Esprit back then.66 Despite its exquisiteness, however, unlike Joyce, the positioning of Esprit was a kind of ‘affordable luxury’ – not really affordable to all though. In 1987, Tina Liu masterminded an ‘Esprit City Girl’ contest in conjunction with her 64 Tina Liu, ‘88 Hing Fat Street’ 興發街88號 (in Chinese), Ming Pao Weekly 明報周刊, 5 May 2020: https://www.mpweekly.com/entertainment/blogger/劉天蘭/20200515-194561; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 65 Cited from ‘The Final Chapter of ESPRIT’ ESPRIT之最終章 (in Chinese), Apple Daily 蘋果 日報, 30 June 2020. 66 Calvin Wong, ‘In the 1980s and 1990s, Young People Took Pride in Working at ESPRIT’ 八九 十年代，年輕人都以入ESPRIT工作為榮 (in Chinese), Art and Piece: https://artandpiece.com/ esprit-hongkong-asia-quit/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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own Cantopop album entitled City Girl, on which was written: ‘Showcase your talent of mix and match.’67 This also echoed the marketing strategy, if not philosophy, of Esprit: the ‘Real People Campaign’ adopted in the 1980s as ‘a new way of communicating’; ‘Esprit is in search of dialogue; it involves people – and takes a stand’; and, as simply put, ‘Esprit is an attitude, not an age.’68 You just had to have several basic items, and if you had your own taste, you could mix and match your own distinctive style, something like ‘they make the clothes, you make the difference.’ The campaign touched the hearts of many young people, not only in Hong Kong but also around the world. Taking advantage of the rapid rise of the young middle class in Hong Kong, the 1980s was the golden period of business growth for Esprit. In the mid-1980s, new Esprit stores were established in Hong Kong as well as major cities around the world, and the press coverage of the imaginative designs of those stores provided free advertising for the brand. After it was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1993, Esprit continued to grow, not only in Hong Kong but also around the world, with a special emphasis on the European market. When Michael Ying married Brigitte Lin, once widely known as the most gorgeous Chinese actress, in 1994, the Hong Kong legendary story of Esprit looked even more flawless. Esprit continued to expand in Hong Kong and branched out into the salon business, for example, by collaborating with Kim Robinson to found Salon Esprit in 1999. Esprit’s mid-pricing helped it withstand the heavy blow of the Asian financial crisis. In 2002, Esprit Asia Holdings Ltd. acquired Esprit Europe and Esprit Sourcing, and the retitled Esprit Holdings Ltd. purchased the US trademark and unified the Esprit brand globally. It was included on the Hang Seng Index in the same year.69 Having become a blue-chip, the listed company had grown so big and global that there were many business considerations to make. Led by generally higher demand for the growth of profits, the brand was no longer young and energetic. At its peak in 2007, it was a US$30 billion company, but owing at least partly to the rise of fast fashion that enthralled the younger generation, Esprit went into decline 67 Refer to Pui-Pang Wong 黃沛鵬, ‘Esprit’s Subsidiary Applying for Bankruptcy Protection in Germany’ 思捷子企德國申請破產保護, HK 01 Weekly, 30 March 2020: https://www.hk01.com/ 一物/265118/esprit-思捷子企德國申請破產保護-回顧品牌那些年光輝歲月; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 68 Cited from Esprit’s website: https://www.esprit.com/en/company/corporate/history; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 69 For further details on the business strategy and development of the brand, refer to Joachim Zentes, Dirk Morschett, and Hanna Schramm-Klein, Strategic Retail Management: Text and International Cases (Wiesbaden: Gabler, 2007), pp. 62–72.

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Figure 4.6  Former Flagship Store@Tsim Sha Tsui; October 2009

thereafter and was later excluded from the Hang Seng Index in 2013. The trajectory of its success story, unfortunately, sounds similar to that of Joyce’s, although it went into decline later. It was perhaps fated that the two pieces of news on 27 April 2020 lowered the final curtain on a glorious era of Hong Kong fashion brands.

Fashion Icons and Stardom Even more pertinent to the topic of this book is that Joyce and Esprit were closely related to Hong Kong’s multimedia stardom in the 1980s. Regarding the history of successful links between fashion and celebrities/stars, it is arguably as long as that of fashion itself. For example, cinema has inspired fashion for more than a century. ‘Film met fashion on a summer’s night in 1911,’ as Amber Butchart noted in her The Fashion of Film, ‘when fashion’s consummate showman Paul Poiret filmed his mannequins parading at a lavish party, he had staged to promote his new collection’.70 Since then, 70 Amber Butchart, The Fashion of Film: How Cinema Has Inspired Fashion (London: Mitchell Beazley, 2016), p. 7.

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many iconic films have transformed high fashion. In some cases, superstars became brands of image and style. ‘Wow, that’s more than a dress – that’s an Audrey Hepburn movie,’ was what Tom Cruise said in Jerry Maguire (1996), which spoke loudly about their intimate and complex relationship. (Hepburn’s image in f ilms in the 1950s and 1960s and, ‘more generally, in publicity articles, film advertising, and other extratextual materials, demonstrate[d] the appeal of juvenated femininity as a hybrid blending innocence and sophistication’, which later ‘became part of a carefully modulated star persona crafted in the waning days of the Hollywood studio system and persisting into the mid to late 1960s, an era associated with a fashion revolution’.71) Fashion also has a similar relationship with other pop media, such as television and music. Fashion and music, for example, ‘have also long shared a powerful mutual attraction’: ‘fashion has consistently amplified our understanding of the band (and in many cases the brand) – fueling the fantasy, giving context to the sound and adding depth to artists’ wider agendas.’72 Stardom, image, and fashion had such an intimate relationship that ‘[i]t [was] difficult to imagine conjuring up the image of […] stars […] without thinking in general terms of their style, and indeed, often, the specific modes of dress with which they were associated.’73 As previously mentioned, film stars Patricia Lam, Connie Chan, and Josephine Siao, among others, were forerunners in bringing modern Western fashion styles to Hong Kong in the 1960s. Countless celebrities and stars picked their designer labels at Joyce Boutique, and Joyce Ma was a star fashionista herself.74 In the 1980s, young and rising stars and models did not mind having large Esprit logos on their T-shirts and sweatshirts, and later Brigitte Lin, the boss’s wife, was a superstar indeed. This needs another book-length study to offer nuanced accounts of the win-win situation: how Hong Kong fashion brands were inspired by stars/celebrities and how they enhanced multimedia stardom. Given the limited scope here, I would just like to use three cases as examples – Danny Chan, Leslie Cheung, and Anita Mui (these three names appear in nearly every chapter of this book) – as they are excellent examples to evince the synergies between different sectors of Hong Kong pop in the 1980s. 71 Studlar, Precocious Charms, p. 203. 72 See, for instance, Katie Baron, Fashion + Music: Fashion Creatives Shaping Pop Culture (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2016), and Helen Warner, Fashion on Television: Identity and Celebrity Culture (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). 73 Rachel Moseley, Fashioning Film Stars: Dress, Culture, Identity (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005), p. 1. 74 Yeung, ‘Joyce Ma – 5 Things to Know about Asia’s Empress of Fashion.’

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As pointed out in the chapter on Cantopop, Danny Chan’s debut album, First Love/Tears for You (1979), brought him instant success, and besides the songs, his white Lacoste polo shirt on the album cover caught the attention of young fans. In the 1981 teen film Job Hunter (aka On Trial), his Ralph Lauren polo shirts triggered a tidal wave among style enthusiasts in Hong Kong. His preppy look taught a whole generation of youngsters in Hong Kong how to dress elegantly. After he grew up, of course, he tried something different. A fashion fanatic, he became the unofficial model of many designer labels, most of which one could find at Joyce Boutique, including but not limited to Gianni Versace, Montana, Giorgio Armani, Matsuda, and Kansai Yamamoto. Not only was he always on trend, he was also able to set new trends; for example, he was possibly the first Hong Kong singer to wear a Jean Paul Gaultier suit. His album covers were similar to, if different from, those of fashion magazines. Besides the Lacoste polo shirt on First Love/Tears for You, his Matsuda tee vest, Ray-Ban Men’s Wayfarer sunglasses, and spiked up hairstyle on the cover of Danny 84 was a perfect display of a sunny, healthy, Hollywood-style look. He looked formal but relaxed with different styles and brands of tuxedoes, and at the same time, he could be flamboyant but classy, for example, carrying Kansai Yamamoto’s concept of basara – a love of colour and flamboyance – effortlessly. Given the limited space, let me just share two more of my favourite examples. Leaning on a convertible Mercedes with a set of Emporio Armani and (probably) Marithé+François Girbaud jeans, he looked charmingly casual on the cover of The Person in My Dream (1987). His distinguished taste can also be seen on the dazzling album cover of the album Danny Chan (1988), on which he appeared in four different sets of outfits with his own Hill House Chair designed by Charles R. Mackintosh. While Danny Chan became a superstar and unofficial spokesperson of a series of world-class designer labels in Hong Kong, he also sometimes dressed casually. In the Cinema City film Merry Christmas (1984), Danny Chan wore a white hoodie with a big signature Esprit logo, which was an invaluable help in promoting the emerging brand. Tina Liu stressed in an interview that she did not ask the stars to wear those outfits with big logos, but perhaps it was the image of the emerging brand that many stars were willing to wear them in films as well as in real life.75 To put it succinctly, Danny Chan was able to mix and match different styles with different designer labels in his own elegant fashion style called ‘Danny Chan’.76 75 Cited from ‘The Final Chapter of ESPRIT.’ 76 Ka-lam Lee 李嘉琳, ‘A Fashion Taste Called ‘Danny Chan’’ 有一種時尚品味叫作陳百強 (in Chinese), HK 01 Weekly, 7 September 2018: https://www.hk01.com/一物/232688/經典回顧-有一

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Leslie Cheung was another superstar who wore Esprit sweatshirts on different occasions. As his father was a well-known tailor who had made suits for the likes of Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, and Alfred Hitchcock in Hong Kong,77 he had already developed a keen fashion sense at the beginning of his career. Eclipsed by his competitor Danny Chan in the early 1980s, he had to wait until 1984 to become a superstar. Before that, however, he had shown his distinctive taste with a Giorgio Armani suit, among others, on the cover of his 1982 Cantopop album Craziness. It was well known that, as a big fan of Giorgio Armani, he was among the few leading Hong Kong trendsetters who often wore the Italian designer label. On the cover of his 1986 album Baffle Me, he wore a red-hot Giorgio Armani suit, a loud but perfect match with his superstar status. His love for the Italian designer label in the 1980s could be best summed up by the suit he wore on the album cover Final Encounter (1989), which was the last album he released in December 1989 before his (temporary) retirement from the Cantopop industry. Of course, Leslie Cheung carried other designer labels extremely well too. One of my favourite examples is All Because of You: Summer Best Collections (1985), on the cover of which he wore a Kenzo blazer with a red pocket square, holding a fedora in an extremely cool manner. This was a textbook example of dandyism different from Danny Chan’s. In an interview with City Magazine shortly before his temporary retirement, Cheung said that these were his favourites: ‘Romeo Gigli and Krizia shirts, Girbaud jeans, Versace shoes, Armani fabric, and Cutting Mugler Suit (only for shows).’78 Actually, he did not use an image designer after 1986, and he tended to mix and match different labels so that he could have his own style. Natalia Siu-hung Chan, his understanding fan and critic, noted in her perceptive study of Leslie Cheung that his style had turned more casual – from gentle and affectionate to dynamic and modish – in the late 1980s, and the energetic and colourful designs of brands such as Gianni Versace and Romeo Gigli helped uncover his modernly chic character.79 ‘The early 種時尚品味叫作-陳百強; Christopher Lai, ‘A Kind of Elegance Called ‘Danny Chan’’ 有一種優雅 叫陳百強 (in Chinese), Ming’s, 16 August 2018: https://www.mings-fashion.com/陳百強-穿搭-造 型-194371/; both last accessed on 28 October 2022. 77 Douglas Parkes, ‘Leslie Cheung: 7 Things You Didn’t Know about the Cantopop Icon, Actor and LGBT Pioneer,’ South China Morning Post, 30 March 2020. 78 Tina Liu, ‘Leslie Cheung: He Said This Was His Last Interview’ 張國榮：他說這是他最後 的一篇訪問 (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 169 (September/October 1990): https://matters. news/@loveyou_rabbit/張國榮-他說這是他最後的一篇訪問-文-劉天蘭-bafyreicw3rpef5iqp 3rghhyqrmk5mhjxlbqjwhczdcfqiahi5twbwf3une; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 79 Cited from ‘Remembering from Scattered Phosphorus Powder: Leslie Cheung the Butterfly of Forbidden Colors’從散落的磷粉中懷念：禁色蝴蝶張國榮 (in Chinese), HK 01 Weekly,

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Leslie Cheung’, to sum up the words of Chan, ‘in both his everyday attire and costumes for album covers, displays a chic style and a radically innovating aesthetics, highlighting how his acute sense of fashion lay way ahead of his contemporaries.’80 Leslie Cheung continued to sparkle brightly in the 1990s, first in films and then in the music industry after his comeback. With respect to fashion, one of the most notable examples was his androgynous image in the Leslie Passion Tour concerts in 2000. He was the first Asian star whose set of stage costumes was designed by Jean Paul Gaultier: six outfits inspired by the concept ‘from angel to devil’.81 A bit different from her two good friends, Anita Mui worked closely with Hong Kong designer Eddie Lau throughout the 1980s and over her whole career. For Hong Kong fans, it was not an exaggeration to make this claim: ‘If Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn were perfect partners in the West, then Eddie and Anita are their Eastern counterparts.’82 Well known as the ‘ever-changing’ Cantopop diva, she f irst stood out from other Hong Kong songstresses with her 1985 album Anita Mui. Inspired by Marlene Dietrich’s androgynous/bisexual image,83 Eddie Lau put Mui in a man’s suit and long coat. This was a boldly pioneering attempt in the Cantopop industry back then. On her next album, she turned completely into a bad girl, with which she was crowned the most popular female Cantopop singer and touted as ‘Madonna of Asia’. For this album, Eddie Lau designed different images for her. On the cover, she looked elegantly gorgeous in a feminine dress, but a silhouette of a unisex, rebellious, ‘bad girl’ look with jacket and jeans could be seen in the background (actually, the ‘bad girl’ image was foregrounded in another album design). Anita Mui subsequently changed her image ‘hundreds of times’ (her sobriquet in 31 March 2017: https://www.hk01.com/一物/81674/從散落的磷粉中懷念-禁色蝴蝶張國榮; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 80 Natalia Siu-hung Chan, ‘Camp Stars of Androgyny: A Study of Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui’s Body Images of Desire,’ in A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, eds. Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti, and Esther C. M. Yau (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), p. 342. 81 For more details, refer to Natalia Chan, ‘Queering Body and Sexuality: Leslie Cheung’s Gender Representation in Hong Kong Popular Culture,’ in As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland China and Hong Kong, ed. Yau Ching (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), pp. 144–145 82 Cited from ‘The Ever-changing Anita Mui,’ Hong Kong Memory: https://www.hkmemory. hk/collections/eddie_lau/anita_mui/index.html#&panel1-1; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 83 Chin-Pang Lei 李展鵬, Dream and the City: Anita Mui and Hong Kong Pop Culture 夢伴 此城：梅艷芳與香港流行文化 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 2019), p. 63. For an informative account of Marlene Dietrich and other icons of beauty and glamour in 1930s Hollywood, refer to Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

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Chinese), and the images of ‘wicked girl’, ‘fair lady’, and tango and samba girls were all tailor-designed by Eddie Lau, which won her worldwide recognition with ‘her stylized costumes and powerful showmanship’.84 These provocative and flamboyant images (such as flashy Arabian outfits and a metal-studded low-cut dress 85) were mainly designed for stage performances, which could hardly be emulated by her fans. This did not undermine her image as the female fashion icon of Hong Kong in the 1980s and beyond. Anita Mui continued to sparkle as a fashion icon with her good friend and stage partner Leslie Cheung beyond the 1980s. Besides the stage costumes tailored-designed by Eddie Lau, countless designer labels fit her well too, thanks to her always-changing image and wardrobe choices. Among those labels, Dior seemed to be one of her favourites, especially Dior by John Galliano. During his tenure as Dior’s creative director from 1996 to 2011, Galliano revitalized the label with his daring, dramatic, sassy, and sexy designs, and he considered Mui to be the best performer in Hong Kong and even Asia to carry his ground-breaking fashion. It was reported that when Anita Mui attended the Dior Ready-to-Wear Show in Paris in 2003, John Galliano praised her as having ‘the perfect image for Dior’.86 In her final concerts held shortly before her demise on 30 December 2003, she became the first Asian star to wear John Galliano’s haute couture on stage. At the same time, Eddie Lau also specially designed two wedding gowns – a red and gold Chinese style and a white Western style – for her to fulfil her final wish to be married to the stage. It was an acutely sad, but in a way satisfying, end to the career of the cancer-stricken chameleon of fashion. All in all, the three all-time fashion icons perfectly showcased the creative synergies among the media, show business, fashion, and chic venues (such as discotheques; more in Chapter 5) in the 1980s. Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui were among the few Hong Kong superstars from the 1980s who never ceased to progress and to evolve beyond the 1980s. Had it not been the tragic death of Danny Chan in 1993 after a seventeen-month coma, I am sure that the city would also continue to feel the glow and glamour of his unique fashion sense. 84 Chan, ‘Camp Stars of Androgyny,’ p. 342. 85 For an illustrated account of Eddie Lau’s image and stage costume designs for Anita Mui, refer to ‘The Ever-changing Anita Mui.’ 86 Christopher Lai, ‘Anita Mui and Dior by John Galliano’ 梅艷芳與Dior by John Galliano (in Chinese), Ming’s, 10 October 2017: https://www.mings-fashion.com/梅艷芳-劉培基-dior-62122/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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The City Is What Its Stars Wear? As celebrities can play an extremely effective role in promoting fashion brands by gaining increased recognition and interest for them, celebrity endorsement has long been one of the most important marketing strategies in the world of luxury fashion in particular and consumer commodities in general. ‘An understanding is beginning to emerge that fashion designers, running-shoe companies, media outlets, cartoon characters and celebrities of all kinds are all more or less in the same business: the business of marketing their brands,’ according to Naomi Klein’s No Logo.87 Although Klein was critiquing the political power of the super brands in her bestseller, this remark exposed the collaboration, if not collusion, between fashion designers and celebrities in the age of the ‘Brandasaurus’. The 1980s was a time when designer labels entered into closer collaboration with celebrities/ stars, owing to the phenomenal success, perhaps the most effective brand promotion on film, of Paul Schrader’s neo-noir film American Gigolo (1980). As reported by GQ Magazine, the film ‘launched Armani’s career, caused a sea change on Savile Row and inspired a generation of men to adopt his silk, linen and Italian cotton suiting’.88 Richard Gere in Giorgio Armani set a new benchmark for the wardrobe of well-dressed men around the world. Conversely, fashion brands were effective catalysts that sparked the star-making process. ‘For the first time a suit became an extension of the leading character’ in the film, or, as Christopher Laverty of Clothes on Film put it, ‘American Gigolo is not even about its protagonist, it is about what he wears. American Gigolo is about Armani.’89 Hong Kong was blessed that Joyce Ma introduced Armani to the city and fashion idols such as Leslie Cheung showcased the brand with styles different from Gere’s. A win-win situation was thereby created for multimedia stardom and brand promotion. As discussed above, fashion brands like Joyce and Esprit fared even better in the 1990s, and the golden age of Hong Kong fashion did not end in 1989 87 Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 2000), p. 59. For examples of celebrity-endorsed fashion campaigns, refer to Jana Pijak, ‘From Songstress Couture Ads to Rapper Sportswear Lines,’ Trend Hunter, 17 September 2015: https://www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/celebrityendorsed-fashion; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 88 Kevin E. G. Perry, ‘The Style of American Gigolo,’ GQ Magazine, 30 March 2012: https:// www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/american-gigolo-paul-schrader-armani-suits; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 89 Amir Jafar, Phani Tej Adidam, and Musunuri V. Rama Prasad, ‘Celebrity Endorsements visà-vis Brand Equity of High Fashion,’ Innovative Marketing 7:4 (February 2010), p. 72; Christopher Laverty, ‘American Gigolo: Armani Gere,’ Clothes on Film, 5 May 2012: https://clothesonfilm. com/american-gigolo-armani-gere/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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from the perspective of business growth. There were also new stars, such as the Four Heavenly Kings, who made more profits than their predecessors. However, the brands managed to offer in the 1980s, to borrow Angela McRobbie’s words, ‘the possibility for understanding fashion design’s existence as both a cultural phenomenon and a set of commercial enterprise’.90 After they became listed companies and grew enormously, ruthlessly commercial demands inevitably overshadowed fashion as culture and art forms. The Hong Kong story of fashion sounds strikingly similar to that of pop media analyzed in the previous chapters. Fashion design and brands started waning in the new millennium, as they had been taken over by the mainland. As William Tang rightly noted, the 1980s was the golden era of the Hong Kong fashion industry, but owing to the sole focal point of the commercial mode of operation and the lack of international vision, fashion was seen and developed by both government and private organizations, not as a culture but merely a business. Similar to the rise and decline of Hong Kong cinema, it did not but pave the way for Chinese fashion, which quietly gained pace from the 1990s to the new millennium, to enter the international scene.91 In 2016, when the expanded 25,000-square-foot Joyce Central reopened after full-scale refurbishment by Italian architect and designer Paola Navone, it was a big event for the city. Navone’s remark that it would offer ‘the most forward-thinking fashion in the world’92 sounded ironic though. It was true that international designer labels were still running their flagship stores in Hong Kong and that there were almost always long lines in front of the stores of super labels such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci along Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, the renowned shopping district in Hong Kong. ‘Shopping in Hong Kong is not what it used to be. ‘It’s better,’ as stated in Hong Kong Chic, a definitive guide to Hong Kong published in 2007, because ‘[m]ore international brands are available now more than ever before. Their elegant boutiques are conveniently housed in spectacular new malls designed by renowned architects […] .’93 This may have been true, but in regard to shopping only. Without fashion moguls like Joyce Ma and superstars like ‘the Holy Trinity’ of Hong Kong pop and fashion icons, ‘forward-thinking’ could not but become ‘north-looking’. The main target customers have now shifted to mainland big spenders. Joyce entered China with a new concept 90 Angela McRobbie, British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 146–147. 91 William Tang, ‘Hong Kong Fashion and the Age of Joyce’ 香港時裝與Joyce年代 (in Chinese), Wen Wei Po 文匯報, 15 May 2020. 92 Rosenfeld, ‘Paola Navone’s Perfect Imperfection.’ 93 Sofia A. Suarez, Hong Kong Chic (Singapore: Didier Millet, 2007), p. 33.

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store in Shanghai in 2006. Although Joyce Boutique Holdings was officially delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in April 2020 when the impact of COVID-19 was increasingly felt across the globe, the plan of delisting had been lingering on for some years, way before the pandemic as well as the social unrest in 2019. In 2007 and 2010, Peter Woo proposed privatization so that the company could have more flexibility to develop the mainland market. In the 2010s, Joyce Boutique Holdings was one of the major Hong Kong fashion distributors doing big things in Mainland China.94 ‘Fashions are a collective medicament for the ravages of oblivion,’95 Walter Benjamin noted in The Arcades Project. The fashion brands and icons of Hong Kong in the 1980s were some of those medicaments that resisted being forgotten on a collective scale. As stated at the beginning of this book, if I had to choose the Hong Kong in the saying ‘We’ll always have Hong Kong’, it would be the one in the 1980s. It was a time when Hong Kong became a chic metropolis where the stars were as stylish as those in any other fashion capitals of the world.

94 Michel Chevalier and Pierre Xiao Lu, Luxury China: Market Opportunities and Potential (Singapore: Wiley, 2009), pp. 93–94. 95 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 80.

5

The Practice of Everynight Life: Disco as Another Kind of Dance They came to dance, but ended up getting an education.1

Abstract Besides the dancing that would continue after 1997 according to Deng Xiaoping, disco was seen as another kind of dancing that shaped another dimension of the city’s nightlife in the 1980s. This chapter investigates the thriving disco scene in Hong Kong in the 1980s, which provided excellent venues for Hong Kong people “to see and to be seen”. After the signature Disco Disco opened its door to trendy celebrities in the now-world-famous Lan Kwai Fong in December 1978, an epidemic of disco fever spread across the territory. Hong Kong’s disco culture is also examined in the light of Cantonese disco songs and Hong Kong stars/celebrities. Keywords: Lan Kwai Fong, nightlife, Disco Disco, Canton, feel for the game

Dance, But Not As Usual As mentioned in the Prologue, dancing symbolized the lifestyle of Hong Kong with the saying ‘horse racing and dancing will continue, and capitalist lifestyle will remain unchanged,’ in which dancing referred to dancing at nightclubs – a nightlife that showcased the city’s success in the capitalist world-economy. Besides the dancing that would continue after 1997 according to Deng Xiaoping, some other dancing venues became chic trendsetters of not only the territory but also neighbouring regions. While 1 Advertisement for the film Thank God It’s Friday (1978); cited from Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson, Discographies: Dance, Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 1.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_CH05

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the never-sleeping city saw big spenders in money-squandering ‘hostess’ nightclubs, disco was also seen as a kind of dance that shaped another dimension of Hong Kong’s nightlife in the 1980s. Derived from ‘discotheque’, a type of dance-oriented nightclub that first appeared in the 1960s, disco became not just the preeminent form of dance music but also a culture of nightlife in Hong Kong in the late 1970s. In the aftermath of Saturday Night Fever (1977; premiered in Hong Kong in 1978), the disco wave was triggered in the territory, which later proved to be important in propelling pop idols to stardom. If nightlife was ‘one of society’s few sanctioned antidotes to the monotony of the day-to-day, or what the French call le quotidian’,2 then disco as another kind of dancing in Hong Kong made the nightlife of this never-sleeping city even more diverse and fascinating. Interestingly, if nightclub dancing was seen as representing the lifestyle that was promised not to change after the handover in 1997, nightlife at trendy discos evinced a quickly developing pop style that uplifted the city throughout the decade. Besides lavish capitalism embodied by the economic achievements of the port city, pop chic gave its people a strong sense of cultural identity and hence self-esteem. Disco fever started going viral across the globe in the 1970s. Generally believed to have begun in the Paris underground during the Second World War, which later evolved into a global phenomenon in America in the 1970s, discos spawned a (night)lifestyle that enthralled a whole generation of people. In the 1960s, when New York’s cabaret business had ‘dropped off to the lowest point in years’ – as reported in a March 1964 New York Times article – as a result of ‘the JFK assassination, the new IRS rules on expense-account spending, and speculation that older people had stopped going to clubs’, it was at this juncture that the disco, ‘as the newest club concept to hit New York, might become the shot in the arm that revived New York nightlife’.3 Le Club, the first American disco, which opened on New Year’s Eve in 1960, and other similar discos, however, ‘were intentionally antidemocratic’, and therefore ‘their impact [was] limited to a small, tony clientele’; Electric Circus – the ‘first unabashedly hippie disco in New York’ – did not open on St. Mark’s Place until 1967. 4 While disco culture continued to grow in the 1970s, it was the film Saturday Night Fever that ignited the era’s disco fever in 1977. The film was reported to have grossed $130 million in its first US run, and the soundtrack album sold fifteen million copies in the United States 2 3 4

Peter Braunstein, ‘Disco,’ American Heritage 50:7 (November 1999), p. 43. Braunstein, ‘Disco,’ p. 45. Braunstein, ‘Disco,’ p. 45.

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and 30 million worldwide,5 becoming the best-selling record of all time until it was taken over by Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982). Actually, earlier in 1977, the monumental Studio 54 opened its doors in April ‘to encompass a pansexuality that united gays, straights, and the sexually undecided under the banner of disco hedonism’.6 It soon became the place for a sensual, stylish, and glamorous (night)lifestyle: ‘Studio 54 was the embodiment of the most decadent social period of any city in modern history.’7 To borrow the words of August Darnell, co-founder of Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band and leader of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, who said that his favourite was Studio 54 and that he went there primarily for the glamor of it, ‘it was so decadent and so exciting in that period to be part of something you knew was a world movement.’8 Together with Saturday Night Fever, disco soon developed into a ‘ubiquitous feature of the pop-culture landscape’, and it was reported that there were approximately 20,000 discos in the US, and the discofication of America simply became ubiquitous.9 Although some critics have argued that disco fever had started to fade in the US in the latter half of 1979,10 it nonetheless continued to exert its impact around the world. As a city whose economy had soared in the 1970s, Hong Kong witnessed a swift development of its dazzling nightlife scene. At the beginning of the decade, discos in Hong Kong were largely affiliated with five-star international hotels, the trendy sites of the vogue of the city. Forerunners included, among others, The Peninsula’s The Scene, the Hilton’s Den, Excelsior’s Disco, Sheraton’s Daynight, and Miramar’s Taipan. The Scene, which opened in 1966, for example, was ‘quite a swinging place’, and ‘guests could spot the likes of Kenzo Takada, Imelda Marcos, and Sir Run Run Shaw at The 5 Reebee Garofalo, Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the U.S.A. (5th ed.) (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011), p. 288; for a succinct account of the rise and decline of disco in the United States, refer to pp. 278–291; see also Peter Shapiro, Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco (New York: Faber and Faber, 2005). 6 Braunstein, ‘Disco,’ p. 55. 7 Steven S. Gaines, Simply Halston: The Untold Story (New York: Putnam, 1991), p. 199. 8 Cited from Vince Aletti, ‘Lost in Music: An Oral History of Disco,’ Rock & Roll Quarterly, Summer 1993, p. 17. 9 Braunstein, ‘Disco,’ p. 56. ‘By 1978, 40 percent of all the music on Billboard’s Hot 100 was disco. Meanwhile the discofication of America proceeded: There were disco lunch boxes, disco “Snoopy” bed sheets and pillows, disco belt buckles, disco records by old-timers like Frank Sinatra and Ethel Merman, an estimated two hundred all-disco radio stations, disco dance courses, disco proms, books about the proper makeup to wear to discos […] .’ For more details about representative disco-era albums, refer to David Hamsley, To Disco, with Love: The Records That Defined an Era (New York: Flatiron Books, 2015). 10 Refer to Tim Lawrence, ‘Introduction,’ Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).

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Scene’s VIP tables or on the round dancefloor during its 10-year run.’11 As noted by Peter Dunn, co-founder of City Magazine, The Scene had become the ‘rendezvous’ of sophisticated ‘in people’ such as Judy Mann (renowned model and fashion designer), Bambi Lam (top male model), Eddie Lau (fashion designer), and Loletta Chu (later crowned ‘Miss Hong Kong’ in 1977).12 Although The Scene was the venue for the elites in town, it was primarily restricted to the elites and the upper class, and there were rules to follow as it was housed in a traditional, classy five-star hotel. In 1977, The Peninsula decided to shut it down in order to avoid trouble (such as gay customers; more below).13 Anyway, the culture of hanging out had begun taking shape in Hong Kong. Before Saturday Night Fever premiered in Hong Kong in the summer of 1978, City Magazine had introduced the new trend to Hong Kong readers in its March 1977 issue and further discussed disco fever in its July 1978 issue.14 For example, Peter Dunn introduced two trendy discos in Hong Kong at that time – Sweet Fancy Adam and Tramps in the Central District – and concluded in the December 1978 issue of City Magazine that 1978 was ‘a year of disco’.15 Disco fever was also felt by the general public after Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) released the eight-episode musical drama Disco Fever in the summer of 1978, which featured rising idols, including, among others, Alan Tam and Yun-Fat Chow, who, together with George Lam (who sang the theme song), became superstars later. The falling of one leaf heralds the autumn: it proved to be the dawning of a new era of disco in Hong Kong. As the disco epidemic appeared after Saturday Night Fever, the discos tied to exclusive f ive-star hotels could no longer meet 11 Annette Chan, ‘Hidden Hong Kong: A History of Hong Kong Nightlife,’ Localiiz: Living in Hong Kong, 29 October 2021: https://www.localiiz.com/post/culture-history-nightlife-discoclubs-bars-hong-kong; last accessed on 28 October 2022.The essay also provides the background of the founding of The Scene: ‘In the mid-1960s, Sir Michael Kadoorie – scion of the family which founded The Peninsula – proposed opening a modern discotheque in the grand hotel, perhaps inspired by the chic clubs found in London during the “swinging sixties”. Despite scepticism from his fellow board members – he would later state that “half the directors didn’t know what a discotheque meant and the other half didn’t wish to know” – Sir Michael stuck to his guns and opened The Scene in the basement of the “finest hotel east of the Suez” in 1966.’ 12 Disco Queen, ‘A History of Hong Kong Disco: From That Summer Night in 1976 Onwards’ 香港 disco 史：一九七六年夏天的一晚起 (in Chinese), City Magazine 號外, Vol. 107, July 1985, pp. 8–9. 13 Disco Queen, ‘A History of Hong Kong Disco.’ 14 Refer to Philip Seth, ‘Hong Kong Disco Scene,’ City Magazine, Vol. 7, March 1977, pp. 14–15; Helen Lai 黎海寧, ‘Disco Fever’ (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 23, July 1978, pp. 29–37. 15 Peter Dunn, ‘Goodbye Polaris’ 再見Polaris (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 23, July 1978, p. 35; Peter Dunn, ‘Disco etc.’ (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 28, December 1978, p. 42.

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Figure 5.1  Gordon Huthart@ Disco Disco; March 1979

the demands of a new generation of young hipsters. As mentioned above, The Peninsula decided to shut The Scene down in 1977 in order to avoid trouble. It was at that particular juncture that Gordon Huthart, son of former Lane Crawford managing director Robert Huthart Snr, decided to open a Hong Kong version of Studio 54.16 As recollected by Andrew Bull, who was a disc jockey at The Scene before working at Disco Disco between 1978 and 1982: Gordon was quite well funded relative to anybody else at this time, and determined to make a statement. So when Studio 54 became the talk of 16 Ka-Chung Sung (Koon-chung Chan), ‘Disco Disco’ (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 29, January 1979, p. 35.

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New York, he said ‘Right, we’re going to do Studio 54 for Hong Kong, and it’s going be a case of [singing Diana Ross] “I’m Coming Out”.’17

In Hong Kong, the disco era dawned after Huthart’s Disco Disco opened its doors to trendy celebrities in the now-world-famous Lan Kwai Fong on 23 December 1978. It then propelled disco fever to epidemic proportions, spawning a new style of nightlife in the territory, which later completely changed its nightscape as well as pop-culture landscape in the 1980s.18 Not unlike Studio 54, which was graced by celebrities from Margaret Trudeau to Andy Warhol, Disco Disco became ‘an elitist music-based lifestyle adopted by name-dropping poseurs’19 in Hong Kong: the ‘to see and to be seen’ places of celebrities in town. Some might have thought that disco fever would not but be short-lived, but as noted by Frederick Leung in the title of his precursory essay in the August 1979 issue of City Magazine, ‘Disco Is Not Dead Yet’.20 The ground-breaking Disco Disco not just paved the way for Lan Kwai Fong, which later developed into a world-famous chic hotspot for late-night revellers, but also ushered the territory into a glorious decade of everynight life. In the 1980s, more and more discos were opened in Lan Kwai Fong and other districts on both sides of Victoria Harbour, catering to different customers with different backgrounds. People might have simply gone dancing, but in addition to a performance of cultural identity at some other everynight dance venues,21 these discos had various functions, as aptly summarized by Koon-Chung Chan: Trendy people go to disco to see and to be seen; gay people go to disco for ‘fishing’; ordinary people go to disco for celebration (birthday, promotion, 17 Cited from Ned Kelly, ‘Legendary Hong Kong Impresario Andrew Bull and Wife Sally Kwok,’ That’s Magazine, 12 July 2019: https://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/post/28677/andrew-bull; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 18 TBT, ‘Why the 70s Clubs Changed Hong Kong’s Nightlife Ever Since,’ Milk X Magazine http://www.milkx.com/zh/living-culture/TBT+WHY+THE+70S+CLUBS+CHANGED+HONG+ KONGS+NIGHTLIFE+EVER+SINCE; last accessed on 28 October 2022. ‘Disco style is another way of referring to the many elements of disco, such as, objects, actors, behaviors, and so forth, that cohere in certain settings. To understand a given experience as “disco” is then likewise a way of thinking about experience, of organizing it, around parameters given by styles.’ Barry Brummett, A Rhetoric of Style (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), p. 44. 19 Braunstein, ‘Disco,’ p. 56. 20 Frederick Leung, ‘Disco Is Not Dead Yet,’ City Magazine, Vol. 36, August 1979, pp. 54-55; the author also discussed some other popular discos in Hong Kong back then: Manhattan, New York New York, and Taipan. 21 Jane C. Desmond, ‘Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies,’ in Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America, eds. Celeste Fraser Delgado and José Esteban Muñoz (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 36.

