Chan Yik-ching was born Chan Yuk-shu in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, on 19 March 1907 and grew up in Shanghai. He made his directing debut in 1933 with a picture co-directed with Yang Kung-leung, scripted by his elder brother Chan Chi-ching. In 1935, introduced by Yang Xiaozhong, he joined Hsin Hwa Film Company as an assistant director; he left briefly in 1937 to make wartime documentary films, then returned to direct such pictures as Bloody Tears in the Dancing Hall (1938) and Three Swordsmen (1939), also serving as unit and production manager and becoming a trusted aide to the studio head Zhang Shankun. Moving from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 1950, he directed many Mandarin films, including A Staff of Green (1951), a 1952 film co-directed with Tu Guangqi, and Spring Returns to the World (1954). From the mid-1950s he turned to Amoy-dialect cinema, directing more than fifty such films, beginning with Quanzhou's Sisters-in-Law Tower (1956) for Kiu Yau, and was hired as chief director by Yick Shing, for which he made around ten titles; he also made films for several other companies and reached his peak output in 1959 with nineteen titles in a single year. More than twenty of his Amoy films were co-directed with Chan Lit. He also directed many Chaozhou-dialect films, from the early Feng the Magistrate Mourns Yue Rong (1958) to opera films such as Lo Lam Wui (1960), Sweeping the Window (1961) and The White Fan (1962). After directing Yu Mei Niang in 1963 he withdrew from Chaozhou cinema. In all he directed more than ninety films, about eighty of them made in Hong Kong, making him one of the territory's most prolific directors. As Chaozhou films faded in the early 1960s he joined Shaw Brothers as studio manager, retiring in the mid-1970s. He died in Hong Kong on 5 April 1987.
About eighty of Chan Yik-ching's films were made in Hong Kong, the great majority of them Amoy- and Chaozhou-dialect pictures, making him a mainstay of the territory's dialect-film industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Working for studios such as Yick Shing and Man Sing, he transferred a great deal of Chaozhou and Amoy opera to the screen, leaving a substantial record of a nearly vanished branch of Hong Kong cinema.
Achievements
- 1933 · Made his directing debut, co-directing Brothers' Blood with Yang Kung-leung.
- 1956 · Directed his first Amoy-dialect film, Quanzhou's Sisters-in-Law Tower.
- 1963 · After directing Yu Mei Niang he left Chaozhou cinema and later joined Shaw Brothers as studio manager.