Fong Siu Yeung, also known by the stage name Fong Mo-sang, came from the traditional large opera companies and was a seasoned performer specialising in the chou role, the male clown. From 1962 he appeared in Chaozhou-dialect opera films with the Sun Tin Choi troupe and, thanks to his solid training and polished acting, quickly became a leading player, taking part in almost all the films the troupe made for Man Sing Film Company, Luen Yau and Chiu Ngai after 1962. As a clown he most often played greedy, lustful villains - lechers and dissolute idlers who used power and trickery to seize other men's wives - in films such as The Phoenix Hairpin (1961), The Jade Hairpin (1962), Liu Yuniang (1963), Seeking a Husband's Bones Across Ten Thousand Miles (1964), The Strange Twin Meeting (1965) and Hai Rui Dismissed from Office (1967); he played corrupt officials in Four Complaints (1964) and Uncle Crows, Sister-in-law Wronged (1965). His largest and finest part was one of a pair of escorts opposite Cheung Yam-kwai in Shuang Qi Jie (1965), moving from bluster and greed through panic to reform with telling detail. He was also a gifted comic, playing a matchmaker in drag who teaches Chan Chor-wai to act like a woman in The Teochew Female Scholar (1962) and a loyal magistrate disguised as a blind fortune-teller in the 1968 sequel The Golden Cassock, Part Two. He occasionally appeared in dialect films for other studios such as Thai Lan and Kong Wah, and made more than thirty in all. He worked in a distinctive corner of Hong Kong cinema: more than 160 Chaozhou-dialect films were made in the city during the 1960s, mostly for Chaozhou emigrant audiences in Singapore, Malaya and Thailand, for whom films in their native tongue were both entertainment and emotional relief, yet the genre drew almost no notice locally. As a supporting clown, Fong helped hold that forgotten film industry together.
As a clown, Fong Siu Yeung anchored the supporting cast of the Sun Tin Choi troupe's Chaozhou-dialect films, usually as corrupt officials or lecherous villains, with his turn as one of a pair of escorts in Shuang Qi Jie (1965) regarded as his finest. Adept at comedy and drag roles, he kept alive the genre's traditions of clowning within a film industry made mainly for Chaozhou emigrants in Southeast Asia.
Achievements
- 1961 · Appeared in The Phoenix Hairpin, beginning a long association with the Sun Tin Choi troupe
- 1965 · Took a leading clown part as one of a pair of escorts opposite Cheung Yam-kwai in a 1965 film
- 1968 · Appeared in a 1968 dialect sequel