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Figure 5.2  Grand opening poster of Disco Disco; December 1979

wedding etc.); drug pushers go to disco for […] ; hookers go to disco for business; dandies go to disco to show off their wealth; starlets go to disco to find sugar daddies. In a word, everyone can find what they want to find in these discos.22 22 Koon-chung Chan 陳冠中, Afterwards: A Chronicle of Hong Kong Culture 事後：香港文化 誌 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 107.

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While different discos had different target audiences, Disco Disco was certainly not where ordinary people went for celebration. Not a good example to be used to examine the nightlife of the masses, it, however, had an essential place in the discussion of multimedia stardom as it was the venue for stars and celebrities in town in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Hong Kong’s disco culture had been on a seemingly endless upward trajectory, propelled mainly by Canton, another disco founded Andrew Bull, in the mid-1980s.

The Location of Star Culture As noted above, the opening of Disco Disco in Lan Kwai Fong in December 1978 ignited an epidemic of disco fever across Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which later changed the city’s nightlife forever.23 The 1970s was a significant decade of transformation for Hong Kong, and towards the end of the decade, its cultural industries began to mature, and its celebrities started looking for a new stylish nightlife. At this particular juncture, Gordon Huthart’s decision to open Disco Disco in Lan Kwai Fong, which was not in the least a developed district for nightlife, proved to be ground-breaking – even in the literal sense of the word. Disco Disco was the first nightclub in this quiet neighbourhood, and Lan Kwai Fong was just a quiet, secluded alley in the buzzing Central District back then. Before the Second World War, it was known as ‘the matchmaker lane’, as it was there that professionals ran their businesses. It was widely believed that Huthart’s choice of venue would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Disco Disco to make an impact, because trendy spots were usually affiliated with the five-star hotels that the elites and celebrities loved to hang out at. However, in the end, he managed to turn it into the then top disco and the coolest place in the city, and Disco Disco was so successful that it once ranked sixth on the list of trendiest discos in the world. Huthart’s decision was actually attributed to his own social statement, if not resistance to the then culture of nightlife in Hong Kong. As the son of the managing director of a global luxury lifestyle department store, he was, of course, part of the cabaret nightlife of the urban upper class. Openly gay, however, he was not welcomed by trendy spots in the city, such as The Scene, which could not but be conservative as it was housed 23 Isobel Yeung, ‘Funky Town: How Disco Fever in the Late ’70s Changed Hong Kong’s Nightlife Forever,’ South China Morning Post, 15 June 2014.

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in a traditional five-star hotel. More acutely, homosexuality was a crime in Hong Kong until 1991. Def iantly gay and once jailed for homosexuality, Huthart was expelled time and again for deliberately dancing with his boyfriend at The Scene. ‘Inspired by the unrestrained discos he had patronised during his student days in San Francisco’, he decided to create a haven for everybody in Hong Kong, ‘regardless of race, sexual orientation, or social standing’. 24 While it offered an alternative choice of nightlife in Hong Kong, it soon became ‘the euphemism for “gay” in the 1970s’ in Hong Kong: It was his experience of repeated prosecution that gave him the inspiration for starting up Disco Disco, a place for the trendy, the outrageous, and the hip, including a crowd of expatriate and middle-class lesbigay people. Disco Disco signifie[d] the birth of the most visible ‘gay circle’ as the urban, young, Westernized, English speaking, trendy, and stylishly dressed.25

Because of the sexual orientation of its proprietor, ‘[w]hen Disco Disco opened, its weekend evenings were unofficially but heavily gay.’26 Had Disco Disco remained simply a euphemism for ‘gay’, it might not have exerted such a big impact on the nightscape of Hong Kong. Interestingly, Huthart’s social statement turned out to be a source for creativity within the context of nightlife in Hong Kong, arguably due to the disco epidemic. Andrew Bull, who later founded the legendary Canton Disco in 1985 and further changed the everynight life of Hong Kong, depicted the backdrop of the rise of disco in Hong Kong in the following manner: […] the mid-70s to the mid-80s was a greatly euphoric time for us, that’s for sure. White Rolls-Royces. Panama hats. Sun tans and gold chains. The crowd – a mix of Vietnam war R’n’R guys, New York fashion mavens, up-for-it Cathay crew and ahead-of-the-curve local scenester wannabes made for a real community, built around an unmistakable sense of ‘right place/right time’. There was huge fun to be had if you made yourself part of the group. This was Hong Kong (especially Kowloon) in the period following the various liberations of the ’60s, yet before AIDS was anything 24 Chan, ‘Hidden Hong Kong: A History of Hong Kong Nightlife.’ 25 Wah-Shan Chou, Tongzhi: Politics of Same-Sex Eroticism in Chinese Societies (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), p. 89. 26 Nigel Collett, A Death in Hong Kong: The MacLennan Case of 1980 and the Suppression of a Scandal (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2020), p. 130.

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Figure 5.3  Andrew Bull@Disco Disco; February 1982

anyone had ever heard of. I do find people are almost universally smiling in old party photos from that era – for very good reason.27

With the benefit of hindsight, one can conclude that Huthart’s choice of the deserted area of Lan Kwai Fong was far-sighted, which enabled him to reign as the unchallenged king of Hong Kong nightlife in the late 1970s and early 1980s. ‘As a stand-alone destination, DD’s was exempt from the baggage of being located inside a hotel. Instead, the disco promoted a more egalitarian clubbing experience that reflected the diverse makeup of the city.’28 Notwithstanding its being alternative, Huthart did not want his place to replicate the exclusiveness The Scene embodied. Bull underlined the openness of the place in an interview, saying that they were trying to build a place to be different ‘for the people, not for the gwailou [foreigners] or for the Chinese’: ‘It began as an alternative venue, an alternative to going 27 Cited from ‘Partying Like It’s 1966: Hong Kong’s Forgotten Hotel Nightclub Scene,’ Coconuts Hong Kong, 9 March 2016: https://coconuts.co/hongkong/food-drink/partying-its-1966-hongkongs-forgotten-hotel-nightclub-scene/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 28 Cited from ‘Famous Hong Kong Discos of the 1980s,’ Hong Kong Hustle: https://www. hongkonghustle.com/music/1128/famous-hong-kong-disco-eighties-club-nightlife-1980s-80shk-dds-canton-hot-gossip-nightclub-dj-andrew-bull-gordon-huthart/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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to a hotel restaurant, or a hotel bar, something more recognized and known in Hong Kong at that time.’29 In other words, Disco Disco was meant to be much more than a gay venue. While it was gay friendly, it was designed for ‘a mix of people, all sorts of characters, more like a human zoo’.30 On the full-page advertisement placed in the January 1979 issue (p. 38) of City Magazine (Figure 5.2), it was clearly stated: ‘Get away from the beast of your life; come to Disco Disco!’ According to Christian Rhomberg, the founder of the fabled nightclub Club 97, ‘Disco Disco was the Studio 54 of Hong Kong. It was the only place where you could find a great mix of western and Chinese people. Normally, they didn’t mix.’31 Despite its ‘hauteur-door policy’, it did not matter whether you were Western or Chinese, gay or straight, male or female, or even where you were at Disco Disco, you would not be discriminated as long as you were stylish. ‘This was how working-class club kids and underaged students came to share a dance floor with pop stars, radio hosts, and TV personalities,’ and to borrow Sea-ling Cheng’s words in her study of Lan Kwai Fong: ‘As a consumer space, Disco Disco was the cosmopolitan alternative to colonial exclusivity; as a sexualized space, Disco Disco was set up to challenge the heterosexual hegemony of the colony.’32 Led by a secondary schoolmate who was a nightlife fanatic, I first visited Disco Disco in 1983. It was such an eye-opening experience, which reminded me of the episode of ‘Granny Liu Visiting the Grand View Gardens’ in the Chinese literary classic Dream of the Red Chamber: totally overwhelmed by the luxurious surroundings, new experiences, and, more importantly, beautiful and stylish people. By virtue of Disco Disco, Lan Kwai Fong developed into the location of chic nightlife in the first half of the 1980s. To borrow Homi Bhabha’s argument in his area-defining book The Location of Culture, the production of stylish and trendy star culture was most productive where it was most ‘ambivalent’.33 This was in a sense proved by Disco Disco, which was designed to be a place to deconstruct conventional values and unlearn traditional behaviours. With Disco Disco as an excellent habitus, 29 Sea-ling Cheng, ‘Consuming Places in Hong Kong: Experiencing Lan Kwai Fong,’ in Consuming Hong Kong, ed. Gordon Mathews and Tai-lok Lui (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), p. 239. 30 Kelly, ‘Legendary Hong Kong Impresario Andrew Bull and Wife Sally Kwok.’ 31 Andrea Lo, ‘The Complete History of Lan Kwai Fong,’ HK Magazine, 29 May 2015, p. 10. 32 Jaime Chu, ‘A Funeral Party for the First Neoliberal City,’ Electronic Beats, 6 July 2020: https://www.electronicbeats.net/ode-to-the-night-funeral-party-for-the-first-neoliberal-city/; last accessed on 28 October 2022; Cheng, ‘Consuming Places in Hong Kong,’ p. 240. 33 Nasser Al-Taee, Representations of the Orient in Western Music: Violence and Sensuality (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), p.10.

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hanging out became trendy people’s practice of everynight life in Hong Kong. It was also the place where style mattered. Very soon, Disco Disco was able to draw a beautiful and wealthy crowd, followed by various sorts of trendy people, including famous entertainers, fashionable models, hip artists and designers, as well as business elites. Night after night, celebrities in town were seen in Lan Kwai Fong, including but not limited to Pansy Ho, Roman Tam, Chris Malig, and Danny Chan, who soon became a superstar after releasing his debut album in 1979. International celebrities from Rod Stewart and Madonna to Andy Warhol also dropped by Disco Disco when they visited Hong Kong. Even though Disco Disco was a trendsetter, Lan Kwai Fong was still not well developed as a location for chic nightlife back then, as Bull pointed out: ‘The experience of coming to Lan Kwai Fong at night in 1978 meant going through deserted streets of Central to a dingy D’Aguilar Street, and seeing one neon sign that said “Disco Disco” – and nothing else.’34 Perhaps as equally important as his founding of Disco Disco, Huthart’s plan to turn Lan Kwai Fong into an area like Tokyo’s Ginza district changed the nightscape of Hong Kong forever: ‘He asked Christian Rhomberg, who was working as an Austrian trade commissioner at the time, to help open other clubs in the area,’ and after a round-the-world trip to study the latest trends, Rhomberg opened Club 97, opposite the back door of Disco Disco, in 1982.35 Cafes such as Cat Street at the Hilton Hotel and D&D on Wyndham Street in the Central District became stylistic places where some disco-goers gathered before heading to Lan Kwai Fong, which further enhanced the clustering effect. At the height of difficulties in the Sino-British negotiations, people partied like the 1997 handover was not an issue. ‘Flash Gordon’36 – Huthart – was therefore hailed as the real ‘Father of Lan Kwai Fong’, although Allan Zeman, who later turned the neighbourhood into an eatertainment tourist district, was more widely related to the title. Disco Disco and Club 97, together with California – a bar and restaurant – founded later by Allan Zeman in 1983, formed the first nucleus of Lan Kwai Fong, as highlighted by Allan’s son Jonathan Zeman.37 Thereafter, Lan Kwai Fong developed into the trendsetter of the city, where up-and-rising film and television stars, singers, and yuppies got all dressed up and went there to see and to be seen. ‘Because of Disco Disco, Lan Kwai Fong emerged, from local to international,’ 34 35 36 37

Lo, ‘The Complete History of Lan Kwai Fong,’ p. 10. Lo, ‘The Complete History of Lan Kwai Fong,’ p. 10. SCMP Reporter, ‘Flash Gordon,’ South China Morning Post, 22 September 1996. Lo, ‘The Complete History of Lan Kwai Fong,’ p. 11.

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according to renowned fashion designer William Tang, who lived near Lan Kwai Fong and was its inveterate fan in the early 1980s; ‘it was so popular that many other Asian Pacific metropolitan cities wanted to duplicate its success, producing replicas at Clark Quay, Santitun, Shanghai New World, Shamian, and even as remote as Lijiang, Fenghuang and Yangshuo.’38 But they were only copies without the essence of Lan Kwai Fong. While the nightscape of Hong Kong was radically changed by the rise of Disco Disco and subsequently Lan Kwai Fong, the Central District, which was world-famous for its five-star offices occupied by global corporations, was also put firmly on the map as the location of the cultural production of pop in Hong Kong. ‘Until LKF came along, all nightlife – besides the hooker bars in Wan Chai – was on Kowloon side,’ as pointedly noted by Liam Fitzpatrick, author of Rats Like It Well Enough: The 1997 Story, and ‘[i]f you wanted to dance or hear a band, you had to go to Kowloon. People joke now about the “Dark Side,” but Hong Kong used to be the dark side.’39 At a time when the nightscape of the city was glamorously lit by the Hong Kong side, Kowloon was waiting for a chance to shine again.

The Location of Star Culture 2.0 It did not take long for the Kowloon side to steal the limelight from Lan Kwai Fong. Andrew Bull, who played a major role in both The Scene and Disco Disco, brought disco vogue to Canton Road in Kowloon, where the giant shopping mall Harbour City was located. In the 1980s, the mall was up and rising, and its transformation to a paradise for mainland big-spending tourists had not yet begun. It was still chic, so to speak. Meanwhile, Bull understood very well that the trend of disco fever and the chic nightlife ignited by it could not last long. He once spoke of this loudly in an interview: ‘Discos in the 60s were groovy and sexy, but that burned out pretty quickly because the way the music was presented was basic […] Seven-inches and shouting between the songs, it was destined to fail.’40 Thanks to the economic boom in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hong Kong saw the rise and subsequent heyday of disco culture. In the mid-1980s, while the boom continued after 38 William Tang 鄧達智, ‘Disco Disco without Danny Chan’ 沒有陳百強的DD (in Chinese), Apple Daily, 11 October 2017. 39 Lo, ‘The Complete History of Lan Kwai Fong,’ p. 11. 40 Cited from Drew Pittock, ‘Andrew Bull in a China Shop: Charting the 50 Year Legacy of China’s Most Prolific DJ and Impresario,’ The Beijinger, 19 November 2020: https://www.thebeijinger. com/blog/2020/11/19/bull-china-shop; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which dictated the city’s future after 1997, its nightlife and pop culture had matured to a point that new impetus was needed to further extend the golden era. When Lan Kwai Fong came to dominate the everynight life of Hong Kong in the early 1980s, Tsim Sha Tsui, the tourist district on the southern tip of Kowloon Peninsula, had new developments owing to a new reclamation project on its eastern side. The centre of Tsim Sha Tsui had long been crowded with restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, and the newly developed Tsim Sha Tsui East area was destined to become a new commercial and shopping district in the daytime, while providing a new jumping nightlife after night fell. Tsim Sha Tsui East housed many newly built international luxury hotels, and a new disco, Hollywood East, which opened its doors in 1982, was located in the basement of the Regal Hotel. It was a pity that, even with its great music, it was kind of isolated, as Tsim Sha Tsui East was later famous for nightclubs, such as Club Volvo, which represented the ‘dancing as usual’ part of the lavish capitalist lifestyle. The Tsim Sha Tsui scene picked up momentum when more new discos opened near Canton Road on the other side of the never-sleeping district. The grand opening of Apollo 18 Disco, among others, was held in December 1984, and later in 1985, two more trendy hotspots were inaugurated along Canton Road: Hot Gossip and Canton Disco. In order to attract target audiences, the new discos had slightly different marketing and promotion strategies. For example, Apollo 18 seemed to target the general public, which was evidenced by their guests of honour at the grand opening, including film and television stars such as Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Barbara Yung, Jaime Chik, Yammie Lam, Carina Lau, Katie Chan, and Dorothy Yu. All except Jackie Chan were TVB actresses at that time, showing that the new disco aimed to attract mainstream audiences who were fans of the then market leader TVB. Apparently, its style was different from that of Disco Disco. Among the new discos, Canton was undoubtedly the most successful one as a result of Andrew Bull’s experience accumulated and networks established at The Scene and Disco Disco. Canton was the most stylish and chic among the new nightlife hotspots, and Bull’s network brought many stars, such as Danny Chan and Leslie Cheung, from Lan Kwai Fong to Tsim Sha Tsui across Victoria Harbour. However, having worked at The Scene and Disco Disco since 1972, 41 Bull knew very well that trendy discos burned out quickly, and so it was not enough to emulate the success of Disco Disco, especially as Hong Kong – both its economy and its 41 For more details on Bull’s experience in Hong Kong, refer to Kelly, ‘Legendary Hong Kong Impresario Andrew Bull and Wife Sally Kwok.’

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Figure 5.4  Canton Disco brand images; 1985

pop culture – had developed enormously since the opening of the latter seven years prior. The Canton project was launched in 1983 with a stylish brand identity – concept by Andrew Bull and designed by the Alan Chan Design Company. As introduced by the design company: As Hong Kong’s most upmarket and fashionable disco in the 80s, Canton Disco set out to redefine flamboyant glamour, hedonistic liberation with an opulent and original design language. The name ‘Canton’ takes after its location on Canton Road, Kowloon. The male swimmer visual was inspired

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Figure 5.5  Sylvester Stallone@Canton Disco; 1987

by Alan’s private collection of 1930s Chinese cigarette cards which mirrored that of British tobacco manufacturers. Moreover, it portrayed the story of the Canton immigrant who swam to Hong Kong for a better life, perhaps one that was slightly camp, androgynous with slick-back hair which was perfect for an 80s disco, projecting a healthy, young and energetic image.42

Canton Disco – Bull had said clearly that he ‘wanted it to be a venue as well as a club’ – opened its doors ‘for a younger, hipper Chinese clientele’ in December 1985, after which it became ‘Hong Kong’s most dynamic venue for seven years’43 where superstars such as Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, and Sean Penn could be seen during their visits to Hong Kong. As evinced by the male swimmer visual inspired by a Canton immigrant swimming to Hong Kong, there was something ‘distinctively 42 Cited from ‘Canton Disco,’ Alan Chan Design Company Facebook, 17 September 2020: https:// www.facebook.com/alanchandesign/videos/canton-disco/3159109604186257/; refer to the video on this website for details related to Canton’s brand identity. 43 Kelly, ‘Legendary Hong Kong Impresario Andrew Bull and Wife Sally Kwok.’

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Figure 5.6  Entrance of Canton Disco; 1987

Made in Hong Kong’ about the venue, whereas it also ‘swam against the tide’, trying to ‘chart its own course’. 44 Divine, a drag queen who had a lot of golden disco hits at the time, performed at the grand opening, showing that Canton’s brand identity was utterly different from that of Apollo 18 and other discos. Bull was not only a trendsetting disc jockey but also a pioneering businessman with an excellent sense of marketing. He conceived ‘a marketing masterstroke, launching the club with a media blackout save for a single ad in the (now-defunct) London culture mag The Face’, and it proved to be unprecedentedly effective as ‘[m]ore than 11,000 people turned up, far exceeding the club’s capacity.’45 I still remember clearly, although I did not have the chance to enter the venue to make history, that I was witnessing its making, experiencing disco fever with crowds flooding along Canton Road. Not unlike those who had gathered outside Studio 54 when the Midtown Manhattan disco first opened its doors in New York City eight years prior, we were hoping for 44 Hans Ebert, ‘How Canton Swam against the Tide in Hong Kong,’ 1 March 2021: https:// hans-ebert.com/2021/03/01/how-canton-disco-swam-against-the-tide-in-hong-kong/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 45 Jason Gagliardi, ‘Clubs Where Disco Is Staying Alive,’ Discovery, Cathay Pacif ic, 20 November 2018: https://discovery.cathaypacific.com/clubs-disco-staying-alive/ ; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 5.7  Kylie Minogue@Canton Disco; 1988

a chance to enter what would soon become the venue of the everynight life in Hong Kong. Subsequently, guests including New Order, Run DMC, Bananarama, Erasure, Swing Out Sister, Pet Shop Boys, and Eartha Kitt played there, and Kylie Minogue even had her first-ever live performance at Canton: ‘Kylie Minogue was still in [the Australian soap] Neighbours at the time and had had a couple of hits, but never done a live performance, and her management wanted to take her to England, so they asked if they could come into our club to prepare her.’46 This showed that Canton was a trendsetter with the amazing power of star-making. After the closure of Disco Disco in 1986, Canton was the most stylish nightlife venue in Hong Kong, to such an extent that it helped etch Hong Kong’s name in the annals of disco: ‘for a few years in the late ’80s, Canton Disco was quite possibly the coolest place on the planet’: It was not only part of Hong Kong coming of age, to many, it gave this unique city a very different pulse. As a much-used advertising copy line might say, here was the place to see and be seen – the vibe maker that 46 Ned Kelly, ‘Kylie Minogue’s First Live Performance Was in Hong Kong,’ That’s Magazine, 12 July 2019: https://www.thatsmags.com/china/post/28683/watch-kylie-minogue-s-first-liveperformance-was-in-hong-kong; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 5.8  Interior design of Canton Disco; 1985

was Canton, the disco on – where else, but Canton Road on Kowloon side – and at a time in the Eighties when Night Fever was finding its strut.47

Occupying a massive two-storey, 16,000-square-foot property at the northern end of a shopping mall, Canton had to expand its customer base. The extensive network of local celebrities and entertainers developed by Bull helped the new venue attract the beautiful and wealthy crowd from Lan Kwai Fong, on the one hand, and more young, local stars, on the other. An eminent disc jockey himself, Bull brought the coolest cutting-edge music to Canton, which created an unparalleled hip aura. At the same time, he also showcased Cantopop stars, letting their fans see their idols sing at the coolest venue in town. The ‘disco prince’ Danny Chan, among others, held his mini concerts at Canton. New and rising Cantopop stars and bands, including Sandy Lam, Beyond, and Tat Ming Pair, held mini concerts at Canton when they launched their new albums. If Disco Disco was ‘a human zoo’ with ‘a mix of people, all sorts of characters’, Canton was like a theme park with a zoo as well as other entertainments to cater to different needs. As recollected 47 Gagliardi, ‘Clubs Where Disco Is Staying Alive’; see also Jason Gagliardi, ‘How Hong Kong’s Canton Disco Became One of World’s Coolest Clubs,’ South China Morning Post, 6 May 2015; Ebert, ‘How Canton Swam against the Tide in Hong Kong.’

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by veteran disc jockey Ocean Chan, who often hung out with Danny Chan in those days, ‘every night you will bump into 20-30 superstars there, with another 20-30 stars waiting at the entrance […] Canton was a de facto shrine [of pop] that believers must worship every night to have peace of mind.’48 While Tsim Sha Tsui was the centre of the nightlife map, different discos had different target customers. For example, Apollo 18 ‘catered to an almost exclusively local crowd’, whereas Hot Gossip – a hi-tech restaurant and bar on the ground floor with a disco in the basement – ‘hosted the best-looking girls in town’.49 Together with Another World at Holiday Inn, New York New York at New World Centre, Future at Miramar, as well as Hollywood East and Tropical in Tsim Sha Tsui East, Tsim Sha Tsui was then firmly pinned on the map of everynight life from the mid- to late 1980s in Hong Kong. At the same time, although Lan Kwai Fong no longer had the brightest jewel in its crown, it still shone luminously with Club 97 and California, and disco fever continued burning over a period of years. At its peak, it was reported that ‘there were over 50 dance halls, both “club-style” and more casual discos, spread across both sides of Victoria Harbor’.50

Disco Disco: Feel for the Game Inevitably capitalistic, discos could not but endorse materialism in how they were produced and in what they expressed: ‘its embeddedness in capitalist modes of music production, its apparently superficial and escapist utopianism’.51 However, disco culture, similar to other subcultural practices such as raving and clubbing, was by no means a mere form of entertainment or escapism. As Richard Dyer pointed out in his often-cited essay ‘In Defence of Disco’, at disco events, ‘music and dance provided sensory-affective relays between the practice of partying together and the sense of belonging to something larger than oneself, however incoherent or vague that “something” may be’: […] the sound of disco itself communicated something essential about how such a utopia would feel: imbued with full-bodied eroticism, grounded 48 Ocean Chan, ‘The Summer on Canton Road’ 廣東道的夏天 (in Chinese), Apple Daily, 21 April 2019. 49 Yeung, ‘Funky Town.’ 50 Chu, ‘A Funeral Party for the First Neoliberal City.’ 51 Luis-Manuel Garcia, ‘Richard Dyer, “In Defence of Disco”,’ History of Emotions – Insights into Research, November 2014: https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/texts/in-defence-of-disco; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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in the material diff iculties of (marginalized, minoritized) life under capitalism, and yet also charged with extremes of emotion that burst out from the routines of everyday, working life.52

Although everyday life could not but be pervaded and regulated by power nexuses, as notably argued by Michel de Certeau, people avoided being reduced into a mass by their practices.53 Walking in the city, for example, turned one’s place into space, and the way one chose how to walk in the city was in itself an art, like writing a poem. In that sense, dancing – and to see and to be seen – in discos was also considered a tactic (an art of making do) to turn the place into one’s own space. As much as nightlife was the ‘antidote’ to monotonous everyday life – le quotidian – the practice of everynight life in Hong Kong discos in the 1980s made those venues the trendsetters of Hong Kong and even Asian pop culture. Given the limited scope and emphasis of this book, it is not possible to dwell upon a detailed discussion of practices (i.e., strategies and tactics).54 As De Certeau’s theory of the practice of everyday life was inspired by Pierre Bourdieu, a very brief discussion on Bourdieu would be helpful. One of the most important points regarding Bourdieu’s cultural sociology of taste is that capital is place-dependent. Bourdieu’s notion of capital is closely related to habitus and, above all, field. I will just go into the interaction between habitus, field and capital, which can be summarized in the equation [(habitus)(capital)] + field = practice.55 According to Bourdieu, different fields in reality have their own operational logics. They are overlapping but at the same time relatively autonomous from others. Each field has its own set of rules concerning positions and practices, and different actors within the field have different amounts of different capitals – cultural, social, economic, etc. The field of cultural production operates with both heteronomous and autonomous logics. The former is related to economic capital, which means 52 Garcia, ‘Richard Dyer’; see also Richard Dyer, ‘In Defence of Disco,’ Gay Left (Summer 1979), pp. 20–23. 53 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 54 De Certeau distinguished between two types of practices: strategies and tactics. Strategies are ‘the calculus of force-relationships which becomes possible when a subject of will and power (a proprietor, an enterprise, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated from an ‘environment’’, whereas tactics are ‘a calculus which cannot count on a “proper” (a spatial or institutional localization), nor thus on a borderline distinguishing the other as a visible totality’. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p. xix. 55 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 101.

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commercial profitability, whereas the latter marks cultural production’s own boundaried space that opposes market logic, in which recognition does not come from commercial gains but other actors in the field.56 The two logics are often negotiated in the field of cultural production. Simply put, the four forms of capital – economic, social, cultural, and symbolic – are intimately related, and the accumulation of these capitals is attributed to ‘distinction’, which is an embodied ‘taste’ that stems from one’s habitus. Habitus, according to Bourdieu, is ‘a way of being, a habitual state (especially of the body) and, in particular, a disposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination’, and it is a structure that ‘at every moment structures new experiences in accordance with the structures produced by past experiences’.57 As such habitus can be considered ‘second nature’, or the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that one possesses due to one’s life experiences, that is to say, one’s ‘feel for the game’.58 All in all, Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and capital help make sense of the distinctions made by cool youngsters. Drawing on Bourdieu’s influential concept of capital, Susan Thornton argued that ‘clubs are refuges for the young where their rules hold sway and that, inside and to some extent outside these spaces, subcultural distinctions have significant consequences,’ and subcultural capital – coined by Thornton from Bourdieu’s cultural capital – ‘confers status on its owner in the eyes of the relevant beholder’.59 A subculture such as clubbing, in short, affords its fans a sense of belonging and hence group identity, and to be part of club culture is to be involved in a habitus which demands specific ways of thinking and styles. In the light of this, one may argue that Disco Disco patrons set the ‘feel for the game’ for how to be involved. Having said that, it should be noted that subcultural capital, as Thornton explained, is both similar to and different from cultural capital as conceived by Bourdieu. While ‘[b]oth cultural and subcultural capital put a premium on the “second nature” of their knowledges’, there is a critical difference between the two: ‘the media are a primary factor governing the circulation of the former.’60 Thornton’s point that subcultural capital is an important symbolic asset 56 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 57 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), p. 18; Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 60. 58 Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, p. 82. 59 Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), p. 11. 60 Thornton, Club Cultures, pp. 12–13.

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of young people when they are measured by their peers can be applied to Disco Disco to a certain extent, but (sub)cultural capital here, albeit it is symbolic capital based on good taste and exclusivity, is closely related to high culture as well as mainstream pop culture. Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson underscored the elitism that defines much of youth culture, and in particular dance culture, in Thornton’s model: ‘subcultural groups exist in a symbiotic relationship with the very “mainstream” media they usually claim to wish to remain autonomous from.’61 Moreover, as Steven Threadgold reminded us in his study of (sub)cultural capital, ‘there needs to be an effort to maintain the critical nature of his theories’ when one uses Borudieu’s theory in the study of subcultures: ‘cultural capital is a concept that is meant to help understand not just how any field works, but how fields are hierarchical and how some fields are more important than others.’62 In reality, the field of Disco Disco was exactly more important than others, and while it challenged mainstream values (such as sexual orientation), it also spawned hierarchies which facilitated multimedia stardom in the field of cultural industries. Disco Disco became a unique field after it opened its doors in a quiet area in the Central District, turning Lan Kwai Fong into a field of pop culture production in Hong Kong. The following remark by August Darnell about Studio 54 can be aptly applied to Disco Disco: The thing about the style of disco, in retrospect it was quite ridiculous and laughable. To be quite honest, I didn’t think much of the clothing, but the Beautiful People who came to 54, they did have style. The good thing was it gave people a reason to say ‘Let’s get dressed up and go out.’63 61 Gilbert and Pearson, Discographies, p. 159; they pointed out the weakness of Thornton’s model and proposed a model informed by Ernesto Laclau ad Chantal Mouffe: ‘any practice establishing a relation among elements such that their identity is modified as a result of articulatory practice’. The concept of ‘articulation’ is useful as ‘it allows us to discuss the relationship between different formations and elements in a more differentiated way than by simply referring to formations “opposition”, “determining” or “incorporating” each other […] it is not a simple question of dance culture being “for” or “against” the dominant culture, but of how far its articulations with other discourses and cultures (dominant or otherwise) result in democratizations of the cultural field, how far they successfully break down existing configurations of power, and how far they fail to do so’ (p. 160). 62 Steven Threadgold, ‘(Sub) Cultural Capital, DIY Careers and Transferability: Towards Maintaining “Reproduction” when Using Bourdieu in Youth Culture Research,’ in Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives, ed. Sarah Baker, Brady Robards, and Bob Buttigieg (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), p. 53. 63 Aletti, ‘Lost in Music,’ p. 23.

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As mentioned above, Gordon Huthart wanted to emulate Studio 54, but he also had his own agenda of creating a place for the eccentric. The major thrust of De Certeau’s theory of practice has been to posit it as the ground of resistance to domination. In this sense, Huthart’s was indeed such a practice. In a study titled ‘The Case for “Everyday Politics”: Evaluating Neo-tribal Theory as a Way to Understand Alternative Forms of Political Participation, Using Electronic Dance Music Culture as an Example’, Sarah C. E. Riley, Christine Griffin, and Yvette Morey stated that the neo-tribal theory offered an alternative way to theorize political participation as a kind of ‘everyday politics’ that could be conceptualized as a form of hedonism and sovereignty over one’s own existence.64 Disco Disco began to make an impact on Hong Kong’s nightscape with its personalizing of politics and ‘aloof’ stance. Later, however, thanks to its patron celebrities, it became the prime place ‘to see and to be seen’ in Hong Kong, and its habitus changed when the bold new venue became the chic field of the town. While Disco Disco was crowded with local as well as international celebrities, a bouncer was hired ‘to select an “interesting mix” of clientele, drawing in people from different “levels”,’ and young people from public-housing estates had a chance to rub elbows with social elites and film stars; according to Huthart, people ‘just used that space […] to form their own social network and to inspire themselves and their friends to the next step for them, and they moved on, of course, and created […] their own scenes.’65 In a sense hedonism and eccentricity were hybridized with cultural elitism as well as multimedia stardom, generating Disco Disco’s own distinctive ‘feel for the game’ – a new style of nightlife in Hong Kong. Not only had Disco Disco become a field for its patrons to accumulate capital, the everynight practice there set the trend of the city, which generated an unprecedented creative synergy with multimedia stardom. Danny Chan was the most representative case in that regard. As mentioned in the previous chapters, Danny Chan rose to fame soon after he released his debut album in 1979, and his debut film, Encore (1980), was also a blast. At that time, he was seen at Disco Disco almost every night. Peter Dunn, renowned writer and columnist, noted that he saw Danny Chan every time he went to Disco Disco, the trendiest venue in town, and although Chan was still very young back then, he had already displayed the exemplary style and 64 Sarah C. E. Riley, Christine Griff in, and Yvette Morey, ‘The Case for “Everyday Politics”: Evaluating Neo-tribal Theory as a Way to Understand Alternative Forms of Political Participation, Using Electronic Dance Music Culture as an Example,’ Sociology 44:2 (2010), pp. 345–363. 65 Cheng, ‘Consuming Places in Hong Kong,’ pp. 239, 261.

