Photo: Weibo

 Chinese netizens are flooding to social media platforms to mourn the death of Richard Ng Man-tat, a veteran actor in the Hong Kong film industry who had worked with Hong Kong actor and director Stephen Chow in a series of comedy films and vividly interpreted the happiness and sorrow of life with a number of classic characters. 

Ng died of liver cancer at the age of 70 on Saturday afternoon. Hong Kong media reported that earlier on Saturday, his condition suddenly turned critical and he fell into a coma and was transferred to the ICU for medical treatment. 

“Uncle Richard, you have left us with so much fun and we will never forget you. Please rest in peace,” a large number of fans left such a message under his Sina Weibo account. 

The last Weibo he posted was “I am a Chinese,” reposting a campaign launched by state media on safeguarding the Five-Starred Red Flag, China’s national flag, on August 4, 2019, when violent protesters in Hong Kong removed a Chinese national flag and threw it in Victoria Harbor, enraging locals as well as people from the Chinese mainland. 

The post is frozen on his Weibo page, just as his life was frozen at that moment, making his fans’ cries even more louder. 

Hong Kong superstars like Andy Lau, Stephen Chow as well as many others from the mainland and the island of Taiwan expressed their deep grief over his death. 

Dubbed a “golden supporting actor,” Ng impressed audiences with many “nobody” characters and was acknowledged as one of the most accomplished actors in Hong Kong. Born in 1951 in Xiamen, East China’s Fujian Province, he moved to Hong Kong when he was seven. Working with his good partner Stephen Chow, they created a genre of slapstick comedy unique to Hong Kong –mo lei tau films (in direct translation: senseless or brainless films). 

They starred in a Hong Kong TVB television series called The Final Combat in 1989, and also the popular 1990 film All for the Winner, where he played the role of Chow’s uncle. From then on, the two collaborated in numerous mo lei tau films that broke Hong Kong box-office charts in the 1990s, bringing the glories of Hong Kong film to the mainland and deeply influencing the Chinese generation of the 1960s to 1990s.  

“This is a world full of farewells, but we are still not good at saying goodbye,” many netizens said. “Uncle Richard was the best memory of our childhood who made us laugh, cry but enlightened us to reflect on life when growing older. It is hard to believe he is gone.” 

What left people with the freshest memory was his performance in the Chinese science-fiction blockbuster, The Wandering Earth, in 2019. In previous interviews, he admitted that shooting this film was one of the toughest days he had ever been through and he could not believe that the script was written by the Chinese. He said he wanted to make some contributions to China’s sci-fi film industry. 

Global Times