What Kills Us This Week

This week HK is very cross that, "just like Princess Diana", their most famous Cantonese opera star, Chan, was killed by paparazzi.

Of course it was nothing like a chase through a tunnel or anything big and dramatic like that. Chan had just done an entire opera and was 'paped' at the stage door, returned home, said she wasn't feeling well, went to bed and just died.

"Those reporters are to blame." everyone is now saying.

She was 98 years old, folks, however no one appears to be taking it into consideration. 

And everyone is now mourning the passing of A Golden Age of their own home-grown art form. Well, that Golden Age went on for a long, long time!

Oh, and reading through her Obits, I also find it astonishing that she was once a little orphan baby in Mainland China who was found and adopted - adopted!!! - by two of HK's greatest opera singers ... and she went on to become the greatest Cantonese opera singer who's ever existed.  Fortuitous, huh! In fact, way, way, way too fortuitous! I suspect there's something here we're not being told.  Like, what exactly did daddy get up to with another opera singer who wasn't his wife? 

And it's astonishing to me just how old famous Hong Kongers get and how long they continue to work. Like Run Run Shaw continues to run Shaw Brothers Films to this day and he's like ... let me check:

Lordy, Sir Run Run was born in 1907.  He's 103.  And he's still running his company. Amazing, huh!

And Stanley Ho. Let's see how old he is?  Born in 1921, so only 89. Not quite so amazing, but to be still heading up his enormous gambling empire is some going.

But still, for Chan to still have been doing opera at her age - and some of those plays last five hours - is truly astonishing so I think that HK shouldn't be throwing around blame this way.  Sure, a dozen or so reporters crowding out such an old lady wasn't a kindness, but I think, all in all, Chan has died exactly the way she would have wanted to.

Chan, RIP!