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fashion sense of a rich, handsome, and well-educated young man. Simply put, Danny Chan’s style of an elegant dandy was always ‘gracefully cool and neat, with a touch of tender loneliness and vulnerability’.66 A big fan of Disco Disco, renowned fashion designer William Tang noted that there were countless celebrities who had also been seen there, but it was Danny Chan, the inveterate fan, who was there the most often, to such an extent that without Danny Chan Disco Disco was not Disco Disco.67 In fact, Disco Disco was not just a place to hang out for Danny Chan. At one point, it was his home. By virtue of Danny Chan’s stardom, Disco Disco became not just a field of subcultural production, it was also the field of pop culture; as shrewdly noted by William Tang: ‘Disco Disco was the cradle for a chic generation, where one could learn pop matters, and the venture of a lot of prominent figures in entertainment and creative industries started here.’68 As a mix of glamorous sophistication and primal hedonism, discos were also a field of (sub)cultural production in Hong Kong in the 1980s. In the above examples of other discos in Hong Kong, such as Canton and Apollo 18, each offered a different habitus for fans who had a different ‘feel for the game’. Those who went to Apollo 18 expected to see TVB actors and actresses, whereas those who went to Canton Disco expected something more, such as how to see and be seen, as in, ‘I saw Danny Chan and [Anita] Mui and was seen dancing ‘with’ them on the same floor!’ All in all, similar to what Bourdieu termed ‘a restricted field of cultural production’, Disco Disco was restricted to a select minority: [A]ctors and their cultural practices are related to the trends of a capitalistic, success-oriented society – they do not want to be in opposition to the society (even though making distinctions between themselves and commercial organisers), but rather use similar means (brands) and in many cases also participate in different fields.69 66 Peter Dunn, ‘Danny Is Danny’ Danny 就是 Danny (in Chinese), Ming’s Fashion, 16 August 2018: https://www.mings-fashion.com/陳百強-鄧小宇-張國榮-194373/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 67 Tang, ‘Disco Disco without Danny Chan.’ 68 William Tang, ‘Ripples: Danny Chan’ 漣漪陳百強 (in Chinese), Wen Wei Po, 13 October 2017. 69 Rene Mäe and Airi-Alina Allaste’s study of alternative music festival organizers in Estonia may shed light on our discussion here. They borrowed Bourdieu’s concept of a ‘restricted field’ – developed by Bourdieu originally to describe high culture – to analyse the ‘field of small-scale alternative music events’ in the Estonian context, while the latter partly overlapped with established culture. ‘Making Distinctions on Autonomous Cultural Field: the Case of Small-scale Alternative Music Festival Organisers in Estonia,’ Studies of Transition States and Societies 3:2 (2011), pp. 69–80. ‘The field of production per se owes its own structure to the opposition between

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Canton Disco: Trendsetter and Its Discontents If stardom was only part (or even the icing on top) of the habitus of Disco Disco, it became the major component of Canton Disco. As noted above, more than 11,000 people turned up at Canton’s launching ceremony. Although Disco Disco was the epicentre of chic and one might rub shoulders with celebrities and superstars there, such a marketing masterstroke would be unimaginable for this place designed for those who had a ‘feel for the game’. The marketing strategy showed clearly that Andrew Bull wanted his Canton to draw a bigger crowd. In other words, ‘Canton Disco was more street smart. So were the clubbers it attracted.’70 At the beginning, it succeeded in conjuring up a charismatic aura. Celebrities such as Danny Chan and Anita Mui crossed Victoria Harbour for Tsim Sha Tsui, not only gracing that new wild playground but also hosting parties and mini concerts there. Canton hosted the mini concerts of both foreign and local stars, including Kylie Minogue and Anita Mui, and Mui even held her fan club and birthday parties there. If Danny Chan was the pop icon of Disco Disco, I would argue that Anita Mui was Canton’s. (My feeling is that although Leslie Cheung was equally popular, he was not as committed to disco as Chan and Mui were.) Danny Chan’s elegant, tasteful, and chic style was emulated – albeit unconvincingly – by young fans, but Anita Mui’s climbing-to-fame-from-below and always-changing images tended to enthral a wider audience of different backgrounds. As insightfully explained by Chin-Pang Lei, an expert on Mui’s stardom, she was like ‘a buffet’, as ‘each person ha[d] his/her own reason for liking her.’71 Shortly after Canton opened its doors in March 1985, Anita Mui released her Cantopop album Bad Girl (1985), which helped crown her as the Cantopop queen in subsequent music award ceremonies. After that, she was widely touted in the media as the Cantopop dance queen and ‘Madonna of Asia’.72 Similar to how Madonna ‘perfected the art of playing the field of restricted production as a system producing cultural goods (and the instruments for appropriating these goods) objectively destined for a public of producers of cultural goods, and the field of large-scale cultural production specifically organized with a view to the production of cultural goods defined for non-producers of cultural goods, “the public at large”.’ Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, p. 115. 70 Ebert, ‘How Canton Swam against the Tide in Hong Kong.’ 71 Cited from ‘Anita Mui’s Like a Buffet: Why Does She Still Touch People’s Hearts after Passing Away for 20 Years?’ 宛如自助餐的梅艷芳，為何過世近20年仍然觸動人心？ (in Chinese), BeautiMode, 21 July 2020: https://www.beautimode.com/article/content/87715/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 72 See, for instance, Lisa Cam ‘Cantopop Queen Anita Mui: Remembering the ‘Madonna of Asia’,’ South China Morning Post, 10 October 2019.

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Figure 5.9  Antia Mui and Danny Chan @Canton Disco; 1987-1989

with the space between women’s liberation and the sexual revolution’,73 Anita Mui continued to develop the bad girl image in her subsequent albums. In May 1986, Anita Mui held her fan club party at Canton, and on the album Wicked Girl (1986), eight of the ten songs had a strong dance rhythm, which was rare in the Hong Kong music industry: ‘Back then, disco was very popular 73 Judy Kutalus, ‘“You Probably Think This Song Is about You”: 1970 Women Music from Carole King to the Disco Divas,’ in Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s, ed. Sherrie A. Inness (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 192.

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Figure 5.10  Jackie Chan, Andrew Bull, Li Ning and Lou Yun@Canton Disco; 1985

in Hong Kong […] every time when Anita Mui took the stage, there were hot dance music […] which ushered in a new age filled with dance songs.’74 It was even more important that Anita Mui became a symbol of the ‘undying spirit’75 – as remarked in a review of the biopic Anita (2021) – of the glorious era of Hong Kong pop culture. As Canton developed into a party venue for stars like Jackie Chan to bring their visitors (he invited Mainland Chinese gymnasts and Olympic gold medallists Li Ning and Lou Yun!) to have a taste of Hong Kong’s world-famous nightlife (apparently, these celebrities did not want to be seen at Club Volvo), Anita Mui had better chemistry with this, given her heterogeneous images as well as her cross-media career. (As Danny Chan focused mainly on pop music, he rarely starred in films.) Starting from 1986, Canton launched album release parties, and before long more and more Cantopop singers held mini concerts there, which was again unimaginable in a place like Disco Disco. Superstars like Danny Chan and Anita Mui continued to hold concerts there (such as album release parties for Chan’s The Person in My Dream and 74 Chin-Pang Lei 李展鵬, Dream and the City: Anita Mui and Hong Kong Pop Culture 夢伴此 城：梅艷芳與香港流行文化 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2019), p. 66. 75 Mathew Scott, ‘Undying Spirit,’ China Daily, HK Edition, 29 October 2021: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202110/29/WS617ba8e2a310cdd39bc72261.html; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Mui’s Fiery Tango in 1987), as did other Cantopop singers, including new and the then up-and-rising bands/groups Tat Ming Pair and Beyond as well as mainstream veteran songstresses (not too stylish, strictly speaking) Elisa Chan and Kitman Mak. In other words, although it was superior to some other discos that targeted the general audience, Canton was a place that catered to the general audience. While Canton, a mini version of everynight life in Hong Kong, provided a variety of ways that one could consume/ practice, it also acted as a field for producing creative synergies between Hong Kong pop cultures. Notwithstanding this, Canton successfully lured upper-class celebrities who used to go to the grand ballrooms at five-star hotels (such as the then rulers of the city’s elite social scene, Mr and Mrs Kai-pong Chau). For traditional social elites, nightlife cache was ‘a form of “subcultural capital” that relied upon a contrast with a more accessible, younger, and popular “mainstream” disco culture’.76 At that juncture, Canton effectively diversified its patrons while still retaining its particular charisma as the trendy, classy centre of the Hong Kong nightscape. ‘Depending on one’s financial, cultural and social capital’, Sea-ling Cheng argued, ‘Lan Kwai Fong, as a distinct sphere of lifestyles and systems of consumption […] allow[ed] different degrees of engagement and senses of belonging or alienation.’77 In that sense, Canton, together with other nightlife venues near Canton Road, also formed a pop and chic cluster that was on a par with Lan Kwai Fong in the late 1980s. ‘We were very fond of disco because every artist needs some sort of movement to make them larger than they really are, and disco did that for us. It sort of gave us a niche, if you will, and a place in history.’78 What August Darnell said about disco was applicable to Canton, but it is usually not possible to have one’s cake and eat it too. When more and more singers and actors hung out and even hosted mini concerts and/or parties there, the power of giving them a niche could not but diminish. In this sense, Canton as a field of pop production gradually moved from super-stardom to the entertainment industry as a whole. In the late 1980s, the everynight life practice contributed to everyday pop culture in Hong Kong by providing a field for the entertainers to accumulate cultural capital, which in turn enhanced the overall cultural capital of the city, through which the cultural capital – identity – and sense of belonging of its people was also 76 James Farrer, Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 297. 77 Cheng, ‘Consuming Places in Hong Kong,’ p. 252. 78 Aletti, ‘Lost in Music,’ p. 15.

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strengthened. Although there was disco fever in Hong Kong in the late 1970s, the impact of Cantonese disco songs was rather restricted. As discussed above, TVB released its eight-episode musical drama Disco Fever in 1978. There were many Cantonese songs in the musical-like drama, some of which were disco-style Cantopop, but they were not very widely liked. Leslie Cheung made an attempt with ‘Grease Fever’ (a Cantonese rendition of ‘One Way Ticket’) on his debut Cantopop album, Lover’s Arrow, in 1979, but the dance song inspired by Grease (1978) did not make any impact. Alan Tam, who later became a Cantopop king, also tested the waters with his solo debut Cantopop album, Porky (1979), including the disco-style songs ‘Porky’ and ‘Very Hot Dancing’ (Cantonese renditions of Leif Garett’s ‘I Was Made for Dancing’ and Andy Gibb’s ‘Warm Ride’, respectively), but they were not well received among Hong Kong fans. Roman Tam’s ‘In the Laser Light’ (1983) was a more well-known dance song – a hybrid of rap, disco, and psychedelia – but Tam was probably too mature for the younger generation of Cantopop fans. Some Hong Kong New Wave films in the early 1980s also featured disco as the main setting. The Happenings (1980), for example, was about a group of teenagers who liked hanging out at a disco and who accidentally committed serious crimes, which snowballed after an incident of car theft. The film featured a special guest appearance by Danny Chan, who played the role of a pop star who was interviewed at the disco. However, even though he was well known as an inveterate disco fan, Danny Chan’s golden hits were mainly romantic ballads without any disco beat. (He stole the limelight with the teenage love ballad ‘Tears for You’ from his debut album, First Love, in 1979, and his all-time hits, such as ‘A Few Minutes Date’, ‘Having You’, ‘Ripples’, and ‘Take Care of Yourself Tonight’, were all romantic ballads.) In 1984, Danny Chan also released the album Danny 84 at the peak of his career, in which ‘Genesis’ and ‘La Vie En Rose’ were dance songs: the former was inspired by break dancing, whereas the latter was a Cantonese rendition of Édith Piaf’s eponymous classic. However, the most well received hit of the album was ‘Star Plucking’, the theme song of a campaign masterminded by the Action Committee Against Narcotics. It was Leslie Cheung’s dance song ‘Monica’ released earlier in 1984, which was a cover version of Kōji Kikkawa’s Japanese pop song of the same title with a strong dance beat completely different from other mainstream love ballads, that turned dance songs into a new genre of mainstream Cantopop.79 His ‘Wild Wind’ (1985), ‘Stand Up’ (1986), and ‘Don’t Wanna 79 Yiu-Wai Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), p. 79.

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Sleep’ (1987) were dance songs that were heard at discos across the territory. As mentioned above, Anita Mui’s ‘Bad Girl’ was her career-defining strong-dance-beat song, which matched well with the opening of Canton in 1985. Later, her ‘Dream Partner’ and ‘Iceberg on Fire’ pushed her career to new heights. As pointedly noted by Ray Caviano, former head of the Warner Bros. Records disco division, ‘With disco, you were not an observer, you were a participant. You weren’t going to the party, you were the party […] A disco record doesn’t let you dance, it makes you dance.’80 As such, no matter whether people were ‘being empowered’ or ‘feeling empowered’, to borrow Thornton’s discrimination of the two kinds of empowerment, they found a sense of belonging at Canton, as ‘[d]ance music cultures ha[d] not merely comprised strategies for asserting identity, but means of deliciously slipping through the gaps in preordained identities, into the temporary occupation of new zones of experience which [left] the participant revivified and imperceptible altered.’81 ‘Nightclubs are spatial enclaves of decontrolled emotional controls,’ David Matsinhe argued in his study of the dance floor and nightlife in Edmonton, Canada. 82 Songs with strong dance beats more effectively engaged people emotionally, and, as the fan base of Canton had greatly widened, Cantopop dance songs became an effective means to boost the ecstasy of discommunication (no pun intended to Jean Baudrillard), helping people ‘decontrol’ their emotional control. While Cantopop was rarely heard at Disco Disco, it became an important element at Canton, and so there was a stronger demand for Cantopop dance songs. The mainstream of Cantopop was still romantic ballads in the late 1980s, but more and more singers released Cantopop with party tunes specially made for discos. The Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards organized by TVB, the market leader of the television sector, presented a new award, Most Popular Disco Song, at its 1986 presentation, which was won by Priscilla Chan’s ‘Dancing Street’, a Cantonese rendition of Yōko Oginome’s J-pop ‘Dancing Hero’. Canton, together with other discos, became f ields of producing new Cantopop stars, although only a select few were baptized into genuine stardom. For example, Sandy Lam hosted her mini concert Sandy Lam’s Grey Hot Summer Trip @ Canton Disco to release her album Grey in August 1987, and the main plug ‘Grey’ was a dance song that was compared to Leslie 80 Aletti, ‘Lost in Music,’ p. 15. 81 Gilbert and Pearson, Discographies, p. 33. 82 David Matsinhe, ‘The Dance Floor: Nightlife, Civilizing Process, and Multiculturalism in Canada,’ Space and Culture 12:1 (February 2009), p. 118.

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Cheung’s song of the year, ‘Don’t Wanna Sleep’. Having said this much, it should be stated that Andrew Bull’s music was the soul of Canton, 83 and the addition of Cantopop helped widen its fan base and enhanced multimedia stardom. In the end, ironically, this could not but diminish the aura of the trendsetter. Canton Disco, once one of the coolest discos in the world, closed its doors in 1991, owing to, among other factors, soaring rents and the rise of karaoke. The huge success of Canton, I would venture to say, in a sense marked its own failure. When a trendy spot was so hot that it became the venue for even the general public, it was inevitable that the power of its charisma would eventually fade. As Canton expanded its business in the late 1980s, at a time when disco vogue had already started waning, it continued to diversify its activities, from mini concerts to noon disco (starting in 1988). Apparently, noon disco was not meant to attract affluent and chic customers.

Dancing in the End Times? Disco fever in Hong Kong did not die right away though. Born in the last year of the pop decade of the 1980s, Club JJ’s at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Wan Chai, albeit a trendy, up-market venue to see and to be seen, was less a disco than a party venue. The location of everynight life moved back to the vicinity of Lan Kwai Fong, such as Club 97, Yin Yang on Ice House Street, and Soho on Wyndham Street. But they were targeting a much smaller target audience than Canton. According to William Tang, ‘After Disco Disco, there were YY, Why Not, 97 Bar, Propaganda and so on, but except Canton and Hollywood East that had enjoyed the best times of Hong Kong in the 1980s, it was at most ‘hanging out’ [but no longer a culture, a trend.]’84 ‘The rise and fall of disco is part of a broader story that is often told about popular culture,’ as Tim Lawrence noted, ‘in which a clandestine underground movement is said to develop a series of innovative practices that are subsequently discovered, exploited, and eventually wrecked by the commercialized mainstream’.85 The practice of everynight life in Hong Kong in the 1980s told a similar story. 83 For details about the music of Disco Disco, refer to Andrew Bull’s recordings at Disco Disco: soundcloud.com/dj-andrew-bull; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 84 Tang, ‘Disco Disco without Danny Chan.’ 85 Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 433.

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Always moving ahead of the trend, Andrew Bull crossed over into the concert promotion business in the 1990s before heading towards the rapidly emerging market in Mainland China in the new millennium, which proved to be far-sighted. Although the Hong Kong economy was still developing quickly in the 1990s, the city’s pop – from disco and Cantopop to cinema – had enter into downward trajectories. Bull witnessed a full cycle of the rise and fall of Hong Kong pop from the 1970s to the 1990s. The closing of Canton Disco can, in retrospect, be seen as marking the beginning of the end of a glorious era. In the new millennium, it has been increasingly common to hear laments such as ‘Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore,’ and in the midst of this, there were many nostalgic imaginaries to bring back the so-called ‘good old days’, such as come-back concerts by Cantopop singers who lit up the 1980s. As asked by Anthony Yiu-ming Wong of Tat Ming Pair (the duo hosted their debut album’s release party at Canton back in March 1986) and Sandy Lam in their song ‘Where Have All of Them Gone?’ (collected on Anthony Wong’s 2003 album My 21st Century), ‘[Where are] those dancing together at Hollywood East and Canton? Are they still dancing now?’ Canton was the location of collective pop memory for a whole generation of Hong Kong people. After more than 35 years, it is still remembered by many people as a game changer, and active participation in the Canton Disco Facebook group, with 2,998 members, has proven that ‘it was and is still talked about with a reverence that’s rarely heard these days’.86 Canton was also the theme of one of the episodes of the ‘Dialogue of Space’ trilogy (2016) funded by the Arts Capacity Development Funding Scheme designed and implemented by the Advisory Committee on Arts Development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. The Hollywood East Star Trax Concert was held in 2016 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Hollywood East Star Trax album series, which contained the remix music of Hollywood East resident DJ Jamaster A.87 In 2018, Club JJ’s was resurrected for one night on New Year’s Eve at the Grand Hyatt, bringing back the good old days of the chic era. The impact of Hong Kong disco culture was also felt in Mainland China. Not only did Andrew Bull extend some of his influence to the massive 86 Ebert, ‘How Canton Swam against the Tide in Hong Kong.’ 87 Refer to ‘Disco Days: A Trip Back to the 1980s with the Hollywood East Star Trax Concert,’ 5 November 2016: https://www.lankwaifong.com/disco-1980s-hollywood-east-trax-music-hongkong/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. ‘Released in Asia, including China, in a series of over 50 albums, sales reportedly reached over four million copies and even scored a mention on U.S. Billboard magazine. Meanwhile, in Asia, “Hollywood East” became the terminology for popular dance music trend, and continues to influence dance-music developments in the region for the following few decades.’

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market of the mainland in the new millennium, the 1980s was also deeply missed by Mainland fans. The G&G Creative Community in Shenzhen exhibited a ‘disco museum’ in 2019 to bring back the glorious days of disco culture. The ‘museumization’ showed recognition of disco, but as a culture that was not supposed to grow old, this ironically symbolized its death. Bitterly, even though those mentioned in Anthony Wong and Sandy Lam’s song might still be dancing, they are no longer young, just as the Hong Kong cultural industries have grown old and lost much of their vigour. ‘Disco was like a sense of youthfulness and decadent innocence that the era had. It was just a hot, hot, hot time,’ as well said by Felipe Rose of the Village People.88 ‘Disco was never designed to grow old gracefully’89 anyway, but although as a global phenomenon it went into decline in the 1980s as a consequence of overt commercialization, there were other music styles, at least some that were inspired by disco, that revitalized world music: So disco actually provided the foundations for contemporary dance music culture. And once the backlash kicked in, the New York disco scene didn’t miss a beat, it re-germinated and, in a way, became the basis for House Music. House is in many respects an electronic version of true disco. The name of disco died because it was over commercialised, but almost everything else survived.90

By the end of the 1970s, disco had become ‘harnessed to the service of industry profits’ in the US, and it was snapped as ‘the height of effete snobbery’, as cited by Reebee Garofalo, and was seen as ‘Margaret Trudeau, Truman Capote, Cher, and all their vacuous Studio 54-People magazine cronies’.91 Although disco witnessed a backlash in the US, its ‘delayed’ impact hit Hong Kong in the 1980s. I would argue, however, that its impact was more acutely felt in discos than in the music industry. As the 1990s witnessed the rise of karaoke and clubbing in Hong Kong, Lan Kwai Fong further developed into an eatertainment centre, and, not unlike the fashion industry discussed in the previous chapter, Hong Kong’s nightlife continued to thrive, but it was 88 Aletti, ‘Lost in Music,’ p. 15. 89 Arwa Haider, ‘Why Disco Should Be Taken Seriously?’ BBC Culture, 10 April 2018: https:// www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180403-why-disco-should-be-taken-seriously; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 90 Paul Stokes, ‘6 Ways Disco Changed the World,’ BBC Music: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/23hgH64c0cvLlwYjfmzcztJ/6-ways-disco-changed-the-world; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 91 Garofalo, Rockin’ Out, p. 289.

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no longer the Lan Kwai Fong with Disco Disco. In regard to business growth, Canton extended the glory of Disco Disco into the early 1990s, but its youthful allure and decadent innocence had started to wane. The symbolic meaning of Danny Chan’s passing away on 25 October 1993 after a seventeen-month coma – I believe not just for me, but also for many Hong Kong fans – was that a young, chic, and trendsetting era of Hong Kong pop was gone forever. Thanks to the wave of rave partying in the new millennium, discos (such as 348 and Cyber 8) are briefly trendy again in Hong Kong, but the ‘feel for the game’ has changed to ‘MK culture’ – a style that implies tackiness. My feeling is very much that this new era was not as trend-leading as the 1980s, when a new style of nightlife began to flourish in Hong Kong.

6

(Un)Covering Cosmopolitan Hybridity: Every Great City Deserves a City Magazine Thanks to these magazines, I can consume a city like any other packaged product.1

Abstract Among the many popular print media in Hong Kong, City Magazine was considered an outlier that showcased fashion trends, celebrities, talk of the town, and even philosophy and literature. Co-founders Koon-Chung Chan and Peter Dunn, among others, also wrote pop fiction that exhibited a new metropolitan sensibility of the emerging class of yuppies. This chapter considers how this magazine defined the fashionable and cosmopolitan taste of the city throughout the 1980s and beyond. All in all, this chapter uses the magazine as an example to explore Hong Kong’s “cosmopolitan hybridity” – to borrow Allen Chun’s term – in the context of Hong Kong pop cultures in the 1980s. Keywords: magazine covers, yuppie, urban literature, middle class, paradigm shift

Birth of a City Magazine In the 1970s, Hong Kong gradually developed into a cosmopolitan city as a result of its rapid economic growth. As the media and entertainment industry grew exponentially in Hong Kong in this decade of changes, there were more and more channels for multimedia stardom. Rising stars spawned 1

Keith White, ‘Sweet Portable Lifestyle,’ The Baffler 7 (1995), p. 15.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_CH06

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Figure 6.1  Cover of The Tabloid, September 1976

new trends among fans who emulated their styles – from fashion to hairstyles – and increased demand for cultural industries products and consumption goods offered new opportunities for magazine journalism. Although there

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were some magazines such as Ming Pao Weekly and youth journals such as The Chinese Student Weekly and The 70’s Biweekly, Hong Kong was yet to have a city magazine at that time. ‘City and regional magazines have always fitted uncomfortably into traditional imaginings of magazine journalism,’ as noted by Miglena Sternadori and Susan Currie Sivek, and ‘their function often is to promote a positive image of their areas and construct a cheerful local identity – comfortable environs for both readers and advertisers.’2 Seeing a niche market opportunity, young pioneers Koon-Chung Chan (aka John Chan), Peter Dunn, Henry Wu, and Joseph Yau founded a city magazine originally entitled The Tabloid [Haowai] in September 1976.3 According to Chan, the idea to produce The Tabloid could be traced back to The Chinese Student Weekly, The 70’s Biweekly, and The Youth Weekly. Influenced by the ‘counter-culture’ of those publications, The Village Voice and other similar publications left a deep impression on Chan while pursuing further studies in Boston in 1974. After returning to Hong Kong to commence his career as a journalist, Chan soon found that he was most interested in investigative reporting, and thus he launched The Tabloid. 4 ‘Every Great City Deserves a City Magazine’ was its motto, which was printed in the first issue of City Magazine, formerly The Tabloid, in 1977.5 ‘With a coverage mix including profiles, long‐form narratives, fashion, food, and public affairs, many contemporary city and regional magazines around the world are hybrid purveyors of both journalism and infotainment,’ 2 Miglena Sternadori and Susan Currie Sivek, ‘City and Regional Magazines: Consumer Guides or Social Binders?’ in The Handbook of Magazine Studies, eds. Miglena Sternadori and Tim Holmes (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), p. 307. 3 For a brief account of the background of The Tabloid, refer to Koon-chung Chan, Afterwards: A Chronicle of Hong Kong Culture事後：本土文化誌 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 53–56. Peter Dunn’s opinion was basically similar to Chan’s, but for a different perspective, refer to ‘The Showcase of a Decade: City Magazine 30 Seminar’ 一個時代的衣架： 記號外三十座談 (in Chinese), Ming Pao明報, 11 and 12 February 2008, Century Page. The title of the seminar hosted by Tai-lok Lui was ‘Pioneer of Hong Kong Visual Trends: Thirty Years of City Magazine Style’ 香港視覺潮流先驅：號外風格三十年 (in Chinese), and speakers included Peter Dunn, Tina Liu, and former creative director Siu-Wai Ching 程少偉. 4 For further details, refer to ‘Cultural Dialogues Part 1: Koon-chung Chan x Peter Wong’ 文化 對談第一回︰陳冠中x Peter Wong (in Chinese), Vogue, 4 September 2020: https://www.voguehk. com/zh/article/art-lifestyle/peter-wong-john-chan-koon-chung-interview/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 5 As recollected by Koon-chung Chan in ‘Attitude and Style Manual’ of the December 1988 issue of City Magazine, he had used the following to explain the magazine’s disposition: ‘1. the best kept secret in town; 2. never complain, never explain; 3. we have some moments; we’ve got some style; 4. our sins are scarlet, but our books are read; 5. every great city deserves a city magazine; and 6. irreverent, iconoclastic, idiosyncratic’ (p. 12).

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Sternadori and Sivek noted, and ‘although they often speak to tourists and area influencers, some also have a history of serving as catalysts for local activism and philanthropy.’6 As pointed out by Nico Tang, chief editor of City Magazine from 2015 to 2019, Koon-Chung Chan believed that Hong Kong had already developed its own distinctive characteristics and attributes, similar to those of metropolitan cities like London, Paris, and New York, and thus it was time to have a city magazine.7 The Chinese title of the magazine was literally ‘newspaper extra’, and ‘it was initially called in English The Tabloid, in the spirit of investigative reporting exemplified by The Village Voice.’8 The first five issues, published between September and December 1976 in the form of an alternative tabloid, featured largely cultural reviews. Its reception by audiences was not even lukewarm, as the majority of readers were more interested in the consumption of styles and trends, while the minority thought its reviews were not piercing enough (that was why contributors such as Shu-Ki Tsang and Chak-Fun Lai founded another journal entitled The Writer’s Magazine – the literal translation of the Chinese title was New Trends of Culture – to publish sharper cultural critiques in 1978). After f ive issues, The Tabloid changed its format and was rebranded as City Magazine (the Chinese title remained unchanged). Sales were better, but as recollected by Koon-Chung Chan, it was still in the red, and the magazine could not have survived without the financial support of his friends: ‘after a few ups and downs, it eventually took six years for City Magazine to generate a profit.’9 In an interview, Chan offered a succinct, first-hand account of the early development of City Magazine. At first, he wanted to publish The Tabloid weekly, as an inheritance and transformation of The Chinese Student Weekly and The 70’s Biweekly. He had hoped to fund it by himself, but he ran out of money before long, and thus partners and friends such as Henry Wu (who soon emigrated), Peter Dunn, and Joseph Yau chipped in money in order to continue operation. Koon-Chung Chan was the de facto chief editor. In late 1979, Chan had to temporarily move to Canada to acquire citizenship through residency, and both Peter Dunn and Joseph Yau had full-time jobs. At that juncture, John Sham, who had just returned from the UK, volunteered to work for 6 Sternadori and Sivek, ‘City and Regional Magazines,’ p. 307. 7 Nico Tang, ‘A Brief History of City Magazine’ 號外簡史 (in Chinese), Modern Weekly 週末畫 報Vol. 1016: http://www.modernweekly.com/culture/28067; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 8 Allen Chun, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), p. 109. 9 Refer to ‘IAS Program on Chinese Creative Writing,’ IAS Newsletter, Fall 2020: https:// iasnews.ust.hk/fall-2020-special-feature; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 6.2  Cover of City Magazine, April 1982

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the magazine unpaid, and in the next four years or so, he became the mainstay of City Magazine. As Koon-Chung Chan pointed out, although the magazine had made some editorial changes back then, it was still not fully commercialized, and it was far from profitable. The turning point was when artist-cum-publisher Alan Yongder Zie began investing in the magazine in 1981. That was a good juncture for the magazine to make its transformation. The new shareholder decided to boost the size of the magazine to eleven x seventeen inches in April 1982 (Figure 6.2), and to invite William Chang and Tina Liu to be its art directors, which brought a paradigm shift to the magazine. This marked the full commercialization of City Magazine, which later really became true to its name.10 Graced by eye-catching photos on its covers, City Magazine transformed into a magazine which showed that one ‘can consume a city like any other packaged product’.11 If this was the mission of a city magazine, it was the face-lifted version of City Magazine that achieved it. In his inspiring study of Haowai (pinyin of the Chinese name of City Magazine), Allen Chun asked ‘whether the force of ideas and culture alone, can actively transform the public sphere and the popular landscape’.12 It seems to me that the answer was a resounding no, and the success of City Magazine could have been attributed to how it effectively channelled the force of ideas and culture into the changing public sphere and popular landscape. Chun underlined the significant transformation of the magazine in the early 1980s: One can undeniably say that Haowai continued to promote (even more successfully) the inherent interests, tastes, and values of a locally bred generation of Hong Kong youth who at the same time were increasingly distanced from an older generation of diasporic residents, on the one hand, and those people associated primarily with a mutating colonial regime and other expatriate interests, on the other hand.13

More importantly, the magazine not only served as a guide to a particular aesthetic and lifestyle (the emergence of a fashionable and hedonistic, but at the same time playful and cynical, style) but also offered urban readers 10 Cited from ‘Koon-chung Chan’s Oral History Transcript’ 陳冠中口述歷史文字稿 (in Chinese), (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Chronicles Institute, 2020), p. 13. 11 Sternadori and Sivek, ‘City and Regional Magazines,’ p. 307. 12 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 122. 13 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 118; Chun interpreted the cosmopolitan hybridity of City Magazine as ‘place-based imagination’. Refer to p. 114.

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a critical intellectual stance on ‘the ongoing pulse of a uniquely Hong Kong culture, reflected most typically by the gradually dominant tastes, attitudes, and consumption patterns of locally bred Hong Kong people’.14 As underscored by Nico Tang, Yongder Zie’s insertion of chic and design elements into the magazine helped turn it into a highly profitable one. From the April 1982 version onwards, the giant spectacular cover stood out from the rest in magazine stands, which attracted the attention of not just readers but also advertising agencies, as size did matter for them when they placed their advertisements. There was a marked increase in full-page ads,15 and the nature of the ads also changed significantly. For example, the ad on the back cover of the March 1982 issue was for the DSS Dirty-Stop System, whereas the ad on that of the April 1982 issue was for the Japanese fashion label D’urban, and subsequent issues in 1982 featured ads for Cartier. Branded as the yuppie magazine of the city, City Magazine quickly picked up momentum, and the period between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s was the best for the magazine from the perspective of attracting advertising clients. Topping the list of all monthly magazines in Hong Kong, it eclipsed international fashion magazines, including Cosmopolitan.16 Equally importantly, the stunning, tasteful visual designs and the advertisements for stylish designer labels soon enabled City Magazine to become the trendsetter of Hong Kong chic. I remember some of my fellow schoolmates bringing a copy of the latest issue of City Magazine to school, and with a strong sense of pride they felt exactly as if they were carrying a designer label bag. During the 12th anniversary of City Magazine, co-founder Peter Dunn said that their original intention was to make the magazine ‘the best kept secret in town’, and when it was first released it was with a sense of self-deprecation, but after twelve years it had 14 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 110; Sternadori and Sivek, ‘City and Regional Magazines,’ p. 315. In other words, City Magazine was ‘a classy, savvy magazine that promoted intellectual eclecticism in addition to cosmopolitan values, consumer sophistication and cultural taste in a way that eclipsed other highbrow magazines by cultivating a newly emerging public through the promotion of a multifaceted cosmopolitanism’. Allen Chun, ‘Critical Cosmopolitanism in the Emergence of Cultural Modernity: Reflections on Discursive Imagination in Hong Kong and Shanghai,’ Postcolonial Studies 16:1 (July 2013), p. 58. 15 Tang, ‘A Brief History of City Magazine’; for a comparison of the ads in the two issues (March 1982 and April 1982), refer to Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 115. ‘The number of full-page ads in Issues 69–71 occupied 11, 22 and 20 pages, respectively, and continued in general to increase in subsequent issues. Full-page illustrations increased and became a staple feature of its new look.’ 16 Refer to ‘Oral History: Koon-chung Chan’ and ‘Peter Dunn: City Magazine Opened the Door of Beauty for Me’ 鄧小宇：號外令我打開美的大門 (in Chinese), PC Lady, 30 June 2011: https:// hk.pclady.com.cn/themes/1106/705984.html; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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turned into self-pride.17 This applied not only to the magazine but also to the city itself. It was at that juncture that the city developed self-confidence and self-esteem in its style and chic that many other cities would have envied. Self-proclaimed as ‘a Hong Kong heritage that is ahead of its time’,18 City Magazine constructed an exceptional cosmopolitan hybridity for Hong Kong throughout the rest of the 1980s.

Covering Chic ‘The cover of City Magazine is definitely a unique scenery among newspaper stall [sic] of Hong Kong because of its large size and stunning cover visual,’ as well said by ‘Landscape of City Magazine’, a project that processed a colour analysis of its covers from the first to the 499th issue.19 This project showed that the covers of City Magazine – at least most of them – had visual arts values worth studying. As the longest running monthly magazine in Hong Kong, City Magazine organized an exhibition and a public opinion poll to select the most popular cover to commemorate the publication of its 500th issue in 2018. The punk look of Leslie Cheung on the May 2001 cover received more than 100,000 votes, and thus it was named the most popular cover (Figure 6.3).20 It was not surprising at all, by virtue of the unmatched charm of the legendary star. Some of the City Magazine covers in the 1980s were also spectacular as well as symbolic. In this section, I will select some covers which, from my own perspective, were of special significance to the development of Hong Kong pop in that decade. The upsizing of City Magazine in April 1982, as noted above, marked the beginning of its success in the 1980s and beyond. Actually, before April 1982, City Magazine had already sported covers, albeit in a smaller size, that were eye-catching and/or culturally significant. Among the earlier covers 17 Koon-chung Chan, ‘Attitude and Style Manual’ (editorial in Chinese), City Magazine, December 1988, p. 12. For the sake of brevity, hereafter references to the contents of City Magazine will be cited with issues and page numbers only in the text. 18 Cited from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/580542208193211530/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 19 Dimension Plus, ‘Landscape of City Magazine,’ 2018: https://dimensionplus.co/works/2018_citymag/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. ‘Landscape of City Magazine’ process a color analysis of its cover from the first to 499th, based on the 4C printing standard CMYK, each issue forms a mountain like landscape according to its CMYK data – this is the landscape of era created by City Magazine.’ 20 For all the covers of City Magazine from 1976 to 2019, refer to http://www.cityhowwhy.com. hk/vote; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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Figure 6.3  Cover of City Magazine, May 2001

of City Magazine, some featured social celebrities such as Mrs. Kai-Bong Chau (February 1977), famous actors such as Michael Hui (July 1977), and monumental landmarks such as Tiananmen Square (April 1979), but the

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Figure 6.4  Cover of City Magazine, September 1979

styles, themes, and tones of the visual designs were still rather diverse. Without adequate resources in its early days, the magazine’s visual style was rather ‘primitive’ – just kind of making do. The magazine had a new logo starting with the July 1979 issue. The original logo was designed by Henry Wu and the new one by Illustration Workshop, which designed seven covers for the magazine, among which ‘Chinese Inspiration’ (September 1979; Figure 6.4) was boldly pioneering and attractive.

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As recollected by Tina Liu, who was one of the models on the cover, the apparels were purchased from a Chinese products emporium (which was generally seen as tacky back then), but the team knew very well how to mix and match, and thus the look became fashionable.21 The design of the cover of the first issue of the 1980s was as bold as the subject matter – having a strong sense of words and thoughts, John Sham brought new style to the magazine at the beginning of the 1980s. The theme of this issue was drugs, which was highly controversial back then, and on the cover, there was a young girl (Sandy So) holding a Snoopy doll, but her image in the mirror was injecting something into her arm, which spoke a thousand words about the special investigative report on drugs in this issue (pp. 7–18). That said, stepping into the 1980s, while City Magazine continued to take on controversial, timely social issues, its covers tended to feature more stars and celebrities, apparently for the sake of attracting more general readers. In 1980, for example, there were actors and actresses such as Deanie Ip, Petrina Fung, Kwok-keung Cheung, Philip Chan, and Chelsea Chan on the covers. In 1981, more and more superstars and young rising stars appeared on the cover of City Magazine, and the Brigitte Lin on the cover of the January 1981 issue (Figure 6.5), in my opinion, was a classic example that set the tone for its covers after the magazine’s metamorphosis in April 1982. Possibly the most famous Taiwanese actress, who moved to Hong Kong to develop her film career after taking a short break in America, Brigitte Lin was the female lead in Patrick Tam’s New Wave classic Love Massacre (1981). Well-known for her typical Taiwanese melodramatic romantic f ilms, her image was utterly different in Love Massacre, and the cover photo, masterminded by William Chang, revealed a completely different, stunningly gorgeous Brigitte Lin as seen in Love Massacre with its use of a sharp colour contrast (red versus blue) to create a stylishly stunning image. Lucilla You, a beautiful 1950s Hong Kong actress, was featured on the cover of the March 1981 issue. The nostalgic but trendy feeling of the photo was another example of the aesthetic taste of the magazine at its early stage. The April and May 1981 issues featured two young, rising Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) stars, Felix Wong and Ken Tong, respectively, later known as two of the Five Tigers who were among the greatest male television stars in the 1980s (see Chapter 1). Actors and actresses with strong personal characters, such as George Lam and Cora Miao, were also invited to highlight the typical styles of City Magazine (August and September 1981 issues, respectively). 21 For further details, refer to ‘The Showcase of a Decade.’

