The Interview

Many people know Sin Sin-man by another name. In the commercial world she is called Sin Sin, a happening, snappy sort of combination that's written on her cards as well as her clothes-and-accessories shop in On Lan Street. In this incarnation, Sin Sin shaves her head ('I feel I want to concentrate, and hair makes me heavy, but without it I feel light, like a nun'), wears memorable outfits (Pucci pants, mini-skirts or backless tops), smokes and has parties which go on through the night.

But there's also Sin Sin-man, the Cantonese opera singer who dons an old kimono and sings the male-lover role in Tang dynasty plots. 'Women are crazy about me,' she says. 'They send me love letters. They say, 'Can I hold your hand, can I touch you?' and I say, sure, sure, sure. The only time I really calm down, the only time I forget about me, is when I'm singing. And when I'm doing my calligraphy. The rest of the time I'm being so many things, I feel I'm always on the stage. Life is a play, a movie.' Sitting cross-legged on a day bed in a candlelit room filled with old Chinese furniture, Sin Sin looks like an urchin dressed up as a monk. Her caged birds twitter on the top floor balcony of the beautiful building which has her name written on its shopfront. She speaks English with a strange southern-American accent (which she says she picked up in the course of a 12-year relationship with someone who lived in the US). Asking her if this is a play too, she nods her head. 'I'm thinking, okay, we have an interview. So I have to support you, I have to give you the answers. That's my role.' When did she realise that life consisted of play-acting, I ask? 'Pretty young, playing kings and queens, doctors and nurses. I grew up on a mountain in Kowloon. Nobody believes me, but it was there - a village with chickens and pigs and vegetables. The river was bright colours from factories dyeing cloth further up. Behind the mountain you could see the lights of the city. I grew up in a temple with my grandparents.' Such recall has in itself the quality of a film set, the land of Oz, but Sin Sin talks with evident sincerity. 'I ran around like a village boy, I was free, I was happy.' She clearly adored her grandparents (never once mentioning her parents during our conversation), and one of the reasons she wanted the On Lan Street building was because she remembered walking past it as a child with her grandfather, waving a hand at the old-fashioned furniture in the shadows. She said that it reminded her of them.

'I love old people, love them. You want me to do anything for old people? I'll do it. When I'm speaking Chinese, sometimes I use ancient words because of the opera. I tease the old people with that. After I sing, I talk to them and they see the holes in my ears and they say to each other, 'It's a girl!'' When I ask her what dreams she had as a child, she replies, 'I had no dreams.' And then: 'Oh! I must give you a better answer.' Feeling like a policeman plodding heavily around offstage, I tell her that I'd prefer the truth, to which she replies, 'I had no dreams, I wanted to work hard.' Which she did, teaching herself how to run a business. At the age of 27, 15 years ago, she started an export company making bags ('I'm a king in the back-to-school item industry') for, it so happens, such dream merchants as Disney, Looney Tunes and Paramount.

After a while, people told her that she should be creating things for herself: hence the one-year-old shop with its Sin Sin jewellery and clothes. But juggling both companies is wearing her down. She gives the impression, despite her valiant efforts to play the part of the alert interviewee, that she is mentally exhausted. Several times she flops down on the bed saying that she hasn't slept for days. 'Usually I only sleep two or three hours a day. It's just me running the whole damn thing. That's why I talk so fast - if I didn't, I'd be in deep trouble.' As a result, Sin Sin has had to cut back on her opera performances. 'The audience is crazy and they love you and you need to have a lot of energy to deal with that. And I don't.' Some years ago she spoke to her seifu, the master with whom she has been studying opera for 10 years, and told him that she wanted to enjoy her singing but that the audience was dragging her down. She stopped for a year. 'Then I saw Siao Fong-fong in that movie [Hu Du Men, in which Siao plays a retiring Cantonese opera singer], and when she gives her last performance, I saw her eyes and I thought, 'I feel that too.' So I went back to the stage but I cannot devote myself anymore. Now I only sing for charity, for old people.' Her next performance will be at the Sai Wan Ho Civic Centre in November.

Besides singing songs about dead dynasties in old kimonos, Sin Sin has a pretty hip image. 'The young generation think opera is boring but then they see me and I'm funky! I'm not a boring person! How many Chinese people remember these little stories of our history?' She begins to sing with extraordinary power - just a few lines of ancient seduction. But in the gloaming, I feel the hairs prickle on the back of my neck. Sin Sin laughs. 'The Chinese papers say that I'm so small but my voice is so big! The passion is the number one thing. Beautiful face, beautiful clothes, beautiful voice - I don't care about that! It's beautiful passion.' Every Wednesday morning Sin Sin goes to her seifu and every Monday night she practices with musicians. 'This is my life,' she says simply. 'Now you know my life. You're like my fortune-teller, he knows my life too.' What does he say? I ask. 'I went to him recently. I've been very emotional. I'm sitting here with you, nice and easy, but behind all this, my life is stressful. It's hard on your own with nobody around. I said to him, 'What am I doing, tell me?' He said, 'Now you're riding the tiger, and it's going crazy eating things. But if you get off, it will eat you too.'' So she's staying on for the duration. The image of Sin Sin is like something from a child's jungle fairytale - absolutely in keeping with her life's dramatic roles. Does she think she's eccentric? Sin Sin shrugs. 'I never myself think 'Who is me?' that much. I just think I'm me. Maybe you can say that.'