Google Doodle shows off ‘sexually ambiguous’ Cantonese opera legend Yam Kim-fai to the world
Tech titan offers touching tribute on the birthday of a Cantonese opera and cinema legend renowned for gender-swapping roles on stage and screen
Today’s Google Doodle is a tribute to Cantonese opera legend Yam Kim-fai, also known as Ren Jian, whose stage and screen performances stretched from the 30s to the 60s, with more than 300 film titles made since the early 50s.
Born on this day in Nanhai District, China, in 1913, Yam performed with various opera groups in Macau from the mid 1930s. After the war her troupe moved to Hong Kong.
READ MORE: Yam Kim-Fai career retrospective
The basis of her reputation is singularly intertwined with two important factors: brilliant talent and sexual ambiguity. In the majority of her 300-plus movies from 1951 to 1968 and countless stage appearances dating back to her initial stardom in the 1930s, Yam essayed the male lead - most famously playing scholars (as in The Tragic Story of Leung Shan-pak and Chuk Ying-toi from 1958, or 1959’s Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom), magistrates (Snow Storm in June, 1959), officers (Two Generals in Contention for a Wife, 1962) and emperors (Emperor Zhengde’s Night Visit to the Dragon and Phoenix Inn, 1958).
Thanks to her signature status, Yam is alone among Hong Kong’s pantheon of opera greats for being able to perform not only with all the top male stars but also opposite the divas in screen romances.