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Figure 6.5  Cover of City Magazine, January 1981

City Magazine was among the forerunners that explored China in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the future of Hong Kong after 1997 was still not discussed openly. The April 1979 cover used a photo of Tiananmen Square taken in the winter of 1978, and the September 1979 one mentioned above even featured the cover story ‘Chinese Inspiration’, represented by two girls who looked like Chinese dolls, Tina Liu and Karlai Tao. The December 1981 issue, another example of the magazine’s foresight, had

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Figure 6.6  Cover of City Magazine, December 1981

the young mainland actress Liu Xiaoqing on its cover (Figure 6.6; she later became one of the most well-known Chinese f ilm stars and businesswomen). The subsequent issue (January 1982) covered a special topic, ‘French fashion in Beijing’, which also proved to be precursory, with a cover photo of a young mainland man, Wang Jing. My sense is that the momentum was already there, it just needed a tipping point, and in the

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end, it was not a little thing that made the big difference – on the contrary, it was something big. The cover figure for the first gigantic cover (April 1982) was Eva Lim (see Figure 6.2 above), a female Hong Kong model who was not high-profile. The choice also showed that one of the missions of City Magazine was to find ‘the best secret in town’ for its readers. The art director for this cover was William Chang, with Raymond Suen, the photographer, and Tina Liu, who was responsible for make-up. Suen was later best known for his photography for Cantopop album covers, with signature works including Leslie Cheung’s The Wind Continues to Blow and Anita Mui’s Wicked Girl. Probably the person who has bagged the most Hong Kong film awards (for art direction, costume design, and editing), William Chang’s first job as art director was, not coincidentally, Love Massacre. It was the first time in the history of Hong Kong cinema that the role of art director appeared on the rolling credits at the end of the film.22 Actually, Chang had a long relationship with the magazine – he appeared in formal attire on the cover of its October 1978 issue. Chang was first nominated for Best Art Director with All the Wrong Clues (1981; directed by Tsui Hark) at the 18th Golden Horse Film Festival and Nomad (1982) at the 2nd Hong Kong Film Awards, respectively. He was soon named Best Art Director with Homecoming (1982; directed by Yim Ho) for the first time at the 4th Hong Kong Film Awards (with a slightly different Chinese name – Suk-Ping Cheung – [it sounded the same as his Chinese name in Cantonese] due to political reasons, as the investor was a leftist film company, which might have led to censorship in the Taiwanese market). After that, Chang had numerous nominations and awards (so far, thirty-nine Golden Horse and fifty Hong Kong Film Awards nominations, and twelve Golden Horse and sixteen Hong Kong Film Awards trophies), becoming the most acclaimed art director in Hong Kong as well as Chinese-language cinema. In 2015, Chang received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for his work on The Grandmaster (2013), directed by his long-time collaborator Kar-wai Wong. This was an excellent example proving that, without doubt, City Magazine had a good eye for style. As recollected by Tina Liu in ‘I Am the Grand Aunt of City Magazine’ when the magazine celebrated its 30th anniversary, it became ‘the talk of the town’ after that issue (October 2006, p. 168). With a team of very talented and tasteful art and visual designers, from April 1982 onwards, the covers 22 Tina Liu, ‘Vision Influences Taste, Taste Influences Choices’ 眼界影響品位，品位決定選 擇 (in Chinese), Vogue Film, 11 August 2017: https://www.gushiciku.cn/dc_hk/101937372; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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of City Magazine became the most eye-catching visuals in newspaper and magazine stalls, to which readers in Hong Kong looked forward every month. If magazines relied on their covers to do two crucial things – ‘one, send a message about the personality and voice of the magazine and two, sell issues’23 – City Magazine simply excelled at both. As there are too many fabulous City Magazine covers to discuss here, I will select several for a brief account. I must first mention the August 1982 issue (Figure 6.7), on the cover of which was Asia’s Empress of Fashion, Joyce Ma, the founder of the legendary Joyce Boutique, which was famous for introducing leading designer labels to Hong Kong as well as Asia (see Chapter 4). That she was willing to become a cover figure for City Magazine (supplemented by a full-page photo and an interview with Peter Dunn) was itself strong proof of the magazine’s trendsetter role in not just fashion but also lifestyle. Celebrities such as Loletta Chu (December 1986; 10th anniversary issue), known as the most beautiful Miss Hong Kong, and Fanny Sieh (October 1983), widely regarded as ‘Queen of the Ball’ in Hong Kong, were also strong proof of this. The literary celebrity Isabel Nee (aka Yi Shu) also made a rare appearance on the cover of the April 1986 issue (Figure 6.8). Appearing on the cover of City Magazine increased one’s visibility, and glittering stars were more than willing to be there. But City Magazine wanted to provide its readers with something new: many veteran stars, such as Lisa Wang (February 1983), Angie Chiu (April 1985), Jenny Tseng (March 1986), Yun-Fat Chow (October 1984), and Jackie Chan (November 1983), were packaged in innovative ways; for example, the voluptuous Cantopop diva Jenny Tseng in casual wear and the kung fu star Jackie Chan wearing a white shirt and a cardigan with a tie. The most creative attempt in this category was Tak-Hing Kwan (March 1989; Figure 6.9), the legendary actor most acclaimed for portraying the late Qing Dynasty kung fu master Fei-Hung Wong. At the age of 83, he was featured holding a rifle and wearing a cowboy-style set designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, which was a prime example of how the magazine really presented something unimaginable. As rightly noted by Koon-Chung Chan in the editorial ‘Attitude and Style Manual’ of that issue (March 1989, p. 18), City Magazine was simply irreplaceable, as it was so creative that no one was able to predict what it would do next. Another similar eye-opening work to me was that of Zhang Yimou. Even though it was not the cover photo, the half-naked Zhang on 23 Ted Spiker, ‘The Magazine Cover: The Craft of Identity and Impact,’ in The Routledge Handbook of Magazine Research: The Future of the Magazine Form, eds. David Abrahamson and Marcia R. Prior-Miller (New York and London: Routledge, 2015), p. 377.

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Figure 6.7  Cover of City Magazine, August 1982

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Figure 6.8  Cover of City Magazine, April 1986

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Figure 6.9  Cover of City Magazine, March 1989

the cover of the separate volume Private Eye (May 1985) became a classic. Shortly after he attracted the limelight with his remarkable cinematography in Kaige Chen’s directorial debut Yellow Earth (1984), Zhang was handpicked by photographer Julian Lee, who found his outlook similar to that of the

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Japanese literary master Yukio Mishima, to shoot one of the sexiest photos of the magazine, rivalled perhaps only by the July 1982 issue, on the cover of which lay a half-naked Andy Lau who was still a young TVB actor. In the meantime, the covers of the separate volume Private Eye doubled the display of figures of different styles: from actors, directors, photographers, authors, and scholars to political figures, such as Tina Leung (May 1987), John Woo (December 1986), Sharon Chung (June 1987), Yon Fan (March 1986), Steven Cheung (July 1985), and Yee Lee (November 1986). As City Magazine also pledged to introduce young, up-and-rising stars, Rosamund Kwan (July 1983), Maggie Cheung (October 1985), and Sandy Lam (March 1987), who later became superstars, among others, also appeared on its covers. As discussed above, the magazine had a sharp eye for Chinese culture, and the mainland actresses Siqin Gaowa (July 1984) and Joan Chen (July 1987) and the Taiwanese actresses Sylvia Chang (November 1985), Terry Hu (February 1985), and Joey Wang (December 1987) added a greater-China inspiration to the magazine in the 1980s. Louise Tsuei (April 1984) deserves a special mention here (Figure 6. 10). While she was a veteran songstress known as the Cleopatra of Taiwan, her image seemed a bit tacky to Hong Kong fans. But under the camera of William Chang, she effectively spewed her sexiness with style. The discussion above offered a sweeping account of some of the worthmentioning covers, in my opinion. The covers proved that the magazine knew very well that they were really street-level exhibitions. According to Steve Taylor and Neville Brody’s study of magazine covers, they ‘can be breathtaking, beautiful, confrontational, resonant, heartbreaking, stimulating, irritating and uplifting’: At their best, they come together as a kind of spontaneous street level exhibition, publicly displaying the work of some of our best creative talent, featuring what is most admirable and dismissible about the modern world, communicating the people and events that shape our culture.24

This quote nicely sums up the meanings of City Magazine’s covers over the years. Back in December 1984, when City Magazine published its 100th issue, it included a collection of the first 100 covers (pp. 113–116). To celebrate its 30th anniversary, City Magazine published a three-volume box set, which included a selection of its exemplary materials. Edited by Tai-lok Lui, the 24 Steve Taylor and Neville Brody, 100 Years of Magazine Covers (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006), p. 1938.

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Figure 6.10  Cover of City Magazine, April 1985

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edited volume had ten different styles packaged with ten different cover photos, including Tina Liu and Karlai Tao (September 1979), Andy Lau (July 1982), Yun-Fat Chow (October 1984), Brigitte Lin (July 1988), Leslie Cheung (December 1991), Tony Chiu-wai Leung (May/June 1992), Kar-Wai Wong (September 1994), Faye Wong (November 1998), Kwok-Leung Kam (March 2006), and Maggie Cheung (October 2006). Besides the abovementioned poll to determine the most popular among the 500 covers, City Magazine picked ten covers on that occasion – Tina Liu and Karlai Tao (September 1979), George Lam (September 1982), Yun-Fat Chow (October 1984), Cheryl Chung (December 1984), Maggie Cheung (April 1990), Leslie Cheung (December 1991), a group of androgynous young models (January 1991), Tony Chiu-wai Leung (May/June 1992), Sandy Lam (March 1993) and Anita Mui (October 2000) – and invited young entertainers to emulate the stars on those classic covers. Four of them overlapped with the ten covers of the box sets.25 These activities showed that the covers of City Magazine had become part of the collective cultural memory of several generations of Hong Kong people, and those of the 1980s, after more than three decades, were still dearly remembered by Hong Kong readers. It was therefore not an exaggeration to say that ‘the covers of City Magazine ha[d] everything you could imagine about, and all important icons of Hong Kong popular culture,’26 during the burning formative years of Hong Kong pop.

Between the Covers: Visuals and Words As mentioned above, City Magazine was launched as The Tabloid, inspired by The Village Voice. Its early issues therefore put much emphasis on investigative reporting, including the Tsan Yuk Hospital incident in which the wrong blood type was given to a patient (1st issue: 30 September 1976), a ‘true report’ on the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre (called a ‘prison’ back then; 2nd issue: 11 November 1976), and an ‘autobiography’ of a retired gangster (3rd 25 For details of the remaking of classic covers, refer to ‘Design Master Alan Chan Designed a New Logo for City Magazine’ 設計大師陳幼堅為號外設計新LOGO了 (in Chinese): https:// read01.com/zh-hk/8z3gB4K.html#.YJlsHC3dmhA; last accessed on 28 October 2022; for a detailed discussion of the designs of some of the covers, such as those of Eva Lim, Andy Lau, Joyce Ma, Jackie Chan, Louise Tsuei, and Tak-Hing Kwan, refer to ‘The Showcase of a Decade.’ 26 Voicer, ‘500 Covers Recording the Burning Youth of the 1970s, 80s and 90s: Hong Kong’s City Magazine’ 用近 500 張封面，記錄下屬於 70、80、90 的滾燙青春：香港號外雜誌 (in Chinese), Polysh, 2 May 2018: https://thepolysh.com/blog/2018/05/02/city-howwhy-magazine/; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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issue: 25 November 1976). The contents of City Magazine were also meant to be multifarious from the very beginning. With respect to division of editorial labour, Koon-Chung Chan took charge of investigative reporting, whereas Peter Dunn directed more attention to art criticism. For example, Dunn talked about Art Garfunkel in the section entitled ‘Tango’ in the first issue, and in the same section there were other essays on, among others, the Hong Kong youth ballet and films such as Jumping Ash (1976; directed by Po-chih Leong), which was widely hailed as a forerunner of the Hong Kong New Wave cinema that was generated three years later. Peter Dunn noted that City Magazine set out as an underdog that was alternative and less mainstream, which had been the distinctiveness of the magazine for many years.27 After it formally became City Magazine, its contents continued to be highly, if not more, diversified. In the 7th issue (March 1977), for example, Deng Xiaoping was juxtaposed with Hong Kong comics ‘Godfather’ Tony Wong, and essays on television and films mixed with avant-garde Taoist poetry written by Wai-lim Yip, renowned poet and teacher of contributing author Ye Si (aka Ping-Kwan Leung). Besides mainstream films and television programmes, the magazine was also willing to explore alternative issues/stars, such as its detailed coverage of soft porn star Wai-Ying Chan (August 1978, pp. 11–15). Some topics were really pioneering, such as the introduction to Hong Kong’s disco scene back in the March 1977 issue, before John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever (1977) created a disco craze in the territory. The column on horse racing (starting in March 1980) was another example of the magazine’s ability to think outside the box. Unlike mainstream horse race journalism that focused solely on predictions, these were insightful analyses from an academic perspective. When it came to academic issues, the magazine also showed its shrewdness as well as humour, as evidenced by the essay ‘Reviews of Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong Humanities Teachers’ (October 1977, pp. 26–27), which rated the outlook, teaching, and research achievements of university professors. As explained by Peter Dunn, after John Sham took the helm, there were many changes in the orientation of the magazine; as regards content, the proportion of academic essays was reduced and that of reports on social issues in Hong Kong increased. After its facelift in the April 1982 issue, the magazine soon became sought after by advertising agencies, but at the same time ‘the best kept secret’ turned into something slick – a mainstream magazine deliberately pretending to be non-mainstream, according to Peter 27 Cited from ‘The Showcase of a Decade.’

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Dunn’s ‘City Magazine and John Sham’ (December 2012, p. 153). That said, the investigative reporting of social issues such as drugs (January 1980), medical practitioners (February 1980), industrial safety (March 1980), and the government’s budget (April 1980) remained a very important category in City Magazine at that stage. Notwithstanding the essays on pop culture and trendy issues such as fashion and disco, City Magazine was still less a trendsetter of lifestyle than a city magazine that caught all various aspects of everyday life. While its contents continued to evolve in the early 1980s under the leadership of John Sham, its ‘metamorphosis’ in April 1982 brought a paradigmatic change to not only the covers but also the content between the covers. First of all, the sharp increase in full-page ads brought a brand-new image to the magazine, and hence changed the overall reading experience. The first ‘upsized’ issue in April 1982 was a prime example. Many full-page ads of world-renowned designer labels, such as Yohji Yamamoto, not only transformed the overall style of the magazine, they also created a reading experience that many Hong Kong fans had never had. My eyes opened wide when I read, for example, the essay ‘On Super City’ written by Ka-Chung Sung (one of the pen names of Koon-Chung Chan), which was sandwiched between Yohji Yamamoto ads. The hybridization of cultural criticism and high-end fashion, for myself, made the discussion about the future of Hong Kong as a super city all the more attractive and even convincing, at least to a young reader like me (I was only sixteen years old back at that time). Sung got it right when he said that twenty years later, Hong Kong would still be the most important city in South China – right at least up till twenty years after the essay was published. The ads, especially those of big and rising labels, such as Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Sonia Rykiel, Claude Montana, Kenzo, Matsuda, Giorgio Armani, Cartier, Hermes, Chopard, and Esprit, helped shape the image of the magazine as the trendsetter of the city. But when the emphasis on lifestyle enthused by luxury goods went up, investigative journalism could not but go down. In August 1982, Koon-Chung Chan founded a new magazine, International City, with his friends to place the emphasis on the latter, seeing Hong Kong as an international centre facing the world. It was stated in the advertisement for the new magazine placed in City Magazine (1982 August, pp. 38–39) that every magazine had its own history, and the examples given were Time, Fortune, and Newsweek. Unfortunately, as noted in the editorial in the January 1984 issue (p. 7), that project lost a great deal of money and therefore ceased after six months or so. Nevertheless, Chan was reluctant to forfeit his original intention, so he established a section called ‘Hong Kong Incorporated’ (the literal

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translation of the Chinese title was ‘international city’) in the October 1987 issue (pp. 93–114) of City Magazine, although that section lasted only for a year. Indeed, the ads alone would not have made City Magazine the city’s trendsetter. Besides pages selling luxury and designer labels, there were other substances between the covers of the storied magazine. In line with the covers and ads of the upsized issues was the column ‘City Magazine’s Showcase’ (the literal translation of the Chinese title was ‘hanger’), masterminded by Tina Liu. According to her, there were three platforms on which to display the visual style of City Magazine: its covers, the typesetting, and the photos, including ‘City Magazine’s Showcase’.28 This section exhibited trends in fashion, sometimes by celebrities as models (such as Cora Miao, Patricia Ha, and Cecilia Yip) and/or sometimes with designers (such as Issey Miyake and Kenzo Takada). The shaping of the city’s lifestyle was supplemented by coverage of trendy events in the city, from elitist parties to film festival receptions. Let me give some examples of each. In the April 1982 issue, a section entitled ‘All That Glitters’ reported the annual ball of the alumni associations of Hong Kong students of US and UK universities, featuring photos of elitist graduates at a social gathering of the young, up-and-coming generation that would define the style of the city. The author ended the report with a sarcastic question: ‘[I]f this was not interesting, what else? [Could it be] the Annual Ball of the alumni of the Chinese University of Hong Kong?’ (p. 51). Ironically, I became a student at The Chinese University of Hong Kong later that year. In addition, in keeping with its mission of revealing the best kept secrets in town, City Magazine added a new column, ‘First Glimpse’, introducing new faces, from actors to artists. Although not all first glimpses turned into celebrities, some did prove that the magazine had a sharp eye for locating budding talent. One of the prime examples was the December 1982 issue (p. 22) with young disc jockey ‘611’ – that was Sandy Lam, who later became one of the greatest Cantopop divas. No wonder the magazine proudly said it was a trendsetter in its 100th issue (December 1984, pp. 96–97). Additionally, the magazine also covered its own social gatherings, often distinguished by celebrities in town. Its June 1983 issue (pp. 18–19) featured the trip of the production team of Boat People (1982; directed by Ann Hui) at Cannes, where the film was an Official Selection at the world-class Cannes International Film Festival. It was a real eye-opener for many Hong Kong film fans, as the Cannes Film Festival was a distant stomping ground for the famous and the wannabes. All of a sudden, Hong Kong cinema was 28 Cited from ‘The Showcase of a Decade.’

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on the stage of world cinema, boasting not just the international image of its city but also the self-pride of its fans. If City Magazine attended only to the elite culture, it would not have been too different from that of competing magazines, such as Hong Kong Tatler and Style Hong Kong. Much less commercial than its competitors,29 however, it also offered self-reflexive, if not self-deconstructive, accounts of the lifestyles it promoted. Besides ‘City Magazine’s Showcase’, the magazine also launched a column entitled ‘Dress to Kill’ in April 1983. Obviously, it was about bad fashion taste, and the first ‘model’ was Anita Mui! While it included actresses like Angile Leung (May 1983, p. 18), it also dared not to exclude legendary icon Teresa Teng (September 1984, p. 18). The special feature ‘Smart-Ass’ in the February 1980 issue (pp. 31–35) also deserves special mention here. The feature was a pointed critique of ‘smart ass-ism’, later fully expanded into a discipline by Ming Yau (Joseph Yau’s nom de plume). ‘Ming Yau’s True Records’ (aka ‘Smart-Ass’) was a well-received column published from 1983 to 1998 in City Magazine. It was referred to as ‘true records’ because the author guaranteed that real sources of all examples discussed could be traced. As aptly summarized in a blurb for the collection of the ‘true records’ essays, Hong Kong’s spectacular economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s gave birth to a generation of overconfident, big-mouth Hong Kongers who thought they were so knowledgeable that they were able to make astute – at least they believed so – comments on everything. From dogmatic criticisms, outrageous judgments, and cheap jokes to hear-say observations, these were the true records of people Ming Yau called ‘smart asses’ (arrogant, cocky, conceited, cunning, opportunistic, slick, sly, etc.) – a mentality ubiquitous in Hong Kong society: ‘it is contemporary Hong Konger.’30 Although City Magazine featured essays about taste and lifestyle from the beginning, it was also sceptical about what it promoted. Koon-Chung Chan’s ‘Why Did They Start Wanting to Have Taste?’ (in Chinese) in the March 1982 issue (pp. 28–29) was an example of exposing how pretentious the ‘profligate sons of the rich’ were: ‘They realized that they needed something more than money: taste, style and fashion.’ The special topic ‘Fake’ in the February 1983 issue was written with similar scorn. ‘Faking: Why and How?’ offered a piercing account of how pretentious people faked having taste, such as pretending to be interested in culture by reading Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Walter Benjamin (p. 64). I was too young when I first read that piece; I did not even know who those critics were. 29 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 116. 30 Joseph Yau, Smart-Ass 1983–1998 尤明實錄 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Artiquette Press, 2018).

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Moreover, they also reminded readers of the importance of being ‘low-key’ (May 1983, pp. 11–16). Interestingly, while some of its readers were critical of that kind of pretentiousness, some used it as a style manual to emulate the lifestyle of the ‘profligate sons of the rich’. In the June 1983 issue, there was a nuanced account of the differences between attitude, gesture, and lifestyle. ‘It is attitude in the 1980s, gesture the 1970s, and life-style before that,’ and ‘life-style is escapist, gesture self-egoistic while attitude being in and for itself’ (p. 9). While City Magazine displayed stylish chic, it also remained self-critical, if not self-deconstructive. Julian Lee, long-time contributing writer and photographer for the magazine, for example, provided a penetrating ‘antipreppie’ guide (September 1984, pp. 48–50), and ‘preppie’ had been a style promoted by the magazine since the late 1970s. Towards the late 1980s, when the yuppie style had been widely accepted in Hong Kong, City Magazine featured the special section ‘Post-style’ in its March 1988 issue, with essays such as Peter Dunn’s ‘After Style’ (p. 82), Koon-Man Wu’s (Joseph Yau) ‘Style Done’ (p. 83), and Kasey Lin’s ‘Here Comes Post-Stylist’ (p. 84). Peter Dunn’s self-reflexive critique was further elaborated in ‘Selfish Yuppies’ (May/June 1989, p. 96), in which he redefined yuppies as educated and knowledgeable but at the same time despicable and cunning professionals who knew how to spend money wisely. He pressed even harder by saying that ‘only by learning to respect others’ lifestyles and being self-reflexive all the time that it would be possible to prevent oneself from turning into a monster.’ Apparently, City Magazine had not turned into a monster, at least up till the end of the 1980s. In 1989, it published a special issue, Hong Kong Yuppies into the Next Decade, a record of the dialogues between City Magazine and the yuppie style, which was, according to Chief Editor Charles Chau, ‘the most controversial focus of the 1980s’.31 The introduction and criticism of chic would not have been able to generate a kind of creative synergy in City Magazine without astute and shrewd authors, but at the beginning, first with The Tabloid and then City Magazine, these talented authors were mainly restricted to the key players – Koon-Chung Chan, Peter Dunn, Joseph Yau, and friends (some even used different pen names to boost the author line-up). After the upsizing of the magazine, and particularly after John Sham became the chief editor, City Magazine had begun strengthening its team of authors. In the May 1983 31 Charles Chau, ‘Record of the Era’ 時代的紀錄 (in Chinese), in Hong Kong Yuppies into the Next Decade (Hong Kong: City Magazine, 1989), p. 12; for an elaborated account of the rise of yuppies in the 1980s, refer to pp. 26–56.

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issue, Joseph Yau claimed explicitly in his editorial that the magazine was trying to recruit ‘new blood’ (p. 7). The magazine later boasted a very strong team of media critics, including but not limited to Lai-Chi Fung (music), who later became the chief editor, and Kenneth Ip (film), who was the Dean of Film and Television at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts from 2005 to 2016. Acclaimed lyricist Lin Xi started contributing to the magazine before he was hailed as the ‘God of Lyrics’, and Flora Wong, one of the most celebrated Hong Kong novelists, also published her short stories in the magazine in the mid-1980s (more details below). As aptly summarized by Tai-lok Lui in his introduction to City Magazine 30: City, the magazine was trying to raise the bar of expectations for a magazine, using cultural critique, literary criticism, philosophy, social theories, and drama theories to boost the theoretical thrust of its commentaries.32 Meanwhile, City Magazine 30: People was an excellent showcase of a new Hong Kong in the making, thanks to a distinctive group of agenda-setting Hong Kong people who were born and grew up in Hong Kong. As Lui perceptively noted, ‘Hong Kong people began to find something to say, and actually have something to say’ as local life experiences had become an important issue.33 To put it concisely, the words of the magazine were as attractive as its visuals.

Yuppie Literature as Notes of the City Besides the essays, ‘City Notes’ – the title of the book series published in collaboration with Publication (Holdings) Ltd – also helped develop the signature style of City Magazine. One of the most representative works was Peter Dunn’s (using the pen name Mary Chin) serial novel The Woman in Kenzo. This was first published in the 14th issue (October 1977), a time when Hong Kong was still learning about fashion and lifestyle. Back then, Kenzo was still not widely known by Hong Kong customers, and wearing it was the cultural capital of Mary Chin, a 28-year-old professional who had the resources to enjoy her life with style. This autobiographical novel 32 Tai-Lok Lui, ‘City Magazine: A Story of Hong Kong Culture’ 號外:一個香港文化的故事 (in Chinese), in City Magazine 30: City 號外三十：城市, ed. Tai-Lok Lui (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 2007), p. 8. 33 Tai-Lok Lui, ‘Looking at How City Magazine People Look at People’ 看號外人看人 (in Chinese), in City Magazine 30: People 號外三十：人物, ed. Tai-Lok Lui (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 2007), p. 3. According to Lui, it was a time when Hong Kong society, economics, and culture were developing in various dimensions, and City Magazine interviewed many Hong Kongers who were able to set the new agenda for Hong Kong in that context.

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was written at a time when Hong Kong’s economy was developing swiftly, a juncture at which Hong Kong people were learning a new lifestyle. Later touted as the Hong Kong version of Sex and the City, The Woman in Kenzo was serialized until the mid-1980s. It was later collected in book form in the series entitled ‘City Notes’.34 Well educated and stylish but snobbish if not bitchy, Chin was also self-reflexive, which was quite typical of Peter Dunn’s writings, if not the general style of City Magazine. Being at the height of her career, the economically independent 28-year-old professional woman was still anxiously awaiting her boyfriend’s marriage proposal: When her besties find their happiness one after another and the people of Hong Kong worry over the handover of sovereignty to China from Britain, Mary feels fidgety: The peak of her career, the test of friendship, and the end of love make her struggle with discomfort. How can she settle down at the crossroad of a woman’s jealousy and social comparison?35

The author made good use of her character to offer penetrating satires of the life of the upper class in Hong Kong. On the one hand, famous chic labels, names, and venues, such as Gucci, Hermes, Dior, Saks 5th Avenue, Bloomingdale (these department stores were not widely known in Hong Kong at that time), American Club, Taipan Talk of the Town, and Disco Disco (trendy private clubs and discotheques in Hong Kong), were almost ubiquitous in the novel, which conjured up the social life of the author. At the very beginning, however, the author had confessed by frankly telling readers of City Magazine that if one wanted to draw others’ envious attention, it was necessary for one to know how to sling the bull. When I first read the serials in City Magazine in the early 1980s, ironically, I was reading it as an introductory guide to those labels, names, and venues – and I will bet that quite a number of readers were doing the same. City Magazine knew that some of its readers were too young and/or unknowing to fully detect the sarcasm between the lines. When John Sham was the chief editor, he used 34 Peter Dunn, The Woman in Kenzo 穿Kenzo的女人 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Publication [Holdings] Ltd, 1985). As noted by Dunn, ‘Recently a lot of friends told me the four female leads in Sex and the City were highly similar to mine in The Woman in Kenzo in terms of mindset, character and lifestyle […] I was totally amazed when I watched this drama, feeling that the script was actually mine!’ Peter Dunn, Days of Eating Hong Kong-Style Russian Meals 吃羅宋 餐的日子 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 2009), p. 303. 35 Cited from Chung Ying Theatre Company, ‘Musical The Woman in Kenzo Performance cum Post-performance Discussion: https://www.abo.gov.hk/en/eventDetail/593; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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the persona of King Lui to make various kinds of commentaries, including a vehement, albeit playful, critique of the pretentiousness of Mary Chin (December 1982, p. 14). Because Publication (Holdings) Ltd had closed down in 2008, a new version of the novel was published in 2010. On the back cover, Mary Chin wrote a new ‘blurb’ after 25 years: When I wrote The Woman in Kenzo, I made it clear that I was willing to spend my precious time to write this book, because I was not happy. I was not happy because I had a boyfriend who did not propose to me! […] I have everything, from family background, knowledge, wisdom, thought, manner, demeanour, taste, body shape to, most importantly, beauty. Why could those commonplace women get married one after another, but I am still […] Dear readers, as bystanders, you may understand me more than I understand myself. Having read this book, if you know what went wrong with me, please tell me. With your help, perhaps I can provide you with a perfect ending.36

This ‘confession’ was exactly the answer to her question: that Chin had adopted the habit of showing off, whether knowingly or unknowingly, was the major cause of her unhappiness. After those years, the piercing sarcasm of Peter Dunn sounded even harsher. The Woman in Kenzo remained well-known after almost three decades, as exemplified by the fact that it was adapted into a musical by a renowned creative team, including Leon Ko (composer and music arrangement), Chris Shum (lyricist), and Roy Szeto (director). For the first public read-through in 2013, the team made many preparations, but as they had high demands for the stage design and performance, it was not until 2019 that it became reality as a special event to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. Originally scheduled to premiere in November 2019, it was called off at a time of widespread social protests in Hong Kong. It finally premiered in October 2021.37 Shortly after The Woman in Kenzo appeared in City Magazine, Koon-Chung Chan published his short story ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’, with the pen name Ka-Chung Sung, in the August 1978 issue. Although it was just a short story, it had exerted a similar impact on the readers of the magazine, as it 36 Dunn, The Woman in Kenzo, back cover. 37 Peter Dunn, ‘The Woman in Kenzo: Repeat Performance After the Golden Decade’ 穿 Kenzo 的女人：走過黃金年代後的重演 (in Chinese), Stand News, 14 November 2019: https:// beta.thestandnews.com/culture/穿-kenzo-的女人-走過黃金年代後的重演; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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exhibited a distinctive style self-reflexive of bourgeois life. Like the author Koon-Chung Chan, the protagonist had returned to Hong Kong from Boston, and he enjoyed doing nothing but lying on the beach of Repulse Bay, as he thought he could not identify with the so-called ‘success’ of his bigger brothers and sisters in the capitalist world. It was indeed Sung’s personal, cultural, and social reaction to bourgeois life, but as Ye Si astutely noted, it was a kind of ‘incomplete bohemianism’: In the story Ka-Chung Sung does resist commodities logic, kinship network and achievement orientated life, and he thinks he would rather f ind happiness in carpe diem. He knows a lot of things, but they are practically useless. Interestingly, Sung talks about sun cream, skin tone, supermodels, skin cancer, car brands, swimwear brands, beach apparel, as well as how to repair a yacht. These seemed to be useless, but they were exactly what City Magazine, after evolving into a trendy city magazine later, turned into a selling point about chic and a survival kit – a kind of usefulness of the useless. This can be read as a short novel, and at the same time as a City Magazine living guide for its devotees to follow.38

The author also intentionally added a series of ‘useless’ information, from the numbers of floating platforms, observation stands, and rubbish bins to swimmers. I was too young to appreciate this when the story was first published in 1978, but when I started reading City Magazine as a living guide in the early 1980s, I was exactly one of those followers. I was just beginning to know about what the red Firebird and Mercedes 450SL in the story were, and I envied the protagonist’s lifestyle – hippie, Taoist, and Zen. I had heard about yoga and marijuana, but carcinogens and Gestalten sounded totally new, and the social activists Eldridge Cleaver and Tom Hayden did not ring a bell for me. The ambiguity adorned with famous brands that Ye Si mentioned above effectively fascinated a teenage reader like me. It was not until several years later, after I had a chance to read more literary works, that I understood the despair of Sung, who saw no exit in the capitalist world, which drove him to escape into hedonism. I remember I felt that he was like J. Alfred Prufrock on the beach, although the comparison was a bit far-reaching. If Peter Dunn’s The Woman in Kenzo was a modern urban social satire, ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’ was seen as the story of a sensitive individual caught in an indifferent world, not unlike many other characters in modern literature. 38 Ye Si, ‘Koon-chung Chan Writing Novel’ 陳冠中寫小說 (in Chinese), in Hong Kong Trilogy, Koon-chung Chan (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. xxvi–xxvii.

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If Koon-Chung Chan had only been interested in providing a living guide to the rising petite bourgeoisie in Hong Kong at that historical juncture, it would not have exerted a long-lasting impact across several generations. In 2004, a time when Firebirds and the 450SL had become antique cars, ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’ (later retitled ‘Repulse Bay’) was joined by two other short stories – ‘Nothing Happened’ (1999) and ‘Can Do Tea Restaurant’ (2003) – by Koon-Chung Chan, which became his Hong Kong Trilogy. In short, the story was not as ‘sentimental’ as it seemed, although Repulse Bay reminded readers of Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City and its wenyi (‘literary and artistic’) tone; as noted by Ziping Huang in his shrewd introduction to Hong Kong Trilogy, the ironic tone of adding carcinogens on top of tanning in the story and seeing Repulse Bay as crowded with ‘the impotence of aristocrats and foolishness of ordinary people’ made the story more than sentimental.39 Ye Si also underlined the main reason ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’ was something more than a living guide. According to him, the last paragraph of the story used another narrative voice to act as alienation from the protagonist, whose suicide (he killed himself by crashing his sport car) hinted that ‘if he had lived and come to Hong Kong, he would also have escaped into hedonism because he could not find any exit in society.’40 The meta-narrative of the story not only touched on the seriousness of existentialist suicide (i.e., how one asserts one’s freedom), but it also enriched the narrative of this short story, extending its impact beyond its time. Without ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’, Koon-Chung Chan’s Hong Kong Trilogy (straddling across four decades) would not have become such a complex and sophisticated imaginary of Hong Kong’s transformation before and after its reversion to China. That the trilogy was adapted into the play Sentimental K by Theatre Ronin in 2015 was an example of its importance. Unlike his main character in ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’, Koon-Chung Chan returned to Hong Kong and found something to do besides tanning on the beach. As well said by the blurb on the under cover of the eponymous book that collected this story and Chan’s other essays: At first Koon-Chung Chan was lying on the beach to kill time, reflecting on how to find an exit. In the end, he jumped from his dream of the sun 39 Ziping Huang 黃子平, ‘Introduction to Koon-chung Chan’s Hong Kong Trilogy’ 陳冠中 香港三部曲導讀 (in Chinese), Hong Kong Literature Quarterly 城市文藝 Vol. 16 (May 2007) pp. 63–64; for an informative account of wenyi, refer to Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, ‘Small History of Wenyi,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, eds. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chow (Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 225–249. 40 Ye Si, ‘Koon-chung Chan Writing Novel,’ p. xxvii.

