Stanley Fung Shui-fan, Hong Kong Cinema’s Deadpan Maestro Who As soon as Rode A ‘Bas Sekolah’, Dies At Eighty-One

Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter, or Telegram and WhatsApp channels for the newest tales and updates.

Stanley Fung Shui-fan, a veteran Hong Kong actor whose hangdog expression and impeccable timing made him one of many metropolis’s most beloved comedian performers, died this week on the age of eighty-one.

The information was confirmed on social media by fellow Hong Kong actor and director, Eric Tsang Chi-wai, who wrote, “Last night I received the tragic news that my dear friend Brother Fung had passed away. I am deeply saddened and heartbroken.”

To perceive Fung’s place in Hong Kong cinema is to know a selected second within the metropolis’s cultural historical past—the many years main as much as the 1997 handover to China—when the movie trade was much less an trade than an prolonged household reunion, and when comedy was the lingua franca of a inhabitants dealing with the anxieties of colonial life and an unsure future.

Fung, together with his deadpan supply and present for bodily comedy, grew to become an emblem of that period—a person who might make you snort just by standing nonetheless.

The “Bas Sekolah” Moment

Born in Guangdong, Fung got here of age throughout Hong Kong cinema’s golden period of the nineteen-eighties and nineties, when town’s studios have been churning out movies at a tempo that will make even Hollywood blush.

He appeared in dozens of films, together with “Her Fatal Ways” (精裝追女仔), usually enjoying what the trade referred to as a “cold-faced comedian”—a performer whose humour derived not from mugging or slapstick however from a type of studied impassivity.

It was a task that required a selected sort of self-discipline, and Fung mastered it so fully that he grew to become synonymous with the fashion.

He was finest recognized for his work within the “Lucky Stars” franchise—together with “My Lucky Stars” (五福星) and “Winners and Sinners” (福星高照)—and “The Best Friend” (最佳損友) sequence, ensemble comedies that captured the manic power of nineteen-eighties Hong Kong.

For older Malaysians, Fung will likely be remembered for a selected scene at Penang International Airport that has lived on in collective reminiscence: the yellow college bus sequence in “The Romancing Star” (精裝追女仔), during which he starred alongside Tsang, Chow Yun-fat, Chan Pak-Cheung, Wong Jing and Maggie Cheung.

The 1987 romantic comedy featured a visit to Malaysia, and the picture of Hong Kong stars cavorting round a “bas sekolah” because it passes by means of Gurney Drive—the distinctive yellow college buses that have been ubiquitous in Malaysian childhoods—grew to become an surprising level of delight.

The Last Laugh

In May, Fung posted on social media about his declining well being, revealing he had been hospitalised for greater than two months and was now depending on an oxygen machine.

“I’ve been in the hospital for two months and three days, everything feels numb,” he wrote, his physique visibly thinner within the accompanying {photograph}.

I’m out now, however my blood oxygen is inadequate, so I’ve to depend on an oxygen machine.

The publish had the matter-of-fact tone of somebody who had spent a lifetime delivering unhealthy information with a shrug.

Four days earlier than his dying, Fung wrote a tribute to Benz Hui Shiu-hung, one other Hong Kong actor who had just lately died: “Dear brother, wait for me over there. Your elder brother will follow soon.”

It was the type of line that, in certainly one of his films, would have been performed for laughs; in life, it turned out to be a prophecy.

Tsang, in his personal tribute, famous the eerie prescience: “Life is like morning dew! Rest in peace!”

READ MORE: [Watch] Hong Kong’s Most Cherished Supporting Star Hui Siu-hung Loses Cancer Battle At 76

Share your ideas with us through TRP’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Threads.