Gone but not forgotten - the people we said farewell to in 2003

Hong Kong has a distinguished honour list of people we will miss in 2004, after a year in which the world also bid farewell to 100-year-old comedian Bob Hope, Hollywood icon Katharine Hepburn and reflected upon the remarkable life of Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Until April no one had heard of Lau Wing-kai, the 38-year-old nurse who became the first medical worker to lose his life in the city's fight against Sars. He was given a fitting farewell attended by top officials including Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa.

Last week pop superstar Anita Mui Yim-fong, 40, who entertained millions of people in Hong Kong and overseas, lost her fight against cervical cancer. Mui, whose career spanned more than two decades, was an idol of screen and stage.

Her death came only eight months after that of her closest celebrity friend and fellow pop star Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, who jumped to his death from the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Central. Cheung, 46, enthralled local audiences first as a singer and then as an actor, appearing in such notable films as Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Happy Together (1997).

In early December, barrister Sir Oswald Cheung, 81, the most senior member of the Hong Kong Bar and the first Chinese to become a Queen's Counsel, died in hospital after an accident in which his pyjamas caught fire as he tried to light a cigar. He served on the Executive Council for 12 years and was a senior unofficial member of Legco from 1978 to 1981. A lover of horse racing, he was the first local resident to be elected chairman of the Hong Kong Jockey Club in 1986.

Less than a month after Sir Oswald's death, the Jockey Club suffered another loss when another immediate past chairman, Alan Li Fook-sum, died in Phuket, Thailand, from a suspected heart attack.