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cream [the literal translation of the Chinese title of the story] into reality, putting himself among a group of new-era Hong Kong yuppies. 41

Evidently, Chan’s ‘compromise’ paid off in the end. Both City Magazine and the derivative pocket-size ‘City Notes’ series saw strong sales. Besides the above-mentioned works, there were also collections of works on different topics and styles originally published in City Magazine, including but not limited to Joseph Yau’s (Simon Ku) In Bed On Sundays, Paul Dunn’s Wellesley Revisited, and Flora Wong’s A Proud Woman. It was not an exaggeration to claim that ‘City Notes’ had triggered a new wave of Hong Kong urban literature. 42 Joseph Yau’s In Bed On Sundays and Paul Dunn’s Wellesley Revisited were outstanding works (the former was a penetrating self-reflection on social and workplace reality, and the latter a romantic love story at Harvard and Wellesley; both f it nicely with the cynical and elegant style of the magazine), but given the limited space in this chapter, all I can do here is to provide a very brief discussion of Flora Wong’s literary works, which I think added something more to the magazine in the 1980s. As one of the most important novelists in Hong Kong, Flora Wong was among the few Hong Kong writers, as incisively argued by Joseph Lau, whose works deserve the most careful explication. 43 Her first collaboration with City Magazine, the short story ‘She Is a Woman, I Am Also a Woman’, was published in its January 1986 issue. As recalled by Julian Lee, her friend and contributing writer at City Magazine, the ground-breaking lesbian short story ignited a bomb, and readers were discussing it as if it was actually autobiographical. 44 In the May 1986 issue of City Magazine, Flora Wong published another short story, ‘Love in a Prosperous Age’. If ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’ was unrelated to Love in a Fallen City, except for the Repulse Bay setting, ‘Love in a Prosperous Age’ was seen as an unofficial sequel to Eileen Chang’s masterpiece. A big fan of Eileen Chang, Wong paid her a tribute by 41 Koon-chung Chan, The Tanning of Hong Kong 太陽膏之夢 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Publication [Holdings] Ltd, 1986), back cover. 42 Cited from ‘Cultural Archaeology of the 1980s’ 八十年代的文化考古 (in Chinese), Books4You, 讀書好, 3 November 2016: https://beta.thestandnews.com/culture/八十年代的文化考古; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 43 Joseph S. M. Lau, Old Times Hong Kong 舊時香港 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 226. 44 See also Liang-ya Liu 劉亮雅, ‘Love and Desire in Hong Kong: Women and Hong Kong Subjectivity in Flora Wong’ s Portraits of Martyred Women’ 愛慾在香港：黃碧雲烈女圖中的 女性與香港主體 (in Chinese), in her Fin-De-Siecle Erotica: Novels, Gender, Culture, Aesthetics 情色世紀末：小說、性別、文化、美學(Taipei: Nine Songs, 2001), pp. 165–196.

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wearing a cheongsam and making a Super 8 film of Love in a Fallen City.45 Set in the mid-1980s, a time when Hong Kong was unsettled by its uncertain future after 1997, Wong’s short story was about the relationship between a postgraduate student and her advisor, who was a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and a Trotskyist, in the 1970s. Economic growth had brought seeming prosperity to the city, unlike the fallen one in Chang’s story about the calculated relationship between two selfish people. In the midst of prodigious prosperity, the professor, in his mid-40s, had forfeited his ideals. As such the title of the ‘love’ story was designed to be ironic. The author was apparently sceptical about love, the 1997 handover, and the prosperity of the 1980s. Without a fallen city that forced the protagonists to get married in Eileen Chang’s masterpiece, the 1980s in Hong Kong was so prosperous, at least on the face of it, that the plot and ending of Wong’s story could not but look more desolate and bleak, as David Der-wei Wang convincingly argued. 46 Interestingly, the characters and plot of the film Starry Is the Night (1988), directed by Ann Hui, who had also directed the film version of Love in a Fallen City, reminded me of ‘Love in a Prosperous Age’. The story of Starry Is the Night was more complex, in which Brigitte Lin had an affair with her married teacher, George Lam, and many years later she fell in love with his son, David Wu. That said, the relationship between Brigitte Lin and George Lam, and even their characters, were blatantly similar to those in Flora Wong’s short story. The film was also punctuated by social and political events across decades. The theme song of the film, sung by George Lam (melody and lyrics by Keith Chan), was probably inspired by Paul Dunn’s Wellesley Revisited, as the Chinese title of the song was exactly the same as the Chinese title of Dunn’s love story. The intertextual references here serve as a good example of the cross-media impact of City Magazine on Hong Kong pop cultures in the 1980s. Had it only been yuppie literature alone, ‘City Notes’ might not have made such a profound impact on Hong Kong literature and culture. Regarding belles-lettres, Flora Wong was arguably the most important contributor in the 1980s. Adding a literary imaginary to City Magazine, which was in line with its image as a chic trendsetter, her writings partly offset the commodity of hedonism which capitalism had transmitted to Hong Kong via the magazine. Equally, if not more, importantly, City Magazine had a sharp eye for young writers’ potential. As mentioned above, many young art 45 Julian Lee, ‘A Fallen Woman’ 墮落女子黃碧雲 (in Chinese), City Magazine, June 1987, p. 78. 46 David Der-wei Wang, Post-loyalist Writing 後遺民寫作 (in Chinese) (Taipei: Rye Field, 2007), p. 177.

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critics published there at the beginning of their career, and one of the most notable cases was Lin Xi, who later became the most influential lyricist in the history of Hong Kong Cantopop. Contributing writers Lai-Chi Fung and Simon Siu later became the chief editors of the magazine. Together with the spectacular visuals discussed in the previous section, these writers contributed a cosmopolitan lifestyle and taste to the magazine as well as Hong Kong in the 1980s.

The (Trans)Formation of Cosmopolitan Hybridity Before its full commercialization in the early 1980s, City Magazine had already turned to more consumer cultures after its initial five issues, in which cultural reviews played the major role. True to its name as a city magazine, it started aiming ‘to fuse multiple cultures’47 by introducing lifestyle and discussing celebrities while still touching on political and social issues. Shortly before the end of the 1980s, Koon-Chung Chan recapitulated in an editorial (August/September 1989, p. 12) that the magazine had brought the characteristics of Hong Kong culture to light, and the keywords were, among others, character, style, lifestyle, fashion, trend, design, and arts. To commemorate the 30th anniversary of City Magazine, Tai-lok Lui, a longtime contributor to the magazine, edited a three-volume set of exemplary materials in 2007. In the preface of the volume entitled ‘City’, he made it clear that ‘[t]he culture presented by City Magazine cover[ed] urban life, trends, fashion, consumption, home décor, cuisine, leisure, travel, sex, gender, living styles and concepts,’ which could be summarized by one common notion: lifestyle.48 Lui’s keywords invoked throughout the magazine were almost the same as those listed by Koon-Chung Chan. Allen Chun also shared similar views in his insightful study of the magazine, listing ‘fashion, consumption, vogue, sensuality, culture, middlebrow, style, perspective, objectivity, high class, taste, form, image and brand respectability’ as the most important components of what he called the ‘cosmopolitan hybridity’ of the magazine.49 Did these keywords add up to one central idea for City Magazine? That the magazine ‘positioned itself both in relation to cosmopolitan values and the emerging sensibilities of popular culture’, Chun also pointed out, ‘makes its perspective on “cosmopolitan hybridity” ambivalent and prone to differing 47 Sternadori and Sivek, ‘City and Regional Magazines,’ p. 315. 48 Lui, ‘City Magazine: A Story of Hong Kong Culture,’ p. 7. 49 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 113.

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interpretations’.50 In order to discuss this further, the section titles of City Magazine 30: City – Nostalgia Hong Kong, Code of Behaviour, Hong Kong, Inc., and Media: Life and Death – would be helpful. Insomuch as the name of this edited volume was self-evident, the collected materials were the embodied soul of this city magazine. First of all, nostalgia may sound suitable only for the edited volume that commemorated the 30th anniversary of the magazine. Interestingly, although the magazine had promoted trendy culture and thought since it was founded, nostalgia, in the sense of looking back at the past, had long been its common theme. This can be traced all the way back to the special feature of the 1960s in its 11th (July 1977) issue, which was recorded in the ‘Chronicle of Major Events’ included in the edited volume.51 In its November 1979 issue, nostalgia was a major theme for a second time (pp. 37–52). Thereafter, there were many nostalgic imaginaries, such as those reflected by essays selected by Tai-lok Lui in the ‘Nostalgia Hong Kong’ section. The magazine had looked back at the 1950s, the 1970s, and the 1980s, from teddy boys and sneakers to various venues in Hong Kong. Overall, this was aptly summarized by Peter Dunn’s essay ‘Trend of the 1980s: New Narcissism’ (October 1978, pp. 4–7). Given the limited scope here, I will just highlight the magazine’s emphasis on its anniversaries over the years. Subsequent to the 4th anniversary of the November 1980 issue (pp. 27–32), the magazine celebrated its 5th anniversary in its November 1981 issue, in which Joseph Yau wrote an introductory essay (p. 4), and a section (pp. 27–43) was dedicated to looking back. As it underwent a complete overhaul in April 1982, it featured a larger section entitled ‘On a Clear Day You Can See Forever’ (pp. 17–26) to commemorate the 6th anniversary in the November 1982 issue. Joseph Yau wrote an introductory essay (p. 17), and ‘Hong Kong’s Ten Aristocrats’ by Peter Dunn (pp. 21–23), among others, originally published in August 1977 (pp. 4–10), was reprinted in this issue. Another example was City Magazine’s 8th anniversary issue (December 1984, pp. 96–97), in which the magazine proudly recalled some cases of its ‘First Glimpse’: ‘Before you know them, we’ve caught their first glimpse.’ This was not simply nostalgic indeed; it was also an assertion of its precursory taste. As previously noted, there was a large-scale poll to choose the most popular cover among the 500 issues in 2018. In that issue the magazine had already exhibited the first 100 covers (pp. 113–116), excellent proof of the magazine’s pride in its covers. Not long after, the December 1985 issue 50 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 122. 51 Refer to ‘Chronicle of Major Events’ 大事記 (in Chinese), in City Magazine 30: City, p. 256.

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featured the section ‘Into the First Ten Years’ (pp. 111–150), and Rogerio Lam, an investor in City Magazine and a major shareholder of Commercial Television Hong Kong, took count of the changes during the past decade in ‘Things and People Change a Lot in the Space of 10 Years’ (p. 115), before the magazine celebrated its 10th anniversary the next year in the December 1986 issue, with which the first issue of The Tabloid was reprinted. Besides Executive Editor Simon Siu’s review of the development of the past decade in ‘Happy Ten Years’ (pp. 22–23), the reminiscence was more extensive, covering various topics such as pop songs by Lin Xi (pp. 32–33) and horse racing by renowned horse racing pundit Felix Cheung (who once shared the pen name Yan-Chi Ma with Chi-Keung Fung and Chak-Fun Lai) (pp. 44–47), who was among the forerunners who theorized horse racing betting tips in Hong Kong. Nostalgia in this sense was not simply narcissism though. Joseph Yau, for example, reflected on nostalgia from theoretical angles, arguing that by recollecting otherwise cluttered individual experiences, one can become part of history, and special meanings of the growing-up process can be highlighted.52 According to Joseph Yau, the nostalgia of City Magazine was meant to help readers imagine the future. Be that as it may, some of its components were also codes of behaviour. The trendy things from the 1950s to the 1980s, as mentioned above, invoked nostalgic imaginaries that also highlighted trends and tastes of different decades, some of which even transcended time, space, and culture. Tai-lok Lui’s selections in the ‘Code of Behaviour’ section underlined some important trends from dance and fashion to food, as well as the yuppie lifestyle developed by the magazine throughout the 1980s. As has been repeatedly shown above, the magazine had placed much emphasis on trendy cultures since its inception. In the late 1970s, it had already started constructing new codes of behaviour for the city, which was learning to cope with emerging cosmopolitan sensibilities. Fashion was indeed among the most important topics covered by the magazine in the late 1970s. In the April 1978 issue, King-Yi Chi (the pen name of Joseph Yau) had already begun discussing fashion trends (‘The Third Force of Fashion,’ pp. 28–33). As remembered by Koon-Chung Chan, famous photographer Yon Fan went to New York in 1978 for a report on Issey Miyake, which was conducted at Studio 54, the world’s most famous disco nightclub back then.53 Furthermore, Chan also recalled that after Frederick Leung became City 52 Joseph Yau, Growing up in Hong Kong 在香港長大 (in Chinese) (expanded version) (Hong Kong: Artiquette Press, 2017), p. 163. 53 Chan, Afterwards, p. 77.

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Magazine’s part-time fashion editor, his fashion sense enabled the magazine to become a pioneer in the field; in the November 1978 issue, Leung’s ‘Fashion of the Next Decade’ discussed Kenzo, Montana, Versace, Armani, and the major trends of fashion in the next decade, which proved to be foresighted (pp. 77–79). In the March 1979 issue, the first fashion editorial was launched, and thereafter City Magazine was at the forefront of fashion. In the meantime, the magazine gradually acquired the assistance of a team of talented artists, such as Yon Fan, William Chang, and Tina Liu, to shape its aesthetic attributes (JJ, ‘City Magazine Aesthetics,’ October 2001, p. 204). On top of this, King-Yi Chi took up the topic of urbanization at the beginning of the 1980s (July 1980, pp. 28–40), exploring hedonism and life as consumption, as well as consumer goods and/as new urban sensibilities. Although these were not the original intentions of the founders of the magazines, as Ka-chung Sung explained in the same issue, it was sad but true that as urbanites one could not but live with this, just like what he had said in the general preface of the ‘City Notes’ series: ‘Together let’s live out and write down all the contradictions of our time.’54 Simon Siu, the then executive editor, offered in the essay ‘The Young Ones’ a nuanced account of these sensibilities, which were categorized as theory, celebrities, and lifestyle sensibilities (December 1985, p. 118). This further elaborated the ‘code of behaviour’ of the City Magazine lifestyle, which was discussed above. To borrow Koon-Chung Chan’s terms ‘yuppie’ and, more importantly, ‘affluent, but not rich’: ‘Anything the rich can do, they [the affluent] can do occasionally,’ but the affluent ones might be able to use their taste to ‘beat the rich in their own games’ (May 1983, p. 8). As a result of the quickly developing economy in the early 1980s, there were more affluent people, but rich people, according to Chan, were still in the minority. City Magazine aimed to offer codes of behaviour for the affluent to beat the rich with their own distinctive taste, so to speak. The style of hybridity (‘mongrel’ or ‘Chinese-barbarian half-bred’), among others, was one of the important components of these codes of behaviour according to Chan.55 (The hybridization of language styles – standard Chinese, Cantonese, and English – in City Magazine was an example of the self-confidence of the magazine. It was self-aware, as a 54 Koon-chung Chan, ‘Manifesto (In Lieu of Preface)’ 宣言(代序) (in Chinese), General Preface of the series ‘City Notes’ 城市筆記 published by Hong Kong Publication (Holdings) Ltd. 55 Koon-chung Chan raised this in ‘Mongrel Style’ 半唐番風格 (in Chinese), City Magazine, July 1982, p. 12. His essays on related topics were collected in his Mongrel City Notes 半唐番城市筆 記 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore, 2000); the term ‘mongrel’ is borrowed from Koon-chung Chan, ‘Hong Kong Viscera,’ Postcolonial Studies 10:4 (December 2007), pp. 379–389.

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local mode of expression to communicate with readers, which was later escalated to become a concept known as ‘mongrel style’.56) ‘Hong Kong, Inc.’, the name of a short-lived section between 1987 and 1988, was seen as the transformation of investigative reporting – a major mission of The Tabloid. Koon-Chung Chan recalled that his journalism teacher James Shen at Boston University once told his students: ‘all reporting should be investigative’; he wanted to realize this but, regrettably, ‘the will was there, but not the strength/resources.’57 After the rebranding of The Tabloid into City Magazine and subsequent commercialization in 1982, the original intention remained unchanged, although the emphasis on this could not but be compromised. Nevertheless, City Magazine still covered social and cultural issues, and the future of Hong Kong after 1997 was one of the most timely topics at that particular historical juncture, although not all coverage on that was investigative. For example, the February 1983 issue featured a table predicting the change of names (such as streets) in Hong Kong after 1997 (pp. 17–18), which was a reflection on the anxiety of Hong Kong people that things would not be the same after the handover. In the midst of uncertainties surrounding the Sino-British negotiations, the December 1983 issue rolled out a ‘fin die siècle’ list (p. 10), and in a series of essays in a column entitled ‘Pompeii’, Koon-Chung Chan, among others, said ‘these will be the last days’ (p. 8), which showed that Hong Kong was in a time of crisis in the looming shadow of 1997. Besides the insightful treatments of this issue mentioned above, I would like to reiterate that the magazine was among the first, with its international vision, to imagine Hong Kong’s development in the light of China, or to borrow the title of an essay in the September 1986 issue: ‘New Chinese Inspirations’ (p. 15). From Chinese fashion trends and mainland actors and actresses to political issues related to the Sino-British negotiations, City Magazine shaped Hong Kong’s image as an international city as well as a window into China that had just opened its door to the world not too long prior to that time. The interview with Sir Sze-Yuen Chung in the June 1984 issue (pp. 9–10) explored the complex relationship between China, the UK, and Hong Kong shortly before the official signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in December of that year. In the August 1984 issue, Koon-Chung Chan’s ‘South China Caucasian Circle’ 56 Lui, ‘City Magazine: A Story of Hong Kong Culture,’ p. 6. It should also be noted that ‘[e]ven if the hybrid nature of their writing was a result of their ambidexterity in English and Chinese, one cannot say the same for a later generation of Hong Kongers who adopted linguistic heteroglossia as a routine mode of communication.’ Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 121. 57 Chan, Afterwards, p. 12,

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(p. 8), as evident in the title itself, saw Hong Kong as the child in the centre of the chalk circle in Bertolt Brecht’s masterpiece. In the June 1988 issue, Jacky Yip reflected on the rise of ‘Hongkongology’, citing Alvin Rabushka’s Hong Kong: A Study In Economic Freedom and Milton Friedman’s theory of the free market (June 1988, pp. 96–97). In a sense, this was further developed, with a different emphasis on culture, by Chan in his ‘Hong Kong as Method’ (January 2004, p. 328). Last but not least, shortly before the end of the 1980s, City Magazine commented on the June Fourth Incident in its feature of the month, ‘Democratic Movement in China, Witness of the Era’, in the June/ July 1989 issue (with a separate booklet included), with essays such as Joseph Yau’s ‘89 Spirit, Instant History’ (p. 54). In the subsequent issue, Chan made it clear in ‘Attitude and Style Manual’ that ‘Hong Kong people have written their own history and shaped a new consensus’ (p. 140). The section ‘Media: Life and Death’ dealt with popular media, and as discussed above, characters from popular media were mainstays of the magazine in terms of visuals and words. Back in its inaugural issue, it had already discussed the film Jumping Ash, which was later seen as a forerunner to the rise of the Hong Kong New Wave and that premiered earlier that year. In the June 1977 issue, the magazine featured a special section on Hong Kong television, and the July 1977 issue invited the renowned comedian Michael Hui to appear on the cover, the first time the magazine had used a Hong Kong actor as its cover model. In the June 1978 issue, television soap opera was thoroughly examined (pp. 22–26). As was briefly mentioned above, the magazine covered events related to new films. For example, the Brigitte Lin cover of the January 1981 issue was related to Love Massacre, and the George Lam one of the September 1982 issue to Boat People (a flashback on that f ilm at the Cannes International Film Festival was featured in the June 1983 issue; pp. 18–19). The January 1983 issue released a special feature on Tsui Hark’s 1983 ground-breaking wuxia blockbuster Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (pp. 9–17), and a still of Brigitte Lin in the film (p. 9) was so attractive and captivating that all readers were tempted to watch the f ilm. This was not just restricted to established stars. The cover girl of the October 1982 issue, new and rising star Patricia Ha, was one of the female leads of Patrick Tam’s 1982 New Wave classic Nomad, and both Ha and Cecilia Yip, the other female lead of Nomad, had appeared in ‘City Magazine’s Showcase’ more than once. Another example was Maygi Ng and Anthony Tang in the ‘First Glimpse’ section of the October 1984 issue (pp. 31–32), who were the male and female leads of the teenage love story A Certain Romance (1984), adapted from Isabel Nee’s novel and directed by Yon Fan. Furthermore, the male

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model Monte Chan featured in the May 1986 issue was another male lead of the film. As City Magazine pledged to discover ‘the best kept secret in town’, there were also other characters from various media besides the cover stars mentioned above that appeared on the cover of or in the magazine. Here are just some examples: veteran actresses Maggie Lee, Wan-Sze Wong, and Elaine Jin (on the covers of the July 1981, April 1983, and May 1985 issues, respectively); young actress Ann Bridgewater (on the cover of the May 1987 issue); disc jockeys ‘611’ (Sandy Lam’s stage name; ‘First Glimpse’ in the November 1982 issue, p. 22) and Susanne Ho (on the cover of the June 1985 issue); new singer Bowie Lam (on the cover of the October 1986 issue); and new songstresses Zeta Wong and Yolinda Yan (on the covers of the November 1986 and August 1987 issues, respectively). In brief, what Allen Chun called the ‘collusive relationship with the evolution of mass-mediated popular culture’58 was an indispensable part of the development of City Magazine in the 1980s. Actually, this should also cover the print media and comics, such as the essays collected by Tai-lok Lui in The Chinese Student Weekly and A Man Called Hero in City Magazine 30: City. Lui also noted that people – writers, interviewers, interviewees, etc. – were the most important properties of City Magazine.59 The interviews of various characters in City Magazine 30: People, such as horse racing pundit-cum-actor Bill Tung, soccer pundit Peter Hing-kwai Wong, economics professor Steven Cheung, director and producer Johnny Mak, and Isabel Nee and Flora Wong mentioned above, also reflected the diversity practiced by the magazine. In a nutshell, the diversity of media coverage generated creative synergies between the magazine and different media, which further enhanced its ‘paradigmatic textual representation of cosmopolitan and hybrid culture’.60

(Un)changed over the Years As Tai-lok Lui noted in ‘City Magazine: A Story about Hong Kong Culture’, the introduction to City Magazine 30: City in 1976, the year that the magazine was inaugurated was not the turning point of Hong Kong history.61 Being 58 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 119. 59 Lui, ‘Looking at How City Magazine People Look at People,’ p. 5. 60 Chun, Forget Chineseness, pp. 108–109; for his discussion on the emergent Hong Kong pop culture and the local-bred generation influenced by mass media, refer to pp. 115–118. 61 Lui, ‘City Magazine: A Story about Hong Kong Culture,’ p. 3.

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the first Hong Kong monthly that went beyond 500 issues, however, City Magazine must have been doing something right. As pointedly noted by the late veteran media writer Christopher Chiu, ‘If the 1970s were a decade of idealism, the 1980s would be that of realism or pragmatism.’62 Transformed into a magazine that targeted mainly the rising middle class, City Magazine captured the paradigm shift brought by a very important transformation of Hong Kong into a cosmopolitan city at that juncture. On the surface, it had similarities with high-culture magazines such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan, but at the same time it promoted an alternative, countercultural mind-set and fashioned its views on media, arts, thought, and lifestyles. With the benefit of hindsight, one can safely conclude that City Magazine experienced a paradigmatic shift from ‘cultural youth’ to ‘yuppie’, as its cultural critiques found more space to develop in pop culture and material life than in political and academic discourses.63 At the same time, there was something that had not changed. From the Tsan Yuk Hospital incident in the very first issue to the ‘Hong Kong Spirit’ theme of the 500th issue, the ‘city’ – the city of Hong Kong – was never absent. Over the years the city of Hong Kong has changed significantly, and the concept of ‘city’ is actually plural, fluid, and changing. City Magazine took an active part in the ‘city’, leading the definitions and interpretations of the concept.64 In the 1980s, City Magazine had several generations of editors and writers, including John Sham, Lai-Chi Fung, Simon Siu, Keith Kan, Charles Chau, and, of course, the continued influence of Koon-Chung Chan, Peter Dunn, and Joseph Yau. At various stages the magazine recruited new talent and the overall emphases and styles changed, albeit not drastically. However, the changes were not thoroughly presented in the three edited volumes of City Magazine 30. In his introduction to City Magazine 30: People, Tai-lok Lui maintained that in over the first thirty years, the fewest changes were in the distinctive styles of the interviews: humorous, incisive, and sharply contextualized.65 Even if that was the case, the volume City Magazine 30: City was not interested in changing either. As Ching-Kin Tang perceptively noted in his review of City Magazine 30, the edited volumes simply saw ‘thirty years’ as a kind of instantaneity without a sense of chronological record: ‘if we do not look at their years of publication, it is impossible to tell in which 62 Cited from ‘Cultural Archaeology of the 1980s.’ 63 Ian Pang 彭礪青, ‘On Koon-chung Chan’s Afterwards’ 讀陳冠中事後：本土文化誌 (in Chinese), 22 October 2007: https://arnoldii.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 64 For further details, refer to Tang, ‘A Brief History of City Magazine.’ 65 Lui, ‘City Magazine: A Story about Hong Kong Culture,’ p. 4.

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decades the essays were written […] Over thirty years, cultural contents had changed a lot, but as for aesthetic style there was no paradigmatic change.’66 While this was justified, it must be noted that the major goal of the editor, in my opinion, was to underscore that style, which had exerted profound influence on Hong Kong pop and chic in the 1980s and beyond. In the October 2005 issue, the essay ‘The 1980s in My, Your, and Their Eyes’ recorded the opinions of a group of former editors of City Magazine and cultural critics (including Lai-Chi Fung, Peter Yuen-chun Wong, Nico Tang, Kam-Moon Cheung, Yin-Shan Lo, Man-Tao Leung, Ka-Fai Ma, Lawrence Pun, Simon Lau, and Carmen Kwong) on Hong Kong in the 1980s (pp. 268–273). When they expressed their views towards the 1980s in general, keywords such as Hollywood East and Club Volvo (Fung), constitutional government (Ma), John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (Pun), and Green Peace, Dr. Martens, and Regent Hotel (Leung) crisply summed up their impressions of the decade as well as the emphases of City Magazine: lifestyle, social issues, media against the backdrop of a (false) show of peace and prosperity, and the subsequent rise of lifestyle. The aesthetic style may have remained intact, but Hong Kong society did change drastically, even within the 1980s. In most of the decade, City Magazine continued to promote (even more successfully) the inherent interests, tastes, and values of a locally bred generation of Hong Kong youth who at the same time were increasingly distanced from an older generation of diasporic residents on the one hand and those people associated primarily with a mutating colonial regime and other expatriate interests, on the other hand.67

This particular generation of Hong Kong youth had grown up by the late 1980s, and Hong Kong was no longer the same after its economy soared to new heights. The reason Peter Dunn decided to stop writing The Woman in Kenzo may shed some light on the transformation of City Magazine as well Hong Kong in the mid-1980s. Dunn said that he had started writing the serialized novel as a spontaneous reflection on reality when a group of Westernized, sort of middle-class people began to make good use of their edges, enjoying the achievements made possible by their parents: 66 Ching-Kin Tang, ‘City Magazine 30: Book of Three Lives of Hong Kong Culture’號外三十： 香港文化三世書 (in Chinese), Wen Wei Po 文匯報, 7 January 2008. 67 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 118.

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They did not mind showing off, wearing famous labels, riding on yachts, learning to water-ski, building up a so-called ‘middle class.’ However, after the mid-1980s, this class of people changed from pioneers to followers, and I began to feel that Hong Kong had gradually settled down; in other words, this group of people had already set the mode of lifestyle, and the next generation simply followed suit […] I had fewer and fewer contributions to make, and so I stopped.68

Although the main target readers of City Magazine were middle class or would-be middle class, it was not just meant for them; it was a symbol of ‘anti-formulism and individualism’, trying to ‘liberate urbanities from their life of tedious stereotype’.69 As a consequence of these changes, however, the magazine ‘became a full-fledged commercial enterprise, after its conscious editorial makeover to promote a haute couture cosmopolitan lifestyle’ in 1988.70 Commercialization, especially in its early stages, was not necessarily a bad thing. After evolving into a new format in the October 1988 issue, City Magazine further developed, and the mission of City Magazine was reconfigured in the July/August 1989 issue (p. 14), as maintained by Charles Chau’s ‘Written Before the City Magazine of the 1990s’: besides renewing its sense of city life and capturing the world’s latest trends, the magazine thought locally and acted globally. Regrettably, as rightly criticized in a reader’s feedback entitled ‘I Mourn the City Magazine in the Past’ in the subsequent issue (August/September 1989, p. 151), it was no longer the same as it went farther and farther away from culture – its style turned ‘hollow’ and staunch passion faded. Peter Yuen-shun Wong took the helm as chief editor in October 1989, preparing the magazine to face a new decade full of uncertainties. Having branched out to Taipei in December 1989 (the Taipei version advertised on the cover of this issue), the magazine also had new projects in the 1990s, such as the launching of its sister magazine, Mary Chin (the same Mary Chin as the author of The Woman in Kenzo), in September 1990. 68 Tai-Tung Yau 游大東, ‘City Magazine 40th Anniversary Issue: Interview with Peter Dunn’ 號外40周年紀念號專訪鄧小宇, 4 November 2017: https://medium.com/@yautaitung/賣文 時間-號外-40周年紀念號專訪鄧小宇-香港要-黃黃哋-才能繼續生存-完整版本-2e2197c1bbaa; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 69 Siu Nap 小衲, ‘City Magazine and Myth Maker’ 號外與神話製造商 (in Chinese), in Reading Hong Kong Popular Culture 1970–2000 閱讀香港普及文化, 1970-2000, ed. Chun-Hung Ng 吳俊 雄 and Charles Cheung 張志偉 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 349. 70 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 117; ‘that was combined with the advent of computerized typesetting and its embrace of digital technology as the staple of everyday life.’

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It was not just a magazine but a brand. Sadly, there have been even more radical changes in the new millennium: ‘the authority of city magazines as edited and fact‐checked guides for local consumers increasingly pales in comparison with user‐generated content’s claim of an alternative authority: the accumulated voices of real people.’71 If we want to plot a developmental trajectory for City Magazine, the shape would be quite similar to those of the three main mass media discussed in the previous chapters. Its golden age dawned after its upsizing in April 1982, and the influence of the magazine continued to grow in the 1980s, to such an extent that Koon-Chung Chan wrote an editorial in the August 1989 issue (p. 12), claiming that Hong Kong was without a brand, and the major trend of the magazine was to go into the world with Hong Kong. As the magazine had developed great momentum, it may be true that ‘despite the magazine’s explicit focus on cosmopolitan hybridity and its claim to represent a local generation of Hong Kong and Hong Kongers throughout its long history’, as argued by Allen Chun, ‘it was only in the mid-1990s, according to Lui, that the magazine had accomplished this vision in practice.’72 However, this looked bitterly ironic when juxtaposed with Koon-Chung Chan’s later work, ‘My Generation of Hong Kongers’, in which he made the confession that Hong Kong’s phenomenal success was no more than luck, sheer luck to have an opportunity to quickly develop in that historical juncture between the world and China.73 According to Chan, Hong Kong’s overemphasis on finance and real estate in the 1980s consisted of a trend and a misconception that interacted in a reciprocal manner. The city was therefore too complacent to be aware of the initially self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating boom-bust process – City Magazine was also a part of this – and inadequate recognition was given to the importance of its vibrant hybridized cultures. The later fall of Hong Kong culture marked a turning point, as both the trend and the misconception became unsustainable, and hence the premature death of the middle-class culture of Hong Kong.74 To sum up, one may argue that in the 1980s Hong Kong pop and chic had gathered enough momentum, but, as a result of the above-mentioned faulty logic noted by Koon-Chung Chan, both the trend and the misconception became unsustainable after the mid-1990s. 71 Sternadori and Sivek, ‘City and Regional Magazines,’ p. 318. 72 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 120. 73 Fan Tsang 曾凡, ‘Preface,’ City Magazine 30: Attitude and Style Manual 號外三十-內部傳閱 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 2007), p. 3. 74 Yiu-Wai Chu, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), p. 87.

Epilogue ‘We’ll Always Have Hong Kong’ Nothing was impossible in the 1980s, but at the same time many other future possibilities were buried.1

Abstract Although the examples discussed in the previous chapters have followed a similar rise-fall trajectory, this chapter does not intend to draw the conclusion that this applied to other forms of Hong Kong pop culture. Instead of a standard conclusion, it is being used to enunciate some more personal belongings (such as Seiko the soccer team). It informally wraps up previous discussions in relation to the statement raised at the beginning of this book: “We’ll always have Hong Kong.” By highlighting its pop and chic, this cultural memoir of the city will hopefully point toward the Hong Kong at least some Hong Kong people will always have. Keywords: synergies, trajectory, soccer, northbound imaginary, cultural memoir

The Golden Decade: Gone for Good? At the beginning of this book, I argued that it was necessary to articulate one’s personal belonging. Personally, I do not have anything fascinating to write about, but the city where I was born and grew up does. What I watched, listened to, and read, and where I (window) shopped and saw people dancing are very well worth recording. As previously mentioned, my recordings in this book were partially inspired by Leo Ou-fan Lee’s City 1 Emilie Choi 蔡倩怡, ‘The 1980s That Will Never Come Again’ 無法重來的80年代 (in Chinese), Ming Pao Weekly, Vol. 2505, 12 November 2016, p. 13.

Chu, Yiu-Wai: Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s. A Decade of Splendour. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463728669_EPI

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Between Worlds: My Hong Kong. I cannot agree more with Didi Kirsten Tatlow on what she said in her review of this book: ‘Anecdotes and vignettes pepper Lee’s book. Yet this is no elegiac history of a colony-that-was; rather, his gentle, personal musings read more like a declaration of love for a city full of contradictions.’2 Unlike Leo Lee’s stance of ‘the flâneur chronicling the life of a beloved city’, though, I looked back at the 1980s as a time when the economy as well as the pop culture of my Hong Kong flourished on an unprecedented scale. In a special feature on the 1980s published by Ming Pao Weekly in November 2016, the editor made the remark quoted in the epigraph, which perfectly summed up the gains and losses of the decade in which Hong Kong cultural industries had ‘the magical Midas Touch’.3 I have already described in this book how various kinds of Hong Kong pop and chic developed in the 1980s, and the synergies between mass media, fashion, discotheques, and magazines helped usher in a new conception of lifestyle that characterized the thriving cosmopolitan city during a time when the 1997 handover issue loomed over its people. In spite of the anxieties caused by the future of the city, the cultural industries were vibrant, the fashionable venues were trendsetting, and multimedia stardom was reaching new heights. The Summer 2022 edition of Being Hong Kong, a quarterly journal of local Hong Kong stories, featured a special issue on the 1980s, in which the editors made a very inspiring introduction. ‘A lot of people described the 1980s as the “golden age”,’ they said, and ‘deeply anxious about our uncertain future after 1997, we fully understood that a moment of glory would not last, but we were not willing to forfeit any opportunity and possibility.’4 That is to say, opportunities and possibilities were core elements underpinning and unleashed by the momentum of the decade. Unfortunately, as discussed in Chapter 6, Hong Kong was too complacent to be aware of the initially self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating boom-bust process of its overemphasis on finance and real estate in the 1980s, which consisted of a trend and a misconception that interacted in a reciprocal manner. When both the trend and the misconception became unsustainable, the problems related to the inadequate recognition of the importance of the city’s vibrant hybridized cultures surfaced. The success of the 1980s, at least in terms of pop and chic, was attributed to the momentum 2 Didi Kirsten Tatlow, ‘City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong,’ South China Morning Post, 11 May 2008. 3 Choi, ‘The 1980s That Will Never Come Again,’ p. 15 4 Cited from ‘From the Editors: Too Good to be True/Nothing to Envy,’ 編者的話 (in Chinese), Being Hong Kong就係香港15 (Summer 2022), p.6.

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and vitality of Hong Kong’s vibrant culture in a contingent social and historical context. This did not have anything to do with a special formula of success with which Hong Kong could stick in the 1990s and beyond. Nor was it owing to the special talents of that generation of Hong Kong people, as shrewdly claimed by Koon-Chung Chan.5 When I reread Leo Lee’s 2008 book in 2022, it became even all the more critical to find out what indeed is (or was) there, as the ‘disappearance’ is fundamentally different from what was proposed by Abbas in 1997, given the drastic changes Hong Kong has witnessed since its reversion to China, especially the past few years. Let me repeat what Leo Lee said in the conclusion of City Between Worlds: For me, the vitality of the future always depends on how we preserve and assimilate the past. Today, more and more people are becoming aware of this and are taking part in a movement to save a few remaining relics of Hong Kong past – an old street here, a clock tower or police station there. They may fail, of course, but in making the effort they help to keep alive a collective memory which, however fragile, will shape Hong Kong’s destiny. This book has been written in the same spirit.6

Readers of this book on an important decade of my beloved city, as noted in the Introduction, can pick and choose from its contents and read at random, and if they find some of the dishes served here to their taste, this book will have fulfilled its purpose. As the thoughts above are not meant to be coherently structured with an eye to theory building, I have chosen to use this epilogue – instead of a standard conclusion – to enunciate some more personal belongings. Given that the overarching theme of this little book is Hong Kong pop and chic, it was necessary to cover the mainstream media cultures – television, cinema, and pop music. I also included fashion, and discotheques, and a city magazine, which have been less examined in academia but are, importantly, related to pop and chic. Growing up in Hong Kong, I had opportunities to witness the rise and fall of these pop cultures. Due to my own limited scope, time and energy, however, I had to make choices in excluding some of my favourites, such as comics. I was also a big fan of horse racing and 5 Yiu-Wai Chu, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), p. 87; see also Koon-chung Chan, My Generation of Hong Kongers 我這一代香港人 (in Chinese), enlarged edition (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 3–25. 6 Lee, City between Worlds, p. 280.

