Remembering Leslie Cheung: 20 years have passed, but Hong Kong fans’ devotion to Cantopop legend lives on
- Concert, exhibition among events to mark April 1 death anniversary of award-winning singer and actor
- Star’s suicide at 46 stunned fans across the region, raised awareness of mental health struggle
Zoey Wang missed the heyday of Hong Kong’s “King of Cantopop” Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, but she says the award-winning actor and singer shaped the way her life turned out.
Originally from Changsha in mainland China, she said: “Because of my love for Leslie, I started to dream of becoming a Hong Kong citizen at the age of 16. It led me to come to Hong Kong to study, work and live.”
Now 25 and working for a non-profit in the city, she is among Cheung’s legion of loyal fans who will mark the 20th anniversary of his death on April 1, with several events that have been lined up.
Affectionately known as Gor Gor – “big brother” in Cantonese – the tailor’s son became a star during Cantopop’s golden era in the 1980s and 1990s.
His breakthrough film role was in the 1986 hit A Better Tomorrow, and he went on to star in many more through the 1990s, including the award-winning Farewell My Concubine, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time and Happy Together.
Behind the celebrity, Cheung lived with depression and his suicide in 2003 sent shock waves across the region. He was 46, at his peak and in a long-time same-sex relationship with his partner Daffy Tong Hok-tak.
Wang, who is lesbian, said Cheung was her “spiritual pillar”, and had helped her come to terms with being part of a sexual minority herself.
To mark his anniversary, she will place a white flower outside the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Central, from which Cheung fell to his death.
She will also be at the concert “I Am What I Am – A Tribute to Leslie Cheung” organised by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA).
The concert, to be held for three nights from March 30 to April 1, is part of a 10-day music festival called HKT x WESTK POPFEST, directed by avant-garde pianist and composer Daniel Chu.
The multimedia tribute will mix music and memories as it revisits milestones in Cheung’s artistic career, with singers Janice Vidal and Walter Kwan performing their own renditions of his hits.
Kung Chi-shing, WKCDA’s Head of Contemporary Performance and Performing Arts, said he deliberately opted for a smaller concert venue that could seat about 450 people.
April 1, 2003: Pop star Leslie Cheung dies in fall from Hong Kong hotel
“We want to create this more intimate concert so people can pay more attention to detail because that’s unusual in Hong Kong, which tends to go for the opposite – the bigger the better, especially in pop music,” he said.
“We want the audience to have a more personal experience of what they hear, what they see, and that may affect the way they see Leslie.”
Director Chu, 25, described it as a labour of love, saying: “This is a very emotional tribute. I have a lot of love for Leslie and I’ve been playing his songs since a very young age.”
Meanwhile, another fan, university student Ellie Yuen, 19, amassed so much Leslie Cheung memorabilia over the years that her collection will be displayed at an exhibition organised by the MTR Corporation and media organisation Art And Piece.
The 16 items include a rare compact disc album called Gift from Japan, a Happy Together movie leaflet and a Passion Tour concert programme.
Yuen said that Cheung, who was open about his relationship with his partner – whom he would refer to as “Mr Tong” on stage – continued to inspire people to be themselves.
“Twenty years ago, I guess no one cared about mental health or how you loved yourself,” she said, adding that Cheung taught people to appreciate themselves before loving someone else.
“This is his signature statement and his ideology,” said Yuen, who became a fan thanks to her family, who introduced her to Cheung’s songs and films.
The exhibition runs until April 6 between the Central and Hong Kong MTR stations.
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Sixteen years after his death, Canto-pop legend Leslie Cheung lives on in Chengdu cafe
Artist Cuson Lo, 51, well known for his political illustrations published on social media, helped to produce large-scale posters of Cheung for the MTR exhibition.
“He remains very genuine to his audience. I think this is worth learning because I’m always scared to show my true self to the world. I should accept myself,” Lo said.
Finance industry worker Ray Heung, 53, said he was in high school when Cheung’s fame took off and he grew up listening to songs like “For Your Heart Only”.
He has never forgotten the day Cheung died. As the news spread, he did not believe it at first, thinking it was a sick April Fool’s Day joke.
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“My friends and I did not pay much attention to it,” he recalled. “Of course, when we found out it was true, it was heartbreaking.”
Two decades later, he is not surprised by Cheung’s enduring legacy, comparing it to that of American pop legends Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, who also died unexpectedly in 1977 and 2009.
“Good music will always continue to live on,” he said.