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soccer – two of the most favourite pastimes of ordinary Hong Kong people in the 1980s. The slogan ‘Horse Racing and Dancing as Usual’ allowed me to discuss, albeit very briefly, horse racing in the Prologue. I had hoped to include a chapter on Hong Kong soccer. As an ardent soccer fan, I think Albert Camus was not exaggerating when he famously said: ‘After many years during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport and learned it in the RUA [Racing Universitaire Algerios].’7 But in view of the major theme of this book – pop and chic – I am afraid it would have been a bit off track to have done so. To pay special tribute to Hong Kong soccer, I decided to include a section on my favourite soccer team, Seiko, here to wrap up my discussion in this concluding epilogue. Regarding this, I am greatly indebted to Before I Forget (in Chinese) written by Pearl Chow. Having been an interpreter who participated in the Sino-British negotiations and preparatory work for Hong Kong’s reversion to China in 1997, she shared in that book her first-hand experiences with many important political characters ‘before she forgets’. While I was deeply impressed by her personal memoir of the history of Hong Kong in the late-transitional period, it was indeed a huge and pleasant surprise for me to know that she worked as a part-time reporter for the Hong Kong soccer magazine Soccer World. Because of this, Pearl Chow had the chance to know many Hong Kong soccer players and managers. When I read her personal account Before I Forget, my own childhood soccer memories flashed back to the time when I was a big soccer fan and an inveterate reader of magazines such as Soccer World and British Soccer. Not only did I realize that I had read many essays written by Pearl Chow, and actually I also had a chance to read Rey Chow (using the pen name ‘Thunder God’) long before I read her Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading Between West and East in 1991.8 ‘All encounters in life are reunions after long times apart,’ as the catchphrase from Kar-Wai Wong’s The Grandmaster (2013) goes. Enthused by the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’, to borrow the famous words of William Wordsworth, ‘from emotion recollected in tranquillity’,9 I record my own stories related to Hong Kong pop while I still

7 Cited from Tamir Bar-On, The World through Soccer: The Cultural Impact of a Global Sport (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, and Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), p. 108. 8 Pearl Chow周蓓, Before I Forget (in Chinese) 趁我仲記得 (Hong Kong: Red Publish, 2014), p. 199. 9 William Wordsworth, ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads,’ cited from The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth, ed. Stephen Gill (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 109.

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remember, including my soccer memory, which illustrate the trajectory of Hong Kong pop culture.

My ‘Seiko’: Not a Watch but a Soccer Team Besides my own personal preference for soccer, I do think the development of my favourite soccer team showed the trajectory of not only Hong Kong soccer in particular but also Hong Kong pop culture in general. A very brief account of Seiko is strikingly similar to the rise and fall of Hong Kong pop cultures. Seiko Sports Association was founded by Chong-Shan Wong (aka Keeree Kanjanapas), son of a wealthy businessman who owned Stelux Holdings based in both Thailand and Hong Kong, which was the importer of Seiko watches. The Wong family made an innovative decision in the late 1960s to use football to promote the Japanese watch brand, of which they were the authorized dealer in Hong Kong.10 Founding the Seiko Sports Association in 1970 proved to be perspicacious in terms of both a marketing strategy and a sport development. Seiko, albeit short-lived, was one of the few successful teams in the history of Hong Kong soccer. Owing probably to the influence of British colonial culture, Hong Kong was once hailed as the ‘Kingdom of Soccer’ in the Far East.11 Even with the quality of the local soccer league, which featured clubs representing numerous communities, private companies, districts, and even armed and civilian services, the performance of the Hong Kong national soccer team was not remarkable in the 1950s and 1960s. This was because during the Cold War years, given Hong Kong’s ambiguous status between two worlds, many outstanding Hong Kong players chose to represent the Republic of China at international matches.12 Although the performance of its representative team was lacklustre, Hong Kong soccer took a lead in professionalizing soccer in Asia. Due to the 10 For further details on the origin of the Seiko soccer team, refer to Yuen Cheung 張遠, Wai-Keung Lau 劉偉強, and Yat-Fung Mok 莫逸風, Champion Forever: Seiko Soccer 50 永恒班 霸：精工足球五十 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Fei Fan Book, 2020), p. 21. 11 Hsiang-lin Lo, Hong Kong and Western Culture (Honolulu: East West Center Press, 1964), p. 287. 12 For elaborated accounts related to this issue, refer to: Chun-Wing Lee, ‘Politics, Identity and Football during the Cold War: When Hong Kong Played the Republic of China in 1959,’ The International Journal of Sport and Society 1:4 (2010), pp. 59–70; Chun-Wing Lee, ‘Can Hong Kong Chinese Football Players Represent Their “Fatherland”? The Cold War, FIFA and the 1966 Asian Games,’ Soccer & Society 18:2 (2017), pp. 296–310; Chun-Wing Lee, ‘PRC v. Hong Kong: Politics and Identity from the Cold War Years to the Twenty-first Century,’ Soccer & Society 19:5 (2018), pp. 858–874.

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pressure applied by the Amateur Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Football Association was prompted to sanction professional football in the 1968–69 season, making Hong Kong the first location in Asia to legalize professional football.13 Similar to the case of horse racing, professionalization brought a new opportunity to Hong Kong soccer to build up momentum. Among the forerunners, Ian Petrie was possibly the one who made the most profound impact on the development of Hong Kong soccer in the 1970s. A FIFA-qualified referee, Petrie did not come to Hong Kong because of soccer. Working for the Tai Koo Shipyard in Hong Kong, he later founded the amateur soccer team the Rangers in 1958, named after the renowned soccer team of his Glaswegian origin. Taking advantage of the professionalization of Hong Kong soccer, he made a trailblazing effort to introduce Western professionals to Hong Kong, which was the first-ever endeavour in Asia. The first batch of three Scottish players – Derek Currie, Walter Gerrard, and Jackie Trainer – were handpicked by Petrie in his homeland, and they hit the ground in Hong Kong in September 1970.14 The soccer trio soon launched ‘a Scottish invasion’ in Hong Kong, helping the Rangers to win its first league title in the first division. In this sense, ‘hybridization’ was one of the key elements behind the remarkable development of Hong Kong soccer in this period. At the same time, Petrie not only paved the way for foreign professional players but also for Seiko to write a success story. The extraordinary leadership of Chong-Shan Wong and the generous investment of his family enabled Seiko to be promoted from the third to the first division in two years and won the league title in the first season of their venture in the top flight of Hong Kong soccer in the 1972–73 season. During its fourteen seasons in the top flight before it disbanded in 1986, Seiko set an amazing record, with nine championships, three 1st runner-up titles, and two fourth place finishes. The team’s phenomenal success was attributed to, on top of the owner’s investment, the recruitment of top talented soccer players, both locally and globally. Chong-Shan Wong recruited Currie and Gerrard in 1972–73, and then Trainer in 1973–74. On top of those foreign players, Seiko’s owner also spent big to attract local players, and the most important figure behind the instant success of Seiko was Kwok-Hung Wu, the legendary soccer player who was the idol of countless Hong Kong fans, 13 Chun-Wing Lee, ‘From Shamateruism to Pioneer of Asia’s Professional Football: The Introduction of Professional Football in Hong Kong,’ Soccer & Society 14:5 (2013), pp. 603–614. 14 Nazvi Careem, ‘When Hong Kong Football Made History – 50 Years since the First Western Pros Landed in Asia to Play for Rangers,’ South China Morning Post, 10 September 2020.

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including myself. It was reported that the young up-and-coming player, nicknamed ‘Big Head Boy’, was paid HK$40,000 a year, which was enough to purchase a decent apartment in Hong Kong back then.15 When I was still a primary school student, I was fortunate enough to have had a once-in-alifetime experience: to play with Kwok-Hung Wu in 1977. A Radio Television Hong Kong television programme entitled Youthful Adventures featured a section that provided opportunities for youths’ dreams to come true. In one episode, my primary school soccer team was arranged to play with Seiko. It was a ‘dream come true’ indeed for a twelve-year-old soccer fan. My jaw dropped when we visited Seiko’s dormitory in a luxurious building in Kowloon Tong, a prime residential district, and the fascinating skills of Kwok-Hung Wu and his teammates made me an enthralled supporter of the top team in the territory. Chong-Shan Wong stressed in an interview made during the 50th anniversary of Seiko that the secret of the team’s success was full dedication, from the players to the leader (himself). As a businessman who had his own family business, he devoted most of his time to his soccer team. In order to attract fans and to not let them down, he firmly believed that the players had to train hard to offer quality soccer.16 Towards this end, Seiko continued to improve its squad by attracting local players and bringing in high-standard, internationally-renowned foreign players. Among the foreign players from around the world, the Dutch players brought in by Seiko were the most remarkable. George Knobel, the coach of the Netherlands national football team from 1974 to 1976, had two spells as Seiko’s manager in 1981 and 1985.17 Seiko had many Dutch national players who had appeared at the World Cup. Rennie van der Kerkhof, Arie Haan, Theo de Jong, and Dick Nanninga, among others, were on the Netherland’s World Cup runner-up teams in 1974 and 1978. Nanninga even scored in the 1978 final match against Argentina, although the Netherlands lost to the host. Furthermore, Gerrie Mühren, alongside all-time soccer legend Johan Cruyff, won three consecutive European Cup titles with Ajax from 1970 to 1973. Evidently, players of this standard had effectively raised the bar of Hong Kong soccer. Quality was very important, 15 Cheung, Lau, and Mok, Champion Forever, p. 80. 16 Cheung, Lau, and Mok, Champion Forever, pp. 58–61. 17 For further details, refer to ‘Hong Kong: Birthplace of Professional Football in Asia,’ Asian Football Confederation, 30 January 2021: https://www.the-afc.com/news/afcsection/hongkong-birthplace-of-professional-football-in-asia; last accessed on 28 October 2022. ‘Knobel had a significant pedigree, having led the Netherlands to a third place finish at the European Championships in 1976, during which time he worked with many of the players who would take their country to the final of both the 1974 and 1978 FIFA World Cups.’

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but as the original intention of Seiko was marketing, it was also necessary to place due emphasis on branding. It was in that regard that their marketing strategy was closer to the pop and chic discussed in the previous chapters. Well begun is half done. The Scottish trio mentioned above was successful from the perspectives of performances as well as images. Thanks to Petrie’s shrewd packaging, Currie, Ward, and Trainer were nicknamed ‘Jesus’, ‘Buffalo’, and ‘Giraffe’ in view of their appearances, respectively, soon after they came to Hong Kong. I still vividly remember the afternoon when I first watched Derek Currie play for the Rangers: I thought – only five or six years old back then – he really was Jesus, or else he would not have been able to dribble past defenders at such an amazing speed. So, when they moved to Seiko, they brought with them their household fame, which fit nicely with the image of Seiko the soccer team. That said, one must not fail to mention the importance of the homegrown star ‘Big Head Boy’. Kwok-Hung Wu won more than forty trophies with Seiko during his fourteen-year tenure and was named ‘Footballer of the Year’ for four consecutive years between 1979 and 1982, widely celebrated as the ‘King of Soccer’ in Hong Kong. He was the icon of Seiko as well as Hong Kong soccer. Representing the Hong Kong soccer team between 1971 and 1986, he was part of a team that made the most remarkable achievements for Hong Kong soccer. Having captained the Hong Kong side for many years, he took part in the final against Singapore at the 1978 World Cup Qualifier in 1977 (although he played only a minor role owing to an injury), helping Hong Kong to advance to the Final Round by beating the host Singapore. In the unforgettable classic match against China on 19 May 1985 in Beijing, in which he played a leading role, Hong Kong ended the dream of China’s first World Cup attendance. Seiko’s strategy to promote the images of its players earned Wu a lot of chances to be covered by the local media like a star. During his Seiko years, he had many chances to play against world-class, legendary players, including, inter alia, Franz Beckenbauer (New York Cosmos, 1979), Johan Cruyff (Washington Diplomats, 1980), and Diego Maradona (Boca Juniors, 1982). In addition, he represented South China and Fire Services to play against FC Santos led by Pelé in 1972. Interestingly, two stars crossed paths in Sound of Bang Bang, a TVB programme for younger audiences sponsored by the local clothing-cum-entertainment brand Bang Bang, in which Kwok-Hung Wu was interviewed by Danny Chan in 1980.18 Another representative example of Wu crossing paths with the stars discussed in 18 The following link shows a clip of this television programme: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2cAHuXTlIXI; last accessed on 28 October 2022.

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this book was the final match of the Viceroy Cup (known as the F.A. Cup of Hong Kong) in 1984, at which he received the trophy from Brigitte Lin. It was very rare for a female superstar to be the guest of honour and award presenter at a soccer match back then. A photo of the ceremony became the cover of Seiko Sports ’82, the official magazine of the Seiko fan club. Besides Kwok-Hung Wu, Chi-Keung Wan was also a star player, perhaps even truer to the name. Rising to fame in South China in the 1970s, he was touted as the ‘No.1 Centre Forward in Asia’. When he joined Seiko in 1983, he had already appeared in films such as Heroic Cops (1981) and The Head Hunter (1982) (Yun-Fat Chow was the male lead in both). Together with Flora Cheong-Leen, renowned model and later fashion designer, Wan was also the cover model of the March 1979 issue of City Magazine, showing that he was seen by the trendy magazine as a fashionable icon among young Hong Kong fans. In short, soccer players could also be multimedia stars.19 In the January 1982 issue of City Magazine, Koon-Chung Chan made a very astute remark about the decade: the 1980s had not yet begun. Between 1975 and 1980, Hong Kong experienced a cycle of development in economy, culture, and society, and 1981 was still an embarrassing interim stage before the dawning of a new era.20 Chan’s claim that 1982 was the year when the 1980s actually began in Hong Kong was relevant in the context of Hong Kong soccer too. The fan club Seiko ’82 was founded that year. Although this was not the first fan club in the history of Hong Kong soccer (which might be South China’s Shaolin Temple Club – Shaolin Temple was the nickname of the soccer team South China), Seiko ’82 was undoubtedly the first to have a full set of strategies to promote the image of the club. When the fan club was founded, besides the production of souvenirs such as jerseys and windbreakers, Alan Tam, a Seiko fan too, was invited to write and sing the club’s anthem, ‘Seiko Sports ’82’ (melody by Alan Tam and lyrics by Andrew Lam). While South China reportedly had a club anthem (in Mandarin; melody by Yau-tai Hwang and lyrics by Bing-Lai Wong), it was not widely sung by its fans. The first unofficial anthem of South China fans was ‘Song of South China Fans’ sung by Albert Cheung (aka Big Al) (original melody: ‘Song of Triumph’; lyrics by anonymous), which was collected on a compilation album in 1977.21 The song of the official fan club, ‘Seiko Sports ‘82’, was included on 19 Cheung, Lau, and Mok, Champion Forever, p. 48. 20 Koon-chung Chan, ‘The 1980s Has Not Yet Begun’ 八十年代還未開始 (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 65 (January 1982), pp. 34–35; according to Chan, similarly, the 1960s actually began in 1963 and the 1970s in 1973. 21 For further details on the songs related to Hong Kong soccer, refer to the Association of Hong Kong Soccer History 香港足球史學會, ‘Hong Kong Soccer Songs’ 香港足球歌曲 (in

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Alan Tam’s album The Best of Alan Tam. Although Alan Tam still had to wait a bit to be crowned the King of Cantopop,22 that album contained some of his golden hits, such as ‘Rain and Sorrow’ and ‘Can’t Forget You’, showing that the club anthem had commercial value as Seiko had actually developed into a famous brand per se. The October 1983 issue of Seiko Sports ’82 was another prime example. On the cover was Cherie Chung held by the soccer king Pelé, who was making a commercial for Puma in Hong Kong. It was an all-win situation for the images of the brands – the soccer team, the watch, the sport label, and even the stars – and a rare synergy was created between Hong Kong cinema and soccer. Moreover, Seiko was among the first soccer teams in Hong Kong to wear jerseys sponsored by famous sport brands. At first, they were sponsored by the local brand DORS, and later the logo on their famous blue jerseys changed to Puma after Stelux Holdings (owned by Chong-Shan Wong’s family) became the official dealer of the German label in Hong Kong in 1981.23 Hong Kong soccer fans only saw famous soccer labels, such as Adidas and Puma, on the jerseys of foreign teams until Seiko brought the latter to Hong Kong soccer grounds. All in all, the emphasis of Chong-Shan Wong on full dedication and quality soccer was effectively supplemented by the ingenious marketing strategies of the club, turning professional soccer into a creative industry, so to speak. Seiko greatly enhanced the image of soccer clubs in Hong Kong. Its trajectory from the 1970s to the 1980s might even be said to be similar to that of Hong Kong cinema and Cantopop. It was unfortunate that an unexpected change in Hong Kong soccer quietly took place in the mid1980s. The exceptional achievement of beating China brought a paradigm shift to Hong Kong soccer. According to Ka-Ming Kwok, the head coach of the heroic Hong Kong team that made history in Beijing: ‘Because of the success of the 1985 team, the league decided there were already too many foreign players and they cut them from seven down to six and five and so on.’24 This sounded absurd to many ears though: instead of ‘because of’ it should have been ‘despite’. Actually, some local teams were not happy Chinese), Stand News, 13 October 2015: https://beta.thestandnews.com/sport/香港足球歌曲史; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 22 Yiu-Wai Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), pp. 77–78. 23 Kai-Wing Chow 周佳榮, The History of the 90-Year Development of the Hong Kong Chiu Chow Chamber of Commerce 香港潮州商會九十年發展史 (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Chunghwa, 2012), p. 44; see also Cheung, Lau, and Mok, Champion Forever, p. 59; for some examples of Seiko x Puma advertisements, refer to Cheung, Lau, and Mok, Champion Forever, pp. 48–53. 24 Cited from ‘Hong Kong: Birthplace of Professional Football in Asia.’

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that Hong Kong soccer was dominated by a few teams who could afford spending big on foreign players, and so it was proposed to cut the quota of foreign players in the 1985–86 season. Enraged by the Football Association’s undemocratic decision to launch a league of all-local players in the 1986–87 season, Bulova, Seiko’s major competitor led by Chong-Po Wong (the big brother of Chong-Shan Wong), withdrew immediately before the 1985–86 season. Seiko stayed on just one more year and pulled out in 1986. Kwok-Hung Wu, who was synonymous with Seiko, also hung up his boots in 1986. From my perspective, all these events marked the beginning of the end of Hong Kong soccer. It was indeed not wrong to provide more chances to local players, but without adequate supplementary policies and resources (such as training and development), there were not sufficient good players to support the first-division league. The lack of enough high-quality players chased away fans, and the waning of hybridity also made the league less attractive. The total number of attendees at Hong Kong first-division soccer matches dropped from ~250,000 to ~60,000 in the 1986–87 season, the first season after Seiko disbanded.25 Despite several successful teams such as South China, Eastern, and, more recently, Kitchee, Hong Kong soccer never got back to its high level – in terms of popularity and, in my opinion, quality – in the early to mid-1980s. Sports have an intimate and complex relationship with identity. I have never owned a Seiko watch, but after all these years I am still a fan of Seiko the soccer team. ‘Football is a theatre of identity – family, tribe, city, nation,’ as pointedly noted by Simon Critchley, and ‘it is the presentation of identity in its ever-twisting, complicated, collapsing and doubled-over forms.’26 It was believed, for example, that the match between Hong Kong and North Korea was an important turning point in the formation of Hong Kong identity. In this decisive qualifier for the 1976 Asian Cup in which the two teams drew at 3-3 after extra time (by the way, Kwok-Hung Wu netted a brace), Hong Kong lost out in an unforgettable penalty shootout that ended 10-11. As discussed above, although the first-division Hong Kong soccer league was quite prevalent back then, the Hong Kong team was not, as many outstanding 25 Cheung, Lau, and Mok, Champion Forever, p. 25. 26 Simon Critchley, What We Think About When We Think About Football (London: Profile Books, 2017), p. 61. For informative accounts of the relationship between soccer and identity, refer to Raanan Rein, Fútbol, Jews, and the Making of Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015); Mariann Vaczi, Soccer, Culture and Society in Spain (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2015); Fan Hong and Zhouxiang Lu, eds., Sport and Nationalism in Asia: Power, Politics and Identity (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2015); and Richard Giulianotti and John Williams, eds., Game without Frontiers: Football, Identity and Modernity (Aldershot: Arena, 1994).

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players chose to represent the Republic of China until the early 1970s. The ‘local’ Hong Kong team gradually gained momentum in the 1970s, and in that year’s Asian Cup qualifier, a collective identity was constructed among Hong Kong fans at long last, as Tai-lok Lui convincingly argued.27 In the age of global media, this continued to be the case as there were deep-seated changes in the sport as a business. ‘Football ha[d] become one of the biggest money-spinners in the sports and entertainment industry’ in the age of neoliberalism, and it had developed into a business in which ‘the relationship between football clubs and their supporters [was] increasingly defined in terms of producer and consumer.’28 Nevertheless, while countless people around the world were still fanatic about their favourite teams, Seiko and Hong Kong fans did not have a chance to witness how soccer would become one of the biggest money-spinners. Seiko made vital contributions to the popularization and commercialization of the sport – arguably the most widely watched and played game in Hong Kong just like in many other places in the world – but its withdrawal in 1986 made it too early for the most revered team in the 1970s and 1980s to behold the dawning of a new era of global soccer. ‘One step ahead of the rest’, the motto of Seiko’s founder Kintaro Hattori, sounds pointedly ironic if placed in the context of the trajectory of Seiko the soccer team. With the benefit of hindsight, it is safe to conclude that Seiko was really one step ahead of the decline of Hong Kong soccer, which was, sadly, in turn one step ahead of the decline of Hong Kong pop culture.

Bring Back That Loving Feeling ‘Popular culture in the United States in the 1980s – as reflected in film, television, music, technology, and art – serve[d] to illustrate the general feeling of American citizens,’ as argued by Thomas Harrison, ‘during this decade that the sky was the limit, and the only thing better than “big” was “bigger”.’29 This description can be aptly applied to Hong Kong. Without a market as sizeable as the United States, it was not possible for Hong Kong to imagine this, until the swift development of the capitalist economy of the city met the open-door policy of Mainland China, where rampant 27 Tai-Lok Lui 呂大樂, The 1970s We Seem to Know 那似曾相識的七十年代 (in Chinese), revised and enlarged edition (Hong Kong: Chunghwa, 2020), pp. 28–29. 28 Peter Kennedy and David Kennedy, Football in Neo-Liberal Times: A Marxist Perspective on the European Football Industry (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 7. 29 Thomas Harrison, Pop Goes the Decade: The Eighties (Santa Barbara and Denver: Greenwood, 2017), blurb.

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global capitalism saw enormous market potential. At the same time, the Communist country that had just opened its doors to the capitalist world had to understand the world by projecting its desire through the Hong Kong imaginary, as perceptively noted by Yunlong Zhou in his ‘Desiring Hong Kong’.30 After the open door policy, according to Zhou, the mainland started to have contact with different kinds of pop cultures that they had long missed, ‘from modernist literature, pop music, love and kung fu movies and television programmes, avant-garde fashion […] and in the midst of all these it was Hong Kong entertainment culture that reshaped the mainland everyday life.’31 Back in the 1980s, mainland youngsters would go to ‘video parlours’ to view pirated Hong Kong films, and Hong Kong stars such as Yun-fat Chow, Andy Lau, Alex Man, Jackie Chan, and Stephen Chow became their idols. Subsequently, Hong Kong corporations swarmed north when global capitalism formally entered Mainland China in the 1990s, with their eye to its enormous market potential. In that particular context, the styles of the Four Heavenly Kings, among others, dominated several generations of mainland lifestyles. In the new millennium, however, Hong Kong pop idols have been taken over by mainland ‘little fresh meat’ and Korean ‘oppa’.32 Against this backdrop, Hong Kong pop culture in the 1980s had special meaning not only for Hong Kong but also China Studies as Hong Kong pop culture was the desire of post-Mao China. I hope that the cases discussed in this book have recorded not only my personal belonging but also some standout individuals and events who/which made various impacts on the trendsetting role of Hong Kong pop culture, ‘with emphasis on the figures who intentionally used pop culture as an avenue for change as well as the influences from the 1980s that are still felt today’.33 The early 1980s was a time when Hong Kong saw the swift rise of a young middle class. In addition, ‘[a]s China became more open to the outside world in the late 1970s and early 1980s, visits to the PRC showed Hong Kong people how different Hong Kong was from the mainland.’34 In this special context, City Magazine ‘actively embraced and inevitably became an integral part of that pop culture emerging from this new entertainment media and film 30 Yunlong Zhou周雲龍, ‘Desiring Hong Kong’ 慾望香港 (in Chinese), in Hong Kong Keywords; Imagining a New Future 香港關鍵詞：想像新未來 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2018), pp. 89–101. 31 Zhou, ‘Desiring Hong Kong,’ pp. 92–93. 32 Zhou, ‘Desiring Hong Kong,’ pp. 94–95, 99–100. 33 Harrison, Pop Goes the Decade, blurb. 34 John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), p. 170

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industry, which cultivated a distinctive Hong Kong style or ethos of its own’.35 Most importantly, ‘Hong Kong society witnessed the recognition of this lifestyle by its people.’36 In 2005, when a group of cultural critics was invited by City Magazine to look back at the three previous decades, Simon Lau said that nostalgia was useless, and Man-Tao Leung warned that using remembrances of the good old days to ‘revitalize’ Hong Kong showed that the city was having a big problem.37 Leung was right to claim that at that juncture Mainland China was like Hong Kong in the 1980s (no political freedom but many opportunities in other aspects), but one should remember that nostalgia does not necessarily point to an idealized imagined past. Joseph Yau, in his collection of essays entitled Growing Up in Hong Kong, rightly noted that the nostalgia he – and the magazine – aspired to was not simply nostalgia, but a kind of nostalgia for the future.38 Koon-Chung Chan’s Afterwards: A Chronicle of Hong Kong Culture, a collection of essays that reminisced about the development of Hong Kong culture, can be interpreted from a similar angle. In his review of that book, Chi-Tak Chan made a very important point about Chan’s recollection of Hong Kong from a cultural perspective: The author was actually not being nostalgic [… but] stressing the different levels of cultural foundations laid in Hong Kong […] Although what was recorded had become anecdotes, but they can let us know the present cultural conditions could be different. There can be a whole lot of possibilities.39

Looking back, Koon-Chung Chan seemed to be hoping to uncover different possibilities of imagining the future development of Hong Kong. At the very beginning of the 1980s, Koon-Chung Chan said in City Magazine that it was a decade of countdown (to 1997) for Hong Kong. 40 This was 35 Allen Chun, Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017), p. 118. 36 Tai-Lok Lui, ‘City Magazine: A Story of Hong Kong Culture’ 號外:一個香港文化的故事 (in Chinese), in Tai-Lok Lui, ed., City Magazine 30: City (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 2007), p. 7. 37 Cited from ‘The 1980s in My, Your, and Their Eyes’ 我看你看他看八十年代 (in Chinese), City Magazine, Vol. 349 (October 2005), p. 271. 38 Joseph Yau 丘世文, Growing up in Hong Kong 在香港長大 (in Chinese) (expanded version) (Hong Kong: Artiquette Press, 2017), p. 467; for further details on his views of nostalgia, refer to the section on nostalgia, pp. 26–164. 39 Chi-Tak Chan, ‘Koon-chung Chan: Reminiscence of the Golden Era of Hong Kong Culture’ 陳冠中：追憶香港文化黃金年代 (in Chinese), Southern Metropolis Weekly 南都周刊, July 2007: https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-07-31/095213563163.shtml; last accessed on 28 October 2022. 40 Koon-chung Chan, ‘Hong Kong, 1980’ 香港，一九八○ (in Chinese), City Magazine, January 1980, p. 4.

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true in the sense that ‘the countdown’ was best thought of as having played the role of catalyst to activate the development of Hong Kong’s economy and culture. I have been trying to argue that the 1980s momentum continued into the 1990s, but it should also be noted that it had already started to fade in the early 1990s. Various problems lurked beneath the glamorous surface of the decade. As the popular medium to build up momentum in the mid-1970s, television’s renewed sensibilities were transitory, and the mainstreaming effect on the television industry posed by the pressures of commercialism resulted in ‘stereotypes, proven formulas, and dominant ideologies’.41 In the Hong Kong film industry, history repeated itself. Not unlike the late 1960s, the industry was gradually corrupted by more and more shoddy, crude productions aimed at a fast profit. Worse yet, as Koon-Chung Chan – who was also a veteran film producer – mentioned, the intrusion on the film industry by triad gangs with an eye to quick and easy money was so serious in the late 1980s that it made him reluctant to produce films any more.42 The glory of Cantopop was extended by the Four Heavenly Kings in the 1990s, but, as I have argued elsewhere, the 1990s was the best of times as well as the worst of times: while the Kings reached new heights in their career, the songs became all the more standardized. The industry failed to diversify its products, making it unable to face the later rise of Mandapop. 43 Films, pop songs, magazines, fashion brands, and even discotheques were lured by the enormous potential of the mainland market, gradually shifting their emphasis to the north in the 1990s. ‘It was early spring 1993. I was in Beijing, marvelling more and more at the many signs of Hong Kong’s importance to the local pop culture,’ as renowned Chinese American writer and media critic Jianying Zha noted in her China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture. Zha also briefly mentioned her personal experience with the influence of Hong Kong media in the early 1990s: ‘Sometimes it makes you feel Hong Kong is starting to buy up mainland culture wholesale.’44 One of the examples from Hong Kong media raised by her was Koon-Chung Chan, who worked for CIM, a major Hong Kong investment company, at that time. ‘Both economically and culturally, China looks similar to the Hong Kong of the seventies,’ Koon-Chung Chan believed, 41 Eric Kit-wai Ma, Culture, Politics and Television in Hong Kong (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 40–41. 42 Cited from ‘Koon-chung Chan’s Oral History Transcript’ 陳冠中口述歷史文字稿 (in Chinese), (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Chronicles Institute, 2020), pp. 20–21. 43 Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop, pp. 105–107. 44 Jianying Zha, China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture (New York: The New Press, 1995), p. 170.

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at least up to that point, ‘so I can see clearly where the market is heading, where China is going to end up.’45 At one point, Hong Kong culture was thought to be able to change Mainland China as a ‘northbound imaginary’: Hong Kong’s cosmopolitanism justified its economic and cultural expansion across the border in China. 46 However, ‘history has since proved that it was not Hong Kong culture influencing China but, rather, the other way round.’47 In the eyes of Jianying Zha, Koon-Chung Chan, and his friends at City Magazine (Haowai) – ‘well-educated, sophisticated, youngish individuals of generally liberal sympathies, with varying degrees of bohemian tendencies and aesthetic eccentricities’ – represented a lifestyle and the tacitly understood aesthetic preferences of Hong Kong: ‘They wore fine clothes, but were contemptuous of custom-made tastes. None of them was against being rich, though style and originality were their forte. They had an epicurean attitude, a cool with rumpled edges, like their preferred fashion.’48 When the friends of Haowai and their peers and followers crossed the border, it was a completely different story. To quote from Zha again: Hong Kong was getting rich fast, and a younger generation was coming of age with more and more pride in being Hong Kong and keeping the poor and backward mainland China at arm’s length. Meanwhile, the pragmatic local mindset, deeply entrenched to begin with, was finding new expression in the intensifying commercialism. ‘Western Marxists thought they had won the battle with radical Maoists,’ Chan would say years later, ‘but they didn’t quite grasp that Hong Kong was already on the threshold of the post-ideological era. Late capitalism is setting in.’49

The story of Hong Kong pop in the 1990s needs to be told in another book, preferably by other authors who have different personal belongings about that decade. 45 Zha, China Pop, p. 171. 46 Yiu-Wai Chu, Main Melody Films: Hong Kong Directors in Mainland China (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming); see also the Northbound Imaginary Group 北進想 像小組, ‘Northbound Imagination: Re-positioning Hong Kong Postcolonial Discourse’ 北進想 像：香港後殖民論述再定位 (in Chinese), in Cultural Imaginary and Ideology: Critical Essays on Contemporary Hong Kong Cultural Politics 文化想像與意識形態: 當代香港文化政治論評 (in Chinese), ed. Stephen Ching-kiu Chan 陳清僑 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 3–10. 47 Yiu-Wai Chu, Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018), p. 133. 48 Zha, China Pop, p. 175. 49 Zha, China Pop, p. 175.

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The 1980s have long gone, and gone with that decade the golden era of Hong Kong pop and chic. It may be gone for good, but what Peter Dunn reiterated in an interview for the 40th anniversary of City Magazine is worth citing here: Hong Kong is a cosmopolitan city that should not have any burden to remain so-called ‘first-tier’ city. To be second or third tier – it is no big deal. There are a lot of second, third and fourth tier cities in the world. Never mind if we will be taken over by Shanghai and Beijing. Let them fare well. We have to retain the ‘charm’ of Hong Kong.50

Let me end by going back to where I began. Culturally speaking, the 1980s was the Hong Kong I will always have. That said, as I have repeatedly argued, ‘the 1980s’ of the cases I discussed in the previous chapters did not begin in 1980, nor did they end in 1989. The beginnings and ends of their 1980s were different, so to speak. Although the examples I chose might have followed a similar rise-fall trajectory, I have no intention whatsoever of drawing the conclusion that this applied to other forms of Hong Kong pop culture. In any case, this book is nothing more than my personal cultural memoir of Hong Kong in the 1980s. What I wanted to highlight is not the cultural legacy but the momentum of this glamorous decade before its decline. To cut my long story short, ‘the dramatic rise of Hong Kong’s peculiar brand of indigenous popular culture’, which in the 1980s ‘ha[d] achieved hegemony also in sound broadcasting, movies, popular music and the printed media’, contributed ominously to a unified cultural identity of Hong Kong people.51 I therefore totally agree with Allen Chun on this point: ‘To say that the 1980s spawned the advent of a unique Hong Kong culture and an intrinsically diverse way of life there is an understatement.’52 In terms of an emergent lifestyle of pop and chic, to say the least, it was a decade that defined (my) Hong Kong.

50 Tai-Tung Yau, ‘City Magazine 40th Anniversary Issue: Interview with Peter Dunn.’ 51 Kai-Cheung Chan and Po-King Choi, ‘Communications and the Media,’ in The Other Hong Kong Report, eds. T. L. Tsim and Bernard H. K. Luk (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1989), p. 294. 52 Chun, Forget Chineseness, p. 103.



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Glossary A Better Tomorrow 英雄本色 A Better Tomorrow II 英雄本色II A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon 英雄本色3：夕陽之歌 A Certain Romance 少女日記 A Chinese Ghost Story 倩女幽魂 A City of Sadness 悲情城市 A Family Affair 全家福 A Few Minutes Date With Danny Chan 與你幾 分鐘的約會 ‘A Few Minutes Date’ 幾分鐘的約會 ‘A Love Tale between Laughter and Tears’ (aka ‘A Fatal Irony’) 啼笑姻緣 A Man Called Hero 中華英雄 A New Page 新的一頁 A Proud Woman 揚眉女子 A Turbulent Era 風雲時代 Aces Go Places 最佳拍擋 Aces Go Places 2 最佳拍檔大顯神通 Aces Go Places V新最佳拍檔 Afterwards: A Chronicle of Hong Kong Culture 事後：本土文化誌 Agency 24 甜甜廿四味 Akira, Inaba 因幡晃 All About Ah Long 阿郎的故事 All Because of You: Summer Best Collections 全 賴有你夏日精選 ‘All Star Challenge’ 星光熠熠勁爭輝 All the Wrong Clues 鬼馬智多星 All The Wrong Spies 我愛夜來香 Always Good Film 永佳影業 An Autumn’s Tale 秋天的童話 ‘An Encounter ’偶遇 ‘An Extra in Life’ 人生小配角 Angel in Crisis 天使危機 Angels and Devils 北斗雙雄 ‘Angels on the Road’ 馬路天使 Anita 梅艷芳 ‘Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale’ 酒幹倘賣無 Armour of God 龍兄虎弟 As Tears Go By 旺角卡門 ‘Astray’ 歧途 Au Revoir, Mon Amour 何日君再來 Au, Tony 區丁平 ‘Back to You’ 回到你身邊

‘Bad Girl’ 壞女孩 Baffle Me 迷惑我 Bang Bang Film Productions 繽繽影業 ‘Be Lofty Step by Step’ 步步高 Before I Forget 趁我仲記得 Behind the Yellow Line 緣份 Being Hong Kong 就係香港 ‘Below the Lion Rock’ 獅子山下 Beyond the Rose Garden 再見十九歲 Beware of Pickpockets 歡樂神仙窩 Bewitched 蠱 Black and White Records 黑白唱片 Blackbird 黑鳥 Bo Ho Films 寶禾影業 Boat People 投奔怒海 ‘Breaking the Iceberg’ 將冰山劈開 Breakthrough突破 Bridgewater, Ann 柏安妮 British Soccer 英國足球畫册 Bullet in the Head 喋血街頭 ‘Can Do Tea Restaurant’ 金都茶餐廳 Can’t Forget You 忘不了您 Capital Artists 華星唱片 Capital Artists Laser Top Picks Vol. 1 華星雷射 首選猛碟第一輯 ‘Car Lost in the Night’ 今夜星光燦爛 Carpio, Teresa 杜麗莎 Carry On Pickpocket 提防小手 Casino Raiders 至尊無上 Castro, Louis 賈思樂 Center Stage 阮玲玉 Century Motion Picture 世紀影業 Challenge of the Gamesters 千王鬥千霸 Chan, Agnes 陳美齡 Chan, Alan 陳幼堅 Chan, Benny 陳木勝 Chan, Charine 陳嘉玲 Chan, Chelsea 陳秋霞 Chan, Chi-Tak 陳智德 Chan, Connie 陳寶珠 Chan, Danny 陳百強 Chan, Eason 陳奕迅 Chan, Eddie 艾迪 Chan, Eliza 陳潔靈 Chan, Frankie 陳勳奇

286  Chan, Jackie 成龍 Chan, Katie 陳復生 Chan, Keith 陳少琪 Chan, Koon-Chung 陳冠中 Chan, Monte 陳俊國 Chan, Ocean 陳海琪 Chan, Patricia 陳美玲 Chan, Philip 陳欣健 Chan, Priscilla 陳慧嫻 Chan, Sammul 陳鍵鋒 Chan, Siu-Bo 陳少寶 Chan, Wai-Ying 陳維英 Chan, William 陳偉霆 Chang, Cheh 張徹 Chang, Eileen 張愛玲 Chang, Sylvia 張艾嘉 Chang, William 張叔平 Chasing Girls 追女仔 Chau, Charles 周肅磐 Chen, Joan 陳冲 Chen Kaige 陳凱歌 Chen, Serena 陳嘉瑛 Cheng, Adam 鄭少秋 Cheng, Derek 鄭棣池 Cheng, Kent鄭則仕 Cheng, Kok-Kong 鄭國江 Cheng, Lawrence 鄭丹瑞 Cheng, Mark 鄭浩南 Cheng, Olivia 鄭文雅 Cheng, Sammi 鄭秀文 Cheong-Leen, Flora 張天愛 Cherry Blossoms 郁達夫傳奇 Cheung, Albert (aka Big Al) 張武孝 Cheung, Alex 章國明 Cheung, Alfred 張堅庭 Cheung, Felix 張福元 Cheung, Jacky 張學友 Cheung, Kam-Moon 張錦滿 Cheung, Leslie 張國榮 Cheung, Lulu 張路路 Cheung, Mabel 張婉婷 Cheung, Maggie 張曼玉 Cheung, Ming-men 張明敏 Cheung, Steven 張五常 Cheung, Suk-Ping 章叔屏 Cheung, William 張鍵 Cheung, Yiu-Wing 張耀榮 Chi, Cheng 紀政

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

Chi, King-Yi 遲敬意 Chik, Jaime 戚美珍 Chin, Mary 錢瑪莉 Chiang, David 姜大衛 ‘Chinese Song Arena’ 中文歌曲擂台陣 Ching, Tony 程小東 Chiu, Angie 趙雅芝 Chiu, Christopher 趙來發 Chiu, Deacon 邱德根 Chua, Robert 蔡和平 Choi, Clifford 蔡繼光 Choi, Ken 蔡楓華 Chong, Patricia 莊靜而 Chor Lau Heung 楚留香 Chau, Kai-Bong 周啟邦 Chow, Niki 周麗淇 Chow, Pearl 周蓓 Chow, Stephen 周星馳 Chow, Yun-Fat 周潤發 Chu, Loletta 朱玲玲 Chu, Paul 朱江 Chung, Cherie 鍾楚紅 Chung, Paul 鍾保羅 Chung, Sharon 鍾曉陽 Chung, Wallace 鍾漢良 Cicada 蟬 CIM 智才集團 Cinema City 新藝城 Cinepoly Records 新藝寶 City Hero 飛虎奇兵 City Magazine 號外 ‘City Magazine and John Sham’ 號外與岑建勲 City Magazine 30: City 號外三十：城市 City Magazine 30: People 號外三十：人物 ‘City Notes’ 城市筆記系列 City on Fire 龍虎風雲 ‘Cloud of Dust’ 風雲塵煙 Club Volvo (aka Club Bboss) 大富豪 Co-tack 同德 Coolie Killers 殺出西營盤 Coma 大昏迷 ‘Comme des Garcons vs Yohji Yamamoto’ 川 保久齡大戰山本耀司 Commercial Television (CTV) 佳藝電視 Conduct Zero 操行零分 Confiding 傾訴 Contec Sound 康藝成音 Cops and Robbers 點指兵兵

Glossary

Craziness 一片痴 Crazy in Love with You 愛到你發狂 Cream Soda and Milk 忌廉溝鮮奶 Crimson Anita Mui 赤色梅艷芳 Crocodile’s Tears鱷魚淚 Crossroad 臨歧 Crown Records 娛樂唱片 Tony Cruz 告東尼 D&B Films 德寶電影 Daily Pictorial 銀燈日報 ‘Dancing Street’ 跳舞街 Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind 第一 類型危險 Danny Chan’s Breakthrough and Greatest Hits 陳百強突破精選 Days of Being Wild 阿飛正傳 ‘Days of Glory’ 光輝歲月 ‘Debt of the Heart’ 心債 ‘Decision’ 決 ‘Dedicate My Heart’ 交出我的心 Demi-Gods & Semi-Devils 天龍八部 ‘Democratic Movement in China, Witness of the Era’ 中國民運，時代見證 Deng, Xiaoping 鄧小平 ‘Desiring Hong Kong’ 慾望香港 Devoted to You 癡心的我 Disco Fever 青春熱潮 DMI Records 迪生唱片 ‘Don’t Forget: Kids Will Grow Up’ 不要忘記： 孩子都會長大 ‘Don’t Wanna Sleep’ 無心睡眠 Dr. Slump IQ博士 Dragons Forever 飛龍猛將 Dragon Lord 龍少爺 Dreadnaught 勇者無懼 ‘Dream Embrace’ 夢幻的擁抱 Dream Lovers 夢中人 Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢 ‘Dream Partner’ 夢伴 Drummer 鼓手 Drunken Master 醉拳 Dunn, Paul 鄧小宙 Dunn, Peter 鄧小宇 East is Red/Generation 1997 東方紅/給九七代 Eastern 東方 Eighteen Districts Amateur Singing Competition 全港十八區業餘歌唱比賽 Encore 喝采

287 Enjoy Yourself Tonight (aka EYT) 歡樂今宵 Enter the Dragon 猛龍過江 ‘Episodes of Love’ 感情的段落 Erotic Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓春上春 Esprit d’amour 陰陽錯 Eternal Love 三生三世十里桃花 Extras 茄哩啡 Fantan番攤 Farewell to My Concubine 霸王別姬 ‘Fashion of the Next Decade’ 下一個十年的 時裝 Father and Son 父子情 Fatherland 大地恩情 ‘Fiery Tango’ 似火探戈 Film Workshop電影工作室 Final Victory 最後勝利 ‘Finally You’ll Get Good Luck’ 始終會行運 First Love /Tears for You 初戀／眼淚為你流 Five Easy Pieces 輪流傳 Floating Clouds 浮雲 Fog of Love 霧之戀 Fong, Eddie 方令正 Fong, Henry 方育平 ‘For You…’ たかはし まりこ For Your Heart Only 為你鍾情 ‘Forbidden Zone of Love’ 情感的禁區 ‘Forever Waiting’ 永遠等待 ‘Forgotten Promise’ 逝去的諾言 Four Couples 對對糊 Foxbat 狐蝠 ‘Friends’ 朋友 Fu, Alexander 傅聲 Fung, Chi-Keung 馮志強 Fung, Lai-Chi 馮禮慈 Fung, Petrina 馮寶寶 Fung, Stanley 馮淬帆 Future Idol Contest 未來偶像爭霸戰 G-Men 75 猛龍特警隊 Games Gamblers Play 鬼馬雙星 ‘Genesis’ 創世紀 Girl Magazine 少女雜誌 God of Gamblers 賭神 Golden Harvest 嘉禾 Golden Princess 金公主 Golden Way Films 威禾電影 Good Time Magazine 好時代雜誌 ‘Goodbye My Dream’ 再見理想 ‘Grease Fever’ 油脂熱潮

288  Grey 灰色 Growing Up in Hong Kong 在香港長大 Guang Da Group 光大集團 Ha, Patricia 夏文汐 ‘Half Moon’ 月半彎 Handsome Siblings 絕代雙驕 Happy Ghost 開心鬼 ‘Happy Ten Years’ Happy十年 Happy Together (1989) 相見好 Happy Together (1997) 春光乍洩 ‘Having You’ 有了你 He Lives by Night 夜驚魂 Heart to Hearts 三人世界 Heartbreak At Long Beach 浪濺長堤 Heaven Can Help 上天救命 ‘Her Heart’ 她的心 ‘Here Comes Post-Stylist’ Post-Stylist駕到 Heroes Shed No Tears 英雄無涙 Heroic Cops 執法者 Heung, Charles 向華強 Heung, Jimmy 向華勝 Ho, Susanne 何嘉麗 Home at Hong Kong 家在香港 Homecoming 似水流年 ‘Hong Kong as Method’ 香港作為方法 Hong Kong City Folk Songs 香港城市民歌 Hong Kong City Folk Songs Encore 香港城市 民歌Encore Hong Kong Hong Kong 香港香港 Hong Kong, Hong Kong 男與女 Hong Kong Trilogy 香港三部曲 Hong Kong 1941 等待黎明 Hotel (aka Raging Tide) 狂潮 Hou, Hsiao-hsien 侯孝賢 Hou Rongmi 後榮迷 Hu, Terry 胡茵夢 Huang, Guangying 王光英 Huang, Steve 黃錫照 Huang, Ziping 黃子平 Hui, Andy許志安 Hui, Ann 許鞍華 Hui, Michael 許冠文 Hui, Sam 許冠傑 Hung, Sammo 洪金寶 Hwang, Yau-tai 黃友棣 I Accuse 大控訴 ‘I Do’ 我願意

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

‘I Mourn the City Magazine in the Past’ 我悼 念以前的號外 ‘Iceberg on Fire’ 冰山大火 If I Were for Real 假如我是真的 ‘Illusion’ 幻影 ‘Illustration Workshop’ 插圖社 ‘Imagining the Future’ 想將來 Imperial Heroes II 大內群英續集 In Bed on Sundays 周日牀上 ‘In the Laser Light’ 激光中 In the Line of Duty III 皇家師姐III 雌雄大盜 In the Line of Duty IV: Witness 皇家師姐IV直 擊證人 Infernal Affairs 無間道 Instructors of Death 武館 International City 國際城市 Ip, Deanie 葉德嫻 Ip, Jimmy葉志銘 Ip, Kenneth 舒琪 IQ 100 IQ成熟時 ‘Island’ 小島 It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World 富貴逼人 It’s A Mad Mad Mad World II 富貴再逼人 It’s A Mad Mad Mad World III 富貴再三逼人 Itsuwa, Mayumi 五輪真弓 Jenfu Records 金音符唱片 Jin, Elaine 金燕玲 Jin, Yong 金庸 Job Hunter (aka On Trial) 失業生 Jumping Ash 跳灰 Just Know I Still Love You Now 只知道此刻愛你 Just Like Weather 美國心 Kam, Kwok-Leung 甘國亮 Kan, Brian Ping-chee簡炳墀 Kan, Keith 簡國慧 Kawashima Yoshiko 川島芳子 Kikkawa, Koji 吉川晃司 King, Hoi-Lam 敬海林 King of Gambler 千王之王 Kiss Me Goodbye 戀愛季節 Kitchee 傑志 ‘Kite’ 風筝 Ko, Clifton 高志森 Koizumi, Kyoko 小泉今日子 Kong, Chu-Shek 江柱石 Koo, Joseph 顧嘉煇 Kuk, Kok-Leung 鞠覺亮 ‎ Kwan, Kenny 關智斌

Glossary

KWam, Michael 關正傑 Kwan, Rosamund 關之琳 Kwan, Stanley 關錦鵬 Kwan, Susanna 關菊英 Kwan, Tak-Hing 關德興 Kwok, Ka-Ming 郭家明 Kwong, Carmen 鄺穎萱 ‘La Vie En Rose’ 粉紅色的一生 ‘Lady’ 淑女 Lai, Chak-Fun 黎則奮 Lai, David 黎大煒 Lai, Gigi 黎姿 Lai, Leon 黎明 Lai, Michael黎小田 Lai, Peter 黎彼得 Lai, Samson 賴水清 Lam, Andrew 林敏驄 Lam, Becky 林碧琪 Lam, Bowie 林保怡 Lam, George 林子祥 Lam, Patricia 林鳳 Lam, Ragence 林國輝 Lam, Raymond 林峯 Lam, Richard 林振强 Lam, Ringo 林嶺東 Lam, Rogerio 林秀峰 Lam, Samantha 林志美 Lam, Sandy 林憶蓮 Lam, Violet 林敏怡 Lam, Yammie 藍潔瑛 Lam, Yuk-Fan 林玉芬 Lamb, Sandy 林姍姍 Lang, Sandra 仙杜拉 Last Affair 花城 Lau, Andy 劉德華 Lau, Carina 劉嘉玲 Lau, Eddie 劉培基 Lau, Hawick 劉愷威 Lau, Joseph 劉紹銘 Lau, Kar-Leung 劉家良 Lau, Kar-Wing 劉家榮 Lau, Simon 劉細良 Lau, Sze-Yue 劉仕裕 Lau, Tats 劉以達 Laughing Times 滑稽時代 Law, Bonnie 羅明珠 Law with Two Phases 公僕 Leaping in a Spotlight 飛躍舞台

289 ‘Legend’ 傳說 Lee, Bruce 李小龍 Lee, Danny 李修賢 Lee, Hacken 李克勤 Lee, Julian 李志超 Lee, Loretta (aka Rachel Lee) 李麗珍 Lee, Louise 李司棋 Lee, Maggie 李琳琳 Lee, Raymond 李惠民 Lee, Yee 李怡 Leo and Sirius of Tin Long Kip 天狼劫 Leong, Po-Chih 梁普智 Leung, Angile 梁韻蕊 Leung, Bruce 梁小龍 Leung, Frederick 梁裕生 Leung, Longman 梁樂民 Leung, Man-Tao 梁文道 Leung, Pato 梁柏濤 Leung, Ping-Kwan (aka Ye Si) 梁秉鈞 (也斯) Leung, Tina 狄娜 Leung, Tony Chiu-Wai 梁朝偉 Leung, Tony Ka-Fai 梁家輝 Li, Chuwen 李儲文 Li, Hanxiang 李翰祥 Li, Jet 李連杰 Li, Kwok-Lap 李國立 Li, Lilian 李碧華 Life after Life 再生人 Lin, Brigitte 林青霞 Lin, Ching-chieh 林清介 Lin, Kasey 練海棠 Lin, Xi (aka Albert Leung) 林夕 Ling, Ivy (aka Ling Bo) 凌波 Little Dragon Maiden (aka Xiaolongnu) 小龍女 Liu, Tina 劉天蘭 Liu, Xiaoqing 劉曉慶 Lo, Jimmy 盧國沾 Lo, May 羅美薇 Lo, Yin-Shan 盧燕珊 Lonely Fifteen 靚妹仔 Long Arm of the Law 省港旗兵 Looking Back in Anger 義不容情 ‘Lost Carnival’ 失落嘉年華 Lawrence Louey 雷覺坤 Love in a Fallen City 傾城之戀 ‘Love in a Prosperous Age’ 盛世戀 ‘Love in Late Autumn’ 愛在深秋 ‘Love Is Invincible’ 無敵是愛

290  ‘Love Is Gone’ 情已逝 ‘Love is Over’ 再度孤獨 Love Massacre 愛殺 Love Soldier of Fortune 愛的逃兵 Love Story 1980 驟雨中的陽光 Love Story 1980 II 驟雨中的陽光續集 Love Unto Wastes 地下情 Love You Most 最喜歡你 ‘Lover’ 恋人よ Lover’s Arrow 情人箭 Luckily It’s Sunday Again 好彩又到Sunday Luen Wah 聯華 Lui, David 呂方 Lui, King 雷勁 Luk Kwok Hotel 六國酒店 Ma, Joyce 馬郭志清 Ma, Ka-Fai 馬家輝 Ma, King-wah 馬景華 Ma, Walter Wai-ming 馬偉明 Ma, Yan-Chi 馬恩賜 Magnificent Warriors 中華戰士 Mak, Johnnie 麥當雄 Mak, Peter 麥大傑 Maka, Karl 麥嘉 Make a Wish 小小心願 Man Chi Records 文志唱片 Man on the Brink 邊緣人 Mann, Judy 文麗賢 Massage Girls 池女 Merry Christmas 聖誕快樂 ‘Metal Maniacs’ 金屬狂人 Miao, Cora 繆騫人 Ming Pao Weekly 明報周刊 ‘Ming Yau’s True Records’ 尤明實錄 Miracles (aka Mr. Canton and Lady Rose) 奇蹟 Mishima, Yukio 三島由紀夫 Miss O O女 Miu, Kam-fung 苗金鳳 Miu, Michael 苗僑偉 Mo, Teresa 毛舜筠 Moment of Romance 天若有情 Money Crazy 發錢寒 Money Talks 金源 ‘Monica’ モニカ ‘More Echo the More I Sing in Cantonese’ 粵 唱越響 Movie Impact 藝能影業 Mui, Anita 梅艷芳

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

‘My Chinese Heart’ 我的中國心 My Dream Last Night 昨夜夢魂中 ‘My Generation of Hong Kongers’ 我這一代 香港人 My Little Darling 荳芽夢 My Young Auntie 長輩 My 21st Century 我的廿一世紀 Naughty Boy 反斗星 Nee, Isabel (aka Yi Shu) 亦舒 ‘New Chinese Inspirations’ 中國新靈感 New Time Magazine 新時代雜誌 Newark File 女媧行動 Newport Circuit 新寶院線 Ng, Agnes 吳小雲 Ng, Chi-Lam 吳志林 Ng, Gam-Yuen 吳錦源 Ng, Maygi 吳美枝 Ng, Sheung-Fei 吳尚飛 No Big Deal 有你冇你 Nomad 烈火青春 ‘Nothing Happened’ 什麼都沒有發生 O, Sing-Pui 柯星沛 Oginome, Yōko 荻野目洋子 Ohsawa, Yoshiyuki 大澤譽志幸 ‘On Super City’ 超城論 On the Big Road 大路上 Once Upon a Rainbow 彩雲曲 Once Upon a Time 殞石旁的天際 Once Upon a Time in China 黃飛鴻 Once Upon an Ordinary Girl 儂本多情 One Love One Life 只願一生愛一人 Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing? 搭錯車 Paula Tsui’s New Hits 1982 徐小鳳全新歌集1982 Pearl City Film Production珠城製片 Peking Opera Blues 刀馬旦 People’s Hero 人民英雄 ‘Pocket Money’ 零用錢 Police Cadet ’84 新紮師兄 Police Cadet ’85 新紮師兄續集 Police Cadet 1988 新紮師兄1988 Police Story 警察故事 Pom Pom 神勇雙響炮 Pom Pom Strikes Back 雙龍吐珠 Poon, Dickson潘迪生 Porky 反斗星 Porky’s Meatballs 鬼馬校園 Princess Agents 楚喬傳 Princess Chang Ping 帝女花

Glossary

Prison on Fire 監獄風雲 Project A A計劃 Pu, Songling 蒲松齡 Publication (Holdings) Ltd. 博益出版 Pun, Lawrence 潘國靈 Queen Millenia 千年女王 ‘Rain and Sorrow’ 雨絲、情愁 Rainbow Round My Shoulder 畫出彩虹 ‘Raising a Thousand Sails’ 千帆並舉 Rediffusion Television 麗的映聲 Reincarnated 天蠶變 ‘Repulse Bay’ 淺水灣 ‘Reviews of Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong Humanities Teachers’ 中大港大人文學科教員評價 ‘Revival’ リバイバル Rich and Famous 江湖情 ‘Ripples’ 漣漪 Roller Coaster 過山車 ‘Roller Skating Gang’ 溜冰滾族 ‘Root of Love’ 愛的根源 Rouge 胭脂扣 Royal Warriors 皇家戰士 Runaway Blues 飆城 Sai Ying Pun 西營盤 Sammi 鄭秀文 Sancity Records藝視唱片 School on Fire 學校風雲 Secret of the Linked Cities 連城訣 Security Unlimited 摩登保鏢 ‘See You on the Other Side’ 江湖再見 Seiko 精工 Seiko Sports ’82 精工 ’82 Sek, Kei 石琪 ‘Selfish Yuppies’ 自私的Yuppies Send in the Clowns 臺上臺下 Sentimental K 裸「言泳」無邪 Seven Women 七女性 Sham, John 岑建勳 Shanghai Blues 上海之夜 Shaolin Temple Club 少林寺俱樂部 Shaw Brothers 邵氏 ‘She Is Afar’ 遙遠的她 She is Afar, Amour 遙遠的她Amour She Remembers, He Forgets 哪一天我們會飛 ‘She Is a Woman, I Am Also a Woman’ 她是女 子，我也是女子 Sheh, Charmaine 佘詩曼

291 Shek, Dean 石天 Shek, Long 石朗 Shen, James 沈承怡 Shi, Nansun 施南生 Shum, Lydia 沈殿霞 Siao, Josephine 蕭芳芳 Sieh, Fanny 薛芷倫 Silent Love 聽不到的說話 Silver Lining 祿怡 Siqin, Gaowa 斯琴高娃 Siu, Simon 邵國華 Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow 蛇形刁手 Soccer World 足球世界 Softhard Boys 軟硬天師 Soldier of Fortune 香城浪子 ‘Song of South China Fans’ 擁南躉之歌 ‘Song of Triumph’ 凱旋歌 Sound of Bang Bang Bang Bang咁嘅聲 South China 南華 ‘South China Caucasian Circle’ 南中國灰闌記 ‘Speechless Gratitude’ 無言感激 Spring . . .The Late Spring 春……遲來的春天 ‘Star Plucking’ 摘星 Starry Is the Night 今夜星光燦爛 Stelux Holdings 寶光實業 ‘Still the Old Sentence’ 仍是舊句子 Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 聊齋志異 ‘Style Done’ 玩殘Style Sue, Julie 蘇芮 Suen, Raymond 孫淑興 Summer Kisses Winter Tears 香江花月夜 ‘Sunflower’ 太陽花 Sung, Ka-Chung 宋家聰 ‘Sunset Melody’ 夕陽之歌 Super Win 永勝 Suzuki, Kisaburo 鈴木喜三郎 Sweet Gal 甜姐兒 Takahashi, Mariko 高橋真梨子 ‘Take Care of Yourself Tonight’ 今宵多珍重 Tale of Cleansing Flowers and Rinsing Sword 浣花洗劍錄 Tam, Alan 譚詠麟 Tam, Patrick 譚家明 Tam, Roman 羅文 Tam, Tommy (aka Tik Lung) 狄龍 Tam, Vivienne 譚燕玉 Tang, Anthony 鄧浩光 Tang, Blanche 鄧靄霖

292  Tang, Ching-Kin 鄧正健 Tang, Nico 鄧炯榕 Tang, William 鄧達智 Tao, Karlai 杜嘉麗 Tat Ming Pair 達明一派 ‘Tears for You’ 眼淚為你流 Tears in a Sandstorm 風塵淚 Robin, Teddy 泰迪羅賓 Teen Fashion玉鳳時裝 Teenage Dreamers (aka Lemon Cola) 檸檬可樂 Teenager 少年十五二十時 Television Broadcasting Company (TVB) 無綫 電視廣播有限公司 ‘Thanks Summer’ 夏にありがとう The Beasts 山狗 The Best of Alan Tam 精裝譚詠麟 The Big Brawl 殺手壕 The Big Heat 城市特警 The Book and the Sword 書劍恩仇錄 The Boy from Vietnam 來客 The Bund 上海灘 The Bund II 上海灘續集 The Butterfly Murderers 蝶變 The Cannonball Run 砲彈飛車 The Charming Month of May 迷人的五月 The Chinese Student Weekly 中國學生周報 The Club 舞廳 The Crimson Doubt 赤的疑惑 The Crimson Shock 赤的衝擊 The Duel of the Twins 絕代雙驕 The Duke of Mount Deer 鹿鼎記 The Eighth Happiness 八星報喜 The Emissary 獵鷹 The Fallen Family 武林世家 The Final Combat 蓋世豪俠 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 網中人 The Grandmaster 一代宗師 The Happenings 夜車 The Head Hunter 獵頭 The Heroic Trio 東方三俠 The House of 72 Tenants 七十二家房客 The Illegal Immigrant 非法移民 The Imp 凶榜 The Island 生死綫 The Journey of Flower 花千骨 The Killer’s Blues 邊緣歲月 ‘The Late Spring’ 遲來的春天 The Legend of the Condor Heroes 射鵰英雄傳

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

The Lonely Hunter 過客 ‘The Love Then’ 當年情 The Lunatics 癲佬正傳 The Musical Singer 歌舞昇平 The New Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre 倚天屠龍記 The Nobles 單身貴族 The Occupant 靈氣逼人 The Other Side of a Gentleman 君子好逑 ‘The Other Side of Goodbye’ さよならの向こ う側 The Passenger 抉擇 The Perfect Wife?! 專撬牆腳 The Person in My Dream 夢裡人 The Private Eyes 半斤八兩 The Return of the Condor Heroes 神鵰俠侶 The Return of Pom Pom 雙龍出海 The Rise and Fall of a Stand-in 五虎將 The Romancing Star 精裝追女仔 The Saviour 救世者 ‘The Season of Wind’ 風的季節 The Secret 瘋劫 The Servants 牆內牆外 The Spooky Bunch 撞到正 The Story Behind the Concert 歌者戀歌 The Story of Woo Viet 胡越的故事 The Sweet and Sour Cops 阿燦當差 The Sword 名劍 The System 行規 The Tabloid (later City Magazine) 號外 ‘The Tanning of Hong Kong’ 太陽膏之夢 ‘The Third Force of Fashion’ 時裝的第三勢力 The Time You Need a Friend 笑匠 The Tigers 五虎將之決裂 The Trio 青春三重奏 The Truth 法內情 The Wicked City 妖獸都市 The Wind Continues to Blow 風繼續吹 The Woman in Kenzo 穿Kenzo的女人 The Woman of My Family 歲月河山之我家的 女人 The Writer’s Magazine 文化新潮 The Wynners’ Rhapsody 溫拿狂想曲 The Wynners’ Weekly 溫拿周記 The Young Dragons 鐵漢柔情 The Young Master 師弟出馬 The Youth Weekly 年青人周報

Glossary

‘The 1980s in My, Your, and Their Eyes’ 我看你 看他看八十年代 The 70’s Biweekly 七0年代雙週刊 Theatre Ronin 浪人劇場 ‘Things and People Change a Lot in the Space of Ten years’ 十年人事幾番新 Thunder God 雷公 Till Death Do We Scare 小生怕怕 To, Alex 杜德偉 To, Johnnie 杜琪峯 Tong, David Sheekwan 唐書琨 Tong, Kent 湯鎮業 Tong, Terry 唐基明 Tonnochy Ballroom 杜老誌舞廳 Tragic Hero 英雄好漢 Treading on Thin Ice 步步驚心 ‘Trend of the 1980s: New Narcissism’ 八十年代 潮流：New Narcissism這是自戀時 Triads: The Inside Story 我在黑社會的日子 True Colours 英雄正傳 Tsang, Eric 曾志偉 Tsang, Ruth 曾路得 Tsang, Shu-Ki 曾澍基 Tseng, Jenny 甄妮 Tsuei, Louise 崔苔菁 Tsui, Hark 徐克 Tsui, Paula 徐小鳳 Tsui, Yu-On 徐遇安 Tung, Bill 董驃 Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 星際鈍胎 ‘Ultimate Song Chart’ 叱咤樂壇流行榜 Undeclared War 聖戰風雲 United We Stand 飛躍羚羊 ‘Unyielding’ 傲骨 ‘Very Hot Dancing’ 勁舞熱辣辣 Viceroy Cup 總督盃 Voice from Heaven 天籟 ‘Voice from Heaven…Star River Legends’ 天 籟…星河傳 Kara Wai 惠英紅 Wan, Chi-Keung 尹志強 ‘Wandering’ 流浪 Wang, Fu-ling 王福齡 Wang, Jing 王京 Wang, Joey 王祖賢 Wang, Liza 汪明荃 Warriors Film Company 奮鬥影業 ‘We Almost Fly’ 差一點我們會飛

293 Wellesley Revisited 故園風雪後 Wheels on Meals 快餐車 Where Does the Wind Come From? 風從哪裡來 ‘Where Have All of Them Gone?’ 下落不明 Where Heroes Dare 俠客行 Where’s Officer Tuba 霹靂大喇叭 ‘Who Can Change?’ 誰可改變 ‘Who Feels the Same?’ 有誰共鳴 ‘Why Did They Start Wanting to have Taste?’ 為什麼他們開始要Taste？ ‘Wicked Girl’ 妖女 ‘Wild Wind’ 不羈的風 Win’s Movie Productions 永盛電影 Wing Hang Records 永恆唱片 ‘Woman at 33’ 女人三十三 Woman on the Beat 警花出更 Wonder Women 神奇兩女俠 Wong, Adam 黃修平 Wong, Anthony 黃耀明 Wong, Bing-Lai 黃炳禮 Wong, Ching Yu 王正宇 Wong, Chong-Po 黃創保 Wong, Chong-Shan (aka Keeree Kanjanapas) 黃創山 Wong, Faye 王菲 Wong, Fei-Hung 黃飛鴻 Wong, Felix 黃日華 Wong, Flora 黃碧雲 Wong, Gigi 黃淑儀 Wong, James 黃霑 Wong, Wong, Jing 王晶 Wong, Ka-Kui 黃家駒 Wong, Kar-Wai 王家衞 Wong, Kirk 黃志強 Wong, Michael 王敏德 Wong, Peter Hing-kwai 黃興桂 Wong, Peter Yuen-shun 黃源順 Wong, Raymond 黃百鳴 Wong, Shirley 王靖雯 Wong, Tang-Ping 王登平 Wong, Taylor 黃泰來 Wong, Tony 黃玉郎 Wong, Wan-Sze 黃韻詩 Wong, Zeta 黃敏華 Woo, John 吳宇森 Woo, Peter 吳光正 ‘Worshipping the Trendy TV Dramas of the 1970s’ 潮拜70’s電視

294  ‘Written before the City Magazine of the 1990s’ 寫在九零號外之前 Wu, David 吳大維 Wu, Henry 胡君毅 Wu, Koon-Man 胡冠文 Wu, Kwok-Hung 胡國雄 Wu Xin The Monster Killer 無心法師 Xiang Gang (aka Hong Kong Guitar Competition Compilation) 香港 (香港結他比賽冠軍精 英集) Yamaguchi, Momoe 山口百惠 Yan, Yolinda 甄楚倩 Yang, Guo 楊過 Yang’s Saga 楊家將 Yau, Joseph 丘世文 Yau, Ming 尤明 Ye, Michelle 葉璇 Yee, Derek 爾冬陞 Yeh, Sally 葉蒨文 Yellow Earth 黃土地 Yeoh, Michelle 楊紫瓊 Yes, Madam 皇家師姐 Yeung, Benny 楊遠振 Yim, Ho 嚴浩 Ying, Michael 邢李源 Yip, Cecilia (aka Cecilia Lee) 葉童

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

Yip, Jacky 葉積奇 Yip, Wai-lim 葉維廉 Yon, Fan 楊凡 You, Lucilla 尤敏 You Only Live Twice 飛越十八層 Youthful Adventures 少年行 Yu, Candice 余安安 Yu, Dennis 余允抗 Yu, Dorothy 余綺霞 Yu, Kan-ping 虞戡平 Yu, Ronny 于仁泰 Yu, Winnie 俞琤 Yuen, Fennie 袁潔瑩 Yuen, Woo-ping 袁和平 Yung, Barbara 翁美玲 Yung, Jing-Jing (aka Mary Jean Reimer) 翁靜晶 Yung, Peter 翁維銓 Zhang, Yimou 張藝謀 Zhou, Yunlong 周雲龍 Zie Yongder, Alan 施養德 Zu: The Warriors from the Magic Mountain 新 蜀山劍俠 The 70s Biweekly 70 年代雙週刊 ‘89 Spirit, Instant History’ 八九精神，即時 歷史

Index Note: Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Abbas, Ackbar 34, 259 “All Star Challenge” (TV programme) 69 Always Good Film 104 Angel in Crisis (TV drama) 63 Angels and Devils (TV drama) 64, 71 “Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale” (song) 125, 137 Apollo 18, 190, 183, 196, 201 “Asia as method” 52 Au, Tony 94, 107 Baker, Hugh 13 Bang Bang Film Productions 92 Barthes, Roland 148, 237 “Be Lofty Step by Step” (music) 85 Being Hong Kong 258 Below the Lion Rock (TV programme) 93 “Below the Lion Rock” (song) 85, 118 Benjamin, Walter 176, 237 A Better Tomorrow (film) 97-99, 102, 106-109, 112, 254 A Better Tomorrow II (film) 99 A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon (film) 99, 105, 113 Beware of Pickpockets (film) 91, 95 Bewitched (film) 91 Beyond 127, 132-133, 140-141, 195, 205 “Amani” (song) and 140 “Days of Glory” (song) and 140 “Forever Waiting” (song) and 140 “Goodbye My Dream” (song) and 140 “Metal Maniacs” (song) and 140 Bhabha, Homi 45, 187 The Big Heat (film) 100 Black and White Records 127 Blackbird 132 blockbusters 101, 104-106 Bo Ho Films 100, 103 The Book and the Sword (TV drama) 77 Bordwell, David 47, 86 Bourdieu, Pierre 197-198, 201 on feel for the game 198-200 on field 197, 201n69 on habitus 197-198 The Boy from Vietnam (TV drama) 93 Boym, Svetlana 43-44 Bridgewater, Ann 252 Bull, Andrew 166, 181, 184-192, 186, 204, 209 “The Butterfly Murders” (song) 90, 118 Canton Disco 156, 185, 190-196, 193, 202-209 brand image of 191

interior design of 195 Kylie Minogue at 194 mini-concerts of 195, 202, 205 noon disco of 208 Sylvester Stallone at 192 See also Andrew Bull Cantopop (Cantonese popular songs) 48, 61, 141-143 concert industry of 128-130, 142 development in the 1970s of 58, 116-119 diversity of 105, 107, 134, 127, 137, 141 hybridizations of 131-135 in movies 90, 124 music awards 123, 136, 207 TV programmes of 126 Capital Artists 66-67, 121-128, 138-139 Capital Artists Laser Top Picks Vol. 1 (album) 128 Carpio, Teresa 137 Carroll, John M. 11-12, 32, 34, 117 Carry On Pickpocket (film) 87, 104 Casino Raiders (film) 105 Castro, Louis 61 celebrities 36, 48-49, 246-249 fashion and 168-169, 174 in disco 182-184, 200-205 on magazine covers 221-223, 227 Century Motion Picture 92-93 Certeau, Michel de 28, 197 Challenge of the Gamesters (film) 91 Cheuk, Pak Tong 59n14, 80n62, 85, 100 Chan, Agnes 128 Chan, Alan 156, 164, 191, 233n25 Chan, Benny 70 Chan, Charine 98 Chan, Chelsea 117, 128, 223 Chan, Connie 150, 169 Chan, Danny 48, 90, 106, 126-129, 131, 136-137, 149, 169-173, 188, 190, 195-196, 200-202, 203, 204-206, 211, 264 Breakthrough (album) and 62, 65, 120 Confiding (album) and 120 Danny Chan’s Breakthrough and Greatest Hits (album) and 120 “Encore” (song) 90, 120 A Few Minutes Date with Danny Chan (album) and 120 First Love /Tears for You (album) 58, 65-66, 119, 170, 206 “Genesis” (song) and 206 “Having You” (song) and 120, 206 “La Vie En Rose” (song) and 206

296  The Person in My Dream (album) and 170, 204 “Ripples” (song) and 65, 120, 206 “Sunflower” (song) and 120 “Star Plucking” (song) and 206 Sweet Gal (TV drama) and 65 “Take Care of Yourself Tonight” (song) and 120, 206 “Tears for You” (song) and 119, 206 Chan, Eason 130 Chan, Eddie 92 Chan, Eliza 128 Chan, Frankie 104 Chan, Jackie 38, 78, 86-87, 103-104, 106, 108, 190, 204, 227, 269 Armour of God (film) and 106 The Big Brawl (film) and 105 The Cannonball Run (film) and 105 Dragons Forever (film) and 106 Dragon Lord (film) and 97 Drunken Master (film) and 105 Miracles (aka Mr. Canton and Lady Rose) (film) and 105 Police Story (film) and 106 Project A (film) and 105 Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (film) and 105 Wheels on Meals (film) and 105-106 The Young Master (film) and 84, 105 Chan, Katie 190 Chan, Keith 245 Chan, Koon-Chung 49, 101, 182, 215-218, 227, 234, 237-238, 246, 248-250, 253, 265, 271-272 Afterwards: A Chronicle of Hong Kong Culture (essay collection) of 151n28, 215n3, 270 “Can Do Tea Restaurant” (fiction) of 243 “Hong Kong as Method” of 34, 251 “My Generation of Hong Kongers” (essay) of 256, 259 Sung, Ka-Chung and 235, 241 “The Tanning of Hong Kong” of 241-243 See also City Magazine Chan, Monte 252 Chan, Ocean 196 Chan, Patricia 90 “The Happenings” (song) and 90 Chan, Philip 92 Chan, Priscilla 137, 207 “Dancing Street” (song) and 207 “Forgotten Promise” (song) and 137 Chan, Siu-Bo 117 Chan, Wai-Ying 234 Chan, William 78 Chang, Cheh 88, 99 Chang, Eileen 94, 243-245 Chang, Sylvia 68, 231 Chang, William 218, 223, 226, 231, 249 Chasing Girls (film) 91, 95, 97 Chau, Charles 238, 253

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

Chen, Joan 231 Chen Kaige 108, 230 Chen, Serena 130 Cheng, Adam 59, 118, 127 Cheng, Derek Tai-chi 21-22 Cheng, Kent 106 United We Stand (film) and 106-107 Cheng, Kok-Kong 117, 119-120, 130 Cheng, Lawrence 117 Cheng, Mark 107 Cheng, Olivia 106 Cheng, Sammi 78, 125, 139-140 Sammi (album) and 140 Cheong-Leen, Flora 265 Cheung, Albert (aka Big Al) 265 Cheung, Alex 85, 92, 94 Cops and Robbers (film) and 85, 92-93 Man on the Brink (film) and 92, 99 Cheung, Alfred 87 Cheung, Felix 248 Cheung, Jacky 125, 137-138 “Half Moon” (song) and 138 “Love Is Gone” (song) and 138 My Dream Last Night (album) and 138 One Love One Life (album) and 138 “She Is Afar” (song) and 138 She is Afar, Amour (album) and 138 Cheung, Leslie 46, 60, 70-72, 93, 98-99, 119-132, 135-138, 141-143, 149, 169, 171-174,190, 202, 206-207, 220, 221, 233 Agency 24 (TV drama) and 62, 66-67, All Because of You: Summer Best Collections (album) and 125, 171 Baffle Me (album) and 171 Behind the Yellow Line (film) and 121 A Chinese Ghost Story (film) and 98, 104, 106, 108 Craziness (album) and 171 Days of Being Wild (film) and 108 “Don’t Wanna Sleep” (song) and 208 Drummer (film) and 90, 106, 121 Erotic Dream of the Red Chamber (film) and 66 The Fallen Family (TV drama) and 68 Farewell to My Concubine (film) and 108 “Finally You’ll Get Good Luck” (song) and 124 Four Couples (TV drama) and 62, 66-67 “Grease Fever” (song) and 206 For Your Heart Only (film) and 127, 130 “I Do” (song) and 130 Imperial Heroes II (TV drama) and 66 “The Love Then” (song) and 136 Lover’s Arrow (album) and 66, 121, 206 Make a Wish (TV drama) and 61 “Monica” (song) and 106, 120-121, 131, 135, 206 Once Upon an Ordinary Girl (TV drama) and 66, 121

Index

Teenage Dreamers (aka Lemon Cola) (film) and 66, 94, 106 Tale of Cleansing Flowers and Rinsing Sword (TV drama) and 65-66 “Wandering” (song) and 90, 121 “Who Feels the Same?” (song) and 136 “Wild Wind” (song) and 130, 206 The Wind Continues to Blow (album) and 120-121, 131, 226 “Woman at 33” (TV drama) and 71 The Woman of My Family (TV drama) and 66 Cheung, Lulu 153 Cheung, Mabel 102-103, 109 The Illegal Immigrant (film) and 102, 112 Cheung, Maggie 67-68, 73, 78, 98, 104, 107, 121, 125, 190, 231, 233 Cheung, Ming-men 134 “My Chinese Heart” (song) and 134 Cheung, Steven 231, 252 Cheung, Suk-Ping 226 Cheung, Yiu-Wing 130 Chik, Jaime 190 Chiang, David 97 The Chinese Student Weekly 215-216, 252 Ching, Tony 98 Chiu, Angie 59, 227 Chiu, Deacon 64 Chua, Robert 127 Choi, Clifford 62, 84, 90, 94, 106 Choi, Ken 61, 65 Chong, Patricia 61 Chor Lau Heung (TV drama) 59 Chau, Kai-Bong 221 Chow, Niki 78-79 Chow, Rey 30, 44, 49, 113, 260 Chow, Stephen 68-69, 78-79, 269 The Final Combat (TV drama) and 69 “Pocket Money” (TV drama) and 71 Chow, Yun-Fat 38, 64-65, 70-71, 78, 86, 90, 96, 99-100, 105, 107-109, 180, 227, 233, 269 All About Ah Long (film) and 100, 109 An Autumn’s Tale (film) and 102, 109 The Bund (TV drama) and 68, 109 Cherry Blossoms (film) and 109 Dream Lovers (film) and 94 God of Gamblers (film) and 104, 109 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (TV drama) and 68 The Head Hunter (film) and 265 Hotel (aka Raging Tide) (TV drama) and 58, 65, 68 Last Affair (film) and 94 Massage Girls (film) and 108 Miss O (film) and 108 City on Fire (film) and 114 Prison on Fire (film) and 100 Rich and Famous (film) and 99 The Romancing Star (film) and 104

297 The Story of Woo Viet (film) and 87, 90, 93, 94, 109, 112-114 Tragic Hero (film) and 99 Chu, Loletta 180, 227 Chu, Paul 63, 65 Chua, Beng Huat 37, 46 Chun, Allen 36, 213, 218, 252, 256 on cosmopolitan hybridity 246 on place-based identity 20, 33n16 on the 1980s 273 Chung, Cherie 67-68, 90, 102, 104, 107, 266 Chung, Paul 61-62, 65, 120 Chung, Sze Yuen 17n26, 250 Chung, Wallace 78 Cicada 132 Cinema City 84, 86, 91, 95-100, 103, 105-107, 111, 127, 170 Cinepoly Records 127, 139 City Magazine 36, 49, 58, 65, 152, 156, 166, 171, 180, 182, 187, 265, 269-270, 273 covers of 220-233 the early development of 213-220 City Magazine’s Showcase of 236-237 City Magazine 30: City and 239, 247, 252-253 City Magazine 30: People and 230, 252-253 “City Notes” and 239-240, 244-245, 249 incomplete bohemianism of 242 nostalgia of 248-249 paradigmatic shift of 253 See also The Tabloid “Cloud of Dust” (song) 139 Club JJ’s 208-209 Club Volvo (aka Club Bboss) 25-26, 190, 204, 254 Club 97, 187-188, 196, 208 Co-tack 23 Coma (TV drama) 63 Commercial Radio Hong Kong 61, 126, 139 Ultimate Song Chart of 126 Commercial Television (CTV) 56, 248 Conduct Zero (film) 101 consumerism 27, 43, 163, 174, 246 Contec Sound 127 Cream Soda and Milk (film) 91 The Crimson Doubt (TV drama) 67, 124 The Crimson Shock (TV drama) 67, 124 Crocodile’s Tears (TV drama) 65 Crossroad (TV drama) 71 Crown Records 127 Cruz, Tony 22-23 cultural memoir 30, 42, 49, 273 D&B Films 100, 127 Daily Pictorial 150 dance music 178, 200, 204, 209n87, 210 decade studies 39-45 Demi-Gods & Semi-Devils (TV drama) 69 Deng, Xiaoping 14-17, 19, 23-25, 42, 48, 116, 142, 177, 234

298  “Desiring Hong Kong” 269 Devoted to You (film) 101 Dirlik, Arif 13-14 Disco Disco 36, 49, 181-190, 194-202, 207-208, 211 feel for the game of 200 grand opening of 183 habitus of 187, 202 See also Gordon Huthart Disco Fever (TV programme) 180 DMI Records 127 Dr. Slump (TV drama) 67, 123 Dreadnaught (TV drama) 91 Dung, Kai-cheung 12-13 Dunn, Paul 244-245 Wellesley Revisited (fiction) and 244-245 Dunn, Peter 49, 155, 160, 180, 200, 215-216, 219, 227, 234, 247, 253-254, 273 Buddy and 150 Chin, Mary and 239, 241, 255 The Woman in Kenzo (fiction) and 239242, 244-245 See also City Magazine Dyer, Richard 37 on disco 196-197 on fashion 147 on star image 38 East is Red/Generation 1997 (album) 132 Eighteen Districts Amateur Singing Competition 125, 138 The Eighth Happiness (film) 100, 109 Encore (film) 62, 65, 84, 106, 119-121, 200 Enjoy Yourself Tonight (aka EYT) (TV programme) 68 Esprit 36, 149, 153-154, 235 “Comme des Garcons vs Yohji Yamamoto” (song) former flagship store of 168 at Hing Fat Street 163, 163-165 marketing strategy of 166-168 stardom and 169-173 See also Michael Ying A Family Affair (film) 125 fashion icons 149, 168, 173-175 Fatherland (TV drama) 60-62, 76 Faure, David 16 Feng, Lin 38, 68, 108 Film Workshop 95, 103-104 Five Easy Pieces (TV drama) 60, 76-77 Five Tigers 64, 68-73, 138, 223 Fleming, Ian 24 Florida, Richard 146 Fong, Eddie 107 Fong, Henry 87, 112 Father and Son (film) and 87 Just Like Weather (film) and 112 Ford, Stacilee 103

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

Four Heavenly Kings 71, 130, 137, 139, 143, 175, 269, 271 Foxbat (film) 92 Fu, Alexander 127 Fu, Poshek 150 Fung, Lai-Chi 239, 246, 253-254 Fung, Petrina 223 Fung, Stanley 104 Future Idol Contest 126 G-Men 75 (TV drama) 117 Girl Magazine 137 Golden Harvest 84, 86, 88, 91, 94, 96-100, 103, 105-106 Golden Princess 97, 103-104 Golden Way Films 103-104 Good Time Magazine 127-128 Guang Da Group 25 gun-fu films 99-100, 109 Ha, Patricia 236, 251 Happy Ghost (film) 98 Happy Together (1989 film) 76 Heart to Hearts (film) 101 Heartbreak at Long Beach (TV drama) 61 Heaven Can Help (film) 97 Heroes Shed No Tears (film) 99 Heroic Cops (film) 265 The Heroic Trio (film) 107 Heung, Charles 104 Heung, Jimmy 104-105 Ho, Susanne 252 Hollywood East 190, 196, 208-209, 254 Home at Hong Kong (film) 112 “Hong Kong as Method” 34, 251 Hong Kong Brand Development Council 148 Hong Kong chic 149, 154, 160, 175 Hong Kong City Folk Songs (album) 132 Hong Kong City Folk Songs Encore (album) 132 Hong Kong Hong Kong (TV drama) 70 Hong Kong, Hong Kong (film) 90, 94 Hong Kong story 12 Hong Kong studies 32, 35, 51-54, Hong Kong Trade Development Council 147148, 153 Hong Kong 1941 (film) 101, 109, 112 horse racing and dancing as usual 19-26 Hot Gossip 190, 196 Hou, Hsiao-hsien 72 Hou Rongmi 122 The House of 72 Tenants (film) 83 Hu, Terry 231 Huang, Guangyin 25 Huang, Steve 64 Hughes, Richard 11-12 Hui, Andy 125 Hui, Ann 63, 85-89, 94-95, 236, 245 Boat People (film) 87, 90, 93, 112, 236, 251 Love in a Fallen City (film) and 94, 112, 245

Index

The Secret (film) and 85, 88 The Spooky Bunch (film) and 84 Starry Is the Night (film) 245 Hui, Michael 84, 87, 105, 221, 251 Hui, Sam 84, 96-97, 105, 107, 116, 118, 125-129, 131, 137 Aces Go Places (film) 96, 107 Aces Go Places 2 (film) 97 Aces Go Places V (film) 100 Games Gamblers Play (film) 84 “Games Gamblers Play” (song) 116,118 Love You Most (album) 125 The Private Eyes (film) 117 Security Unlimited (film) 87, 91 Hung, Sammo 87, 100-101, 103-106 Huthart, Gordon 181, 181-188, 200 Hybridity 34, 134-135, 267 cosmopolitanism and 20, 36, 220, 246, 256 hybridizations 98, 117, 235, 249, 262 See also Cantopop I Accuse (TV drama) 63 “Illustration Workshop” 222 in-betweenness 15, 34-35, 52 In the Line of Duty III (film) 101, 103 In the Line of Duty IV: Witness (film) 101 Infernal Affairs (film) 71 Instructors of Death (film) 91 Inter-Asia cultural studies 53 International City 235-236 Ip, Deanie 137, 223 Ip, Jimmy 92 Ip, Kenneth 239 IQ 100 (TV programme) 61 Island 127 “Her Heart” (song) and 133 It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World (film series) 101 Itsuwa, Mayumi 122 Jameson, Fredric 40, 43 Jenfu Records 127 Jin, Elaine 252 Jin, Yong 70 Job Hunter (aka On Trial) (film) 120-121, 170 Jones, Andrew 40 Jones, Carol 15 Joyce Boutique 36, 48, 154, 156-161, 227 at New World Tower 155, 157, 159-160 designer labels of 149, 152, 155-158, 170 at the Mandarin Hotel 156 at The Peninsula 156 at Wing On 152, 155-156 The World of Joyce and 159 See also Joyce Ma Kam, Kwok-Leung 76, 102, 233 Kan, Brian Ping-chee 22 Kan, Keith 253 Kikkawa, Koji 131

299 The Killer’s Blues (film) 99 King, Hoi-Lam 112 King of Gambler (TV programme) 60 Kiss Me Goodbye (film) 101 “Kite” (song) 132 Ko, Clifton 98 Koizumi, Kyoko 128 Koo, Joseph 61, 85, 116, 118 Kwan, Michael 127-128, 131, 136 “An Extra in Life” (song) and 118 “The Saviour” (song) and 90 Voice from Heaven (album) and 137 “Voice from Heaven…Star River Legends” (song) and 137 Kwan, Rosamund 67-68, 231, Kwan, Stanley 95, 104 Center Stage (film) 107 Love Unto Wastes (film) and 72 Kwan, Susanna 127 A New Page (album) 127 Kwan, Tak-Hing 227, 230 Kwok, Ka-Ming 266 Lai, David 93, 104 Lonely Fifteen (film) 87, 93 Lai, Gigi 106 Lai, Leon 125, 137-139 Lai, Michael 61, 130 Lai, Peter 117 Lai, Samson 77 Lam, Andrew 143, 265 Lam, Becky 87 Lam, Bowie 252 Lam, George 90, 107, 117, 129, 131, 136-137, 180, 223, 233, 245, 251 Lam, Patricia 150, 169 Lam, Ragence 148 Lam, Raymond 78 Lam, Richard 130 Lam, Ringo 97-100 Esprit d’amour (film) and 97 School on Fire (film) and 100 Undeclared War (film) and 100 Lam, Rogerio 248 Lam, Samantha 125 “An Encounter” (song) and 137 “Episodes of Love” (song) and 132 Lam, Sandy 137, 195, 209-210, 231, 233, 236, 252 Grey (album) and 207 Lam, Violet 121 Lam, Yammie 190 Lamb, Sandy 98 Lan Kwai Fong 182-180, 195-196, 199, 208, 210-211 Lang, Sandra 116-118 “A Love Tale between Laughter and Tears” (aka “A Fatal Irony”) (song) and 118 Luckily It’s Sunday Again (album) and 116

300  Lau, Andy 60, 68-71, 73, 78, 90, 96, 112, 137-138, 231, 233, 269 As Tears Go By (film) and 70 “Back to You” (song) and 138 “Decision” (TV drama) and 71 The Emissary (TV drama) and 69-70 “Forbidden Zone of Love” (song) and 138 Just Know I Still Love You Now (album) and 138 Leo and Sirius of Tin Long Kip (TV drama) and 70 Moment of Romance (film) and 70 The Return of the Condor Heroes (TV drama) and 70, 77 Runaway Blues (film) and 104 “See You on the Other Side” (TV drama) and 70 Lau, Carina 67-68, 107, 190 Lau, Eddie 124, 148, 172-173, 180 Lau, Joseph 244 Lau, Kar-Leung 100 Lau, Kar-Wing 97 Lau, Tats 133, 140 Law, Bonnie 98, 106 Law, Kar 114 Lee, Bruce 105, 108 Enter the Dragon (film) 83-84 Lee, Chun-Wing 261n12, 262n13 Lee, Danny 99 Law with Two Phases (film) and 104 Lee, Hacken 125 Lee, Julian 230, 238, 244 Lee, Loretta (aka Rachel Lee) 98 Lee, Louise 65 Lee, Maggie 252 Lee, Leo Ou-fan 29, 113, 257-259 Lee, Raymond 99 Lee, Yee 231 The Legend of the Condor Heroes (TV drama) 77 Leong, Po-Chih 92 He Lives by Night (film) and 96 The Island (film) and 101 Jumping Ash (film) and 89, 91, 117, 234, 251 No Big Deal (film) and 61 Leung, Angile 237 Leung, Bruce 63 Leung, Frederick 152, 182, 248 Leung, Longman 141 Leung, Pato 128 Leung, Ping-Kwan (aka Ye Si) 143, 234 Leung, Tina 231 Leung, Tony Chiu-Wai 60, 64, 68-73, 78, 98, 233 Astray (TV drama) and 71 Beyond the Rose Garden (TV drama) and 69, 71 The Duel of the Twins (TV drama) and 72 The New Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre (TV drama) and 72

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

Police Cadet ’84 (TV drama) and 68, 71 Police Cadet ’85 (TV drama) and 71 Police Cadet 1988 (TV drama) and 71 Where Heroes Dare (TV drama) and 72 Leung, Tony Ka-Fai 60, 99 Leung, Wing-Fai 38, 44, 66, 70 Li, Chuwen 25 Li, Hanxiang 88 Li, Jet 38, 108 Li, Lilian 113 lifestyle 178, 246, 249, 253, 273 capitalism and 19-20, 26, 131, 177, 190 City Magazine and 218, 227, 235-240, 249, 254, 258, 270 fashion and 145-151, 156 Hong Kong’s 20-28, 33, 35, 45-46, 48, 177, 272 night 178-179, 182, 205 Lim, Eva 217, 226 Lin, Brigitte 68, 90, 104, 107-108, 167, 169, 223, 224, 233, 245, 251, 265 Lin, Xi (aka Albert Leung) 133, 239, 246, 248 Ling, Ivy (aka Ling Bo) 108 Little Dragon Maiden 70 Liu, Tina 127, 165-166, 170, 218, 222, 223-224, 226, 233, 236, 249 Liu, Xiaoqing 225 Lo, Jimmy 61, 121, 133 Lo, May 98 Louey, Lawrence 95, 97 “Love Is Invincible” (song) 125 Love Story 1980 (TV drama) 60-61 Love Story 1980 II (TV drama) 61 Lui, David 125, 127, 140 Lui, Tai-Lok 43, 231, 239, 246-248, 252-253 on “frozen Hong Kong” 52 on the 1970s 46, 268 Luk Kwok Hotel 24 Ma, Joyce 48, 154-162, 169, 174-175, 227, 228 Ma, Eric Kit-wai 13-14, 55, 57, 74-75 Ma, Walter King-wah 154, 154n38, 160 Ma, Walter Wai-ming 148, 154, 154n38 Ma, Yan-Chi 248 magazine covers 220, 227, 231 Mak, Johnnie 103 Long Arm of the Law (film) and 112 Maka, Karl 87, 95-96 A Man Called Hero (comic) Man Chi Records 127 Mann, Judy 148, 180 Mathews, Gordon 14, 33, 46 McRobbie, Angela 147 megastar 65, 70, 98, 120-124, 129, 134-136, 142-143 Merry Christmas (film) 170 Miao, Cora 223, 236 middle class 85, 131, 167, 253-256, 269 Ming Pao Weekly 58, 215, 258

301

Index

Miu, Kam-fung 59 Miu, Michael 70, 73 You Only Live Twice (TV programme) and 69 Mo, Teresa 62 momentum 40-43, 46-51, 69, 98, 271-273 Moore, Gary 22-23 Moore, George 22-23 Moore, John 22 “More Echo the More I Sing in Cantonese” (song) 117 Movie Impact 104 Mui, Anita 48, 60, 63, 67-70, 98-99, 113, 123-129, 131, 134-137, 149, 169, 172-173, 202, 203, 203-204, 233, 237 Anita (film) and 141 Au Revoir, Mon Amour (film) and 107 “Bad Girl” (song) and 124, 202, 207 “Breaking the Iceberg” (song) and 136 Crimson Anita Mui (album) and 123 “The Crimson Doubt” (song) 131 “Debt of the Heart” (song) and 123 “Dedicate My Heart” (song) and 124 “Dream Embrace” (song) and 67, 124, 131 “Dream Partner” (song) and 136, 207 “Fiery Tango” (song) and 124, 205 “Homecoming” (song) 67, 124-125 “Iceberg on Fire” (song) and 207 Kawashima Yoshiko (film) and 107 “Lady” (song) and 124 Leaping in a Spotlight (album) and 124 “Lost Carnival” (song) and 124 Monster Girl (album) and Summer Kisses Winter Tears (TV drama) and 67, 124 “Sunset Melody” (song) and 136 “Wicked Girl” (song) and 124 multimedia stardom 38-39, 44, 48-50, 56, 66, 70-71, 90, 111, 213, 258, 265 brand promotion and 174 Canton Disco and 208 Cinema City’s impact on 91 Disco Disco and 184, 199-200 Fashion and 149-150, 168-169 synergy between images and songs and 126-128 See also Wing-fai Leung music magazines 127-128 My Little Darling (TV drama) 61 My Young Auntie (film) 87 Nee, Isabel (aka Yi Shu) 227, 229, 251-252 New Time Magazine 128 The New Wave 59, 59n14, 61, 64, 66-67, 80n62 Newark File (TV drama) 63-64, 67 Newport Circuit 103 Ng, Agnes 96 Ng, Chi-Lam 23 Ng, Maygi 251

nightlife 24-26, 36, 49, 177-179, 182, 184-190, 197, 200, 204-205, 207, 210-211 The Nobles (film) 101 northbound imaginary 272 nostalgia 43-45, 113, 247-248, 270 Nylonkong 146 O, Sing-Pui 104 On the Big Road (album) 132 Once Upon a Rainbow (film) 96 one country two systems 12, 14, 26, 34, 51 Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing? (film) 97, 125 paradigm shift 45, 53, 115, 130, 142, 218, 235, 253, 266 The Passenger (album) 118 Pearl City Film Production 92-94 The Perfect Wife?! (film) 97 personal belonging 12-15, 28, 30, 39, 41, 53, 257, 259, 269, 272 Pom Pom (film) 100 Pom Pom Strikes Back (film) 101 Poon, Dickson 100-101, 103 popular tastes 57 Porky’s Meatballs (film) 101 postcolonial studies 31, 34, 53 Publication (Holdings) Ltd., 239, 241 Pun, Lawrence 254 Queen Millenia (TV drama) 124 Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) 66, 68, 70-71, 85, 93, 133 Chinese Song Arena 126 Top Ten Gold Songs of 118, 120-123, 125-126, 136, 138 Rainbow Round My Shoulder (TV drama) 68 Raidas 127, 133, 140 “Legend” (song) 140 Rangers 262, 264 Rediffusion Television (RTV) 56, 59-69, 76-77, 81, 119-121, 126 “Raising a Thousand Sails” and 59-62 Reincarnated (film) 59-60 The Return of Pom Pom (film) 100-101 The Rise and Fall of a Stand-in (TV drama) 69 Roller Coaster (TV drama) 64 Rouge (film) 104, 106, 108, 113 Sancity Records 127 satellite film companies 100, 103 satellite television 75, 79 The Scene 179-181, 184-186, 189-190 Secret of the Linked Cities (TV drama) 140 Seiko 260-268 Seiko Sports ’82 (magazine) 265-266 “Seiko Sports ’82” (song) 265 Sek, Kei 89, 111 Send in the Clowns (film) 97

302  The Servants (film) 92 Seven Women (TV drama) 59, 63 The Seventies Biweekly 215-216 Sham, John 100-103, 216, 223-225, 238, 240-241, 253 Shaw Brothers 84, 88, 91, 94, 100, 103, 108 Sheh, Charmaine 78 Shek, Dean 95, 97, 107 Shen, James 250 Shi, Nansun 95 Shih, Shu-mei 44 Shum, Lydia 57 Siao, Josephine 72, 148, 150, 169 Sieh, Fanny 227 Silent Love (film) 102 Sinn, Elizabeth 51n77 Siqin, Gaowa 231 Siu, Simon 246, 248-249, 253 Soccer World 260 Softhard Boys 163, 165 Sound of Bang Bang (TV programme) 264 South China 264-267 Shaolin Temple Club and 265 “Song of South China Fans” (song) and 265 “Song of Triumph” (song) and 265 star-making 64, 69, 73, 79-81, 174, 194 See also Richard Dyer Stelux Holdings 261, 266 Studio 54, 179, 181-182, 187, 193, 199-200, 210, 248 Sue, Julie 125, 131, 137 Suen, Raymond 226 The Sweet and Sour Cops (film) 91 synergies 35-39, 47, 65, 70, 80, 149, 154, 161, 169, 173, 205, 252, 258 cross-media 61, 78, 89, 118-130 The Tabloid (later City Magazine) 214, 215-216, 233, 238, 248, 250 Tam, Alan 98, 104, 107, 117, 120, 123, 125-126, 128-129, 131-132, 134-138, 265 The Best of Alan Tam (album) and 266 Can’t Forget You (album) and 122, 266 Crazy in Love with You (album) and 122 Fog of Love (album) and 122, 124, 131, 133 “Friends” (song) and 136 If I Were for Real (film) and 122 “Illusion” (song) and 122-125 “Imagining the Future” (song) and 122 “The Late Spring” (song) and 122, 131 “Love in Late Autumn” (song) and 123, 131 Love Soldier of Fortune (film) and 104 Naughty Boy (album) and 122 The Other Side of a Gentleman (film) and 104, 108, 125 Porky (album) and 206 “Rain and Sorrow” (song) and 122, 266 “Root of Love” (song) and 123-125, 142-143 “Speechless Gratitude” (song) and 136 Spring . . .The Late Spring (album) and 122

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

The Story Behind the Concert (film) and 104 “Unyielding” (song) and 133 “Very Hot Dancing” (song) and 206 “Who Can Change?” (song) and 124 Tam, Patrick 59, 63, 93, 102 Final Victory (film) and 102 Love Massacre (film) and 108, 223, 226, 251 Nomad (film) and 106, 121, 226, 251 The Sword (film) and 94 Tam, Roman 118, 126, 136, 188 “In the Laser Light” (song) and 206 Tam, Tommy (aka Tik Lung) 99, 107, 112 Tam, Vivienne 153 Tang, Anthony 107, 251 Tang, Blanche 61 Tang, Nico 216, 219, 254 Tang, William 153, 161, 175, 189, 201, 208 Tao, Karlai 222, 224, 233 Tat Ming Pair 127, 132-133, 140-141, 195, 205, 209 “Angels on the Road” (song) and 140 “Car Lost in the Night” (song) and 140 “Roller Skating Gang” (song) 140 Tatlow, Didi Kirsten 258 Tears in a Sandstorm (TV drama) 60 Robin, Teddy 95 All the Wrong Spies (film) and 97, 108 Teen Fashion 150 Teenager (TV drama) 61 Television Broadcasting Company (TVB) 5659, 90, 109, 116, 120-121, 180, 190, 201, 223, 264 Cantopop stars and 137-140 declining vogue of 77-78 Globalization of 73-74 inertia ratings of 62 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Awards and 123-127, 207 New Talent Singing Competition and 125 Your Choice on Sunday and 126 See also Five Tigers Teo, Stephen 47, 85, 90-91, 93, 111n58 Theatre Ronin 143, 243 Once Upon a Time (play) and 143 Thornton, Sarah 198 on subcultural capital 198 Till Death Do We Scare (film) 97 The Tigers (film) 73 To, Alex 125 To, Johnnie 100, 107 Tong, David Sheekwan 152 Tong, Kent 69-71, 73 Tong, Terry 93 Coolie Killers (film) and 93 Tonnochy Ballroom 24-25 trajectory 81, 111, 118, 144, 148-149, 168, 184, 256, 261, 266, 273 Treading on Thin Ice (TV drama) 77 The Trio (TV drama) 61

303

Index

Tsang, Eric 73, 95-97, 102 Tsang, Ruth 61 Tsang, Shu-Ki 216 Tseng, Jenny 127, 129, 131, 136, 227 The Charming Month of May (album) and 137 “Love is Over” (song) and 137 Tsuei, Louise 231, 232 Tsui, Hark 63, 85-86, 88-89, 94-96, 99, 103, 107-108, 113, 251 All the Wrong Clues (film) 91, 95, 97, 226 The Butterfly Murderers (film) 85, 88 Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (film) and 112 Peking Opera Blues (film) 104, 107-108 Shanghai Blues (film) and 104, 112 Zu: The Warriors from the Magic Mountain (film) 94, 251 Tsui, Paula 123, 127, 129, 137 Paula Tsui’s New Hits 1982 (album) and 127 “The Season of Wind” (song) and 123 Tung, Bill 252 A Turbulent Era (TV drama) 139 Turner, Matthew 33 TV New Wave 59-64 See also Rediffusion Television Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (film) 94 “Ultimate Song Chart” 126 urban literature 244 Viceroy Cup 265 Wai, Kara 87 Wan, Chi-Keung 265 Wang, David Der-wei 12, 245 Wang, Fu-ling 120, 134 Wang, Klavier 73, 76, 79 Wang, Joey 68, 231 Wang, Liza 59-60, 65, 118, 127 Warriors Film 95 “We Almost Fly” (song) 143 “Where Have All of Them Gone?” (song) 209 Where’s Officer Tuba (film) 101 The Wicked City (film) 111n58 Win’s Movie Productions 104 Wing Hang Records 127 Woman on the Beat (TV drama) 124 Wonder Women (film) 102 Wong, Anthony 209-210 My 21st Century (album) and 209 Wong, Chong-Po 267 Wong, Chong-Shan (aka Keeree Kanjanapas) 261-263, 266 Wong, Faye 130, 139-140, 233 “Still the Old Sentence” (song) and 139 Where Does the Wind Come From? (album) and 139 Wong, Fei-Hung 227

Wong, Felix 64, 69-71, 73, 223 The Lonely Hunter (TV drama) and 69 Looking Back in Anger (TV drama) 73 Wong, Flora 239, 252 “Love in a Prosperous Age” (fiction) and 244-245 A Proud Woman (fiction) and 244 “She Is a Woman, I Am Also a Woman” (fiction) 244 Wong, Gigi 65 Wong, James 61, 66, 85, 117-118, 121, 130, 132, 134, 144 Wong, Jing 104-105 Wong, Ka-Kui 140-141 Wong, Kar-Wai The Grandmaster (film) Happy Together (1997 film) 101 Wong, Kirk 92, 99 The Club (film) and 92 True Colours (film) and 99 Wong, Michael 107 Wong, Peter Hing-kwai 252 Wong, Peter Yuen-shun 255 Wong, Raymond 95-96, 98, 107 Wong, Shirley 139 Wong, Tang-Ping 23 Wong, Taylor 99, 104 Triads: The Inside Story (film) and 99 The Truth (film) and 104 Wong, Tony 234 Wong, Wan-Sze 252 Wong, Zeta 252 Woo, John 86, 97, 107, 114, 231, 254 Bullet in the Head (film) 72 The Killer (film) and 109 Laughing Times (film) 84, 91, 95, 99 Money Crazy (film) and 99 Princess Chang Ping (film) and 99 Sheung-Fei Ng and 84 The Time You Need a Friend (film) 97, 99 The Young Dragons (film) and 98-99 Woo, Peter 160, 176 The World of Suzie Wong (film) 24 The Writer’s Magazine 216 Wu, David 245 Wu, Henry 215-216, 222 Wu, Kwok-Hung 262-267 wuxia film genre 85, 88, 90, 94, 251 The Wynners’ Rhapsody (TV programme) 126 The Wynners’ Weekly (TV programme) 126 Xiang Gang (aka Hong Kong Guitar Competition Compilation) (album) 132 Yamaguchi, Momoe 121, 124 Yan, Yolinda 252 Yang’s Saga (TV drama) 72-73

304  Yau, Joseph 215-216, 238-239, 247-248, 253, 270 Chi, King-Yi and 248-249 Growing Up in Hong Kong (essay collection) 270 In Bed on Sundays (fiction) 244 Koon-man Wu and 238 Ming Yau and 237 “Ming Yau’s True Records” (column) and 237 See also City Magazine Ye, Michelle 78 Yee, Derek 72 The Lunatics (film) and 72, 101 People’s Hero (film) and 72 Yeh, Sally 104, 107, 131, 137 Yellow Earth (film) 230 Yeoh, Michelle 101, 107 Magnificent Warriors (film) and 101 Royal Warriors (film) and 101 Yes, Madam (film) and 101 Yim, Ho 67 The Extras (film) 85, 92, 188 The Happenings (film) and 84, 206 Homecoming (film) 112, 124, 137, 226 Ying, Michael 153, 162, 167 Yip, Cecilia (aka Cecilia Lee) 236, 251 Yip, Jacky 251 Yip, Wai-lim 234 Yon, Fan 231, 248-249, 251 A Certain Romance (film) and 137, 251 You, Lucilla 223

Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s

youth idols 61, 64 The Youth Weekly 215 Youthful Adventures (TV programme) 263 Yu, Candice 63 Yu, Dennis 61 The Beasts (film) 61, 84, 93, 101 City Hero (film) and 107 The Imp (film) and 93 The Musical Singer (film) 98 Yu, Dorothy 190 Yu, Ronny 92 The Occupant (film) 98 The Saviour (film) and 93 Yu, Winnie 126 Yuen, Fennie 98, 106 Yuen, Woo-ping 105 Yung, Barbara 190 Yung, Jing-Jing (aka Mary Jean Reimer) 61-62 Yung, Peter 88-89, 96 Life after Life (film) 96 The System (film) 88-89, yuppie 49, 101, 188, 219, 238 yuppie literature 239-245 Zeman, Allan 188 Zha, Jianying 271-272 Zhang, Yimou 227 Zhou, Yunlong 269 Zie Yongder, Alan 218-219 The 70’s Biweekly 215-216