Joyce Chan, a native of Xinhui in Guangdong, was born in Hong Kong, studied in the foreign languages department of New Asia College and later toured the United States and Britain for further study. Back home she worked at an advertising agency and hosted music programmes on Commercial Radio Hong Kong and Radio Television Hong Kong, having earlier contributed to literary magazines and publications such as Hong Kong Movie News. Joining Television Broadcasts (TVB)'s publicity unit in 1973, she moved to its drama division as a screenwriter and scripted such series as Tea for Two, Hotel, A House Is Not a Home, Superstar Special, Social Worker, Seven Women and C.I.D., as well as Below the Lion Rock and Under the Same Roof for RTHK and a series for the Independent Commission Against Corruption. In 1978 she wrote Love Affair for Commercial Television and In Cold Blood for Rediffusion Television. She conceived the story and drafted the screenplay of Kuei Chih-hung's Ghost Eyes in 1974, and entered cinema in 1979, scripting The Servants (1979), The Secret (1979), No Big Deal (1980), The Spooky Bunch (1980), Love Massacre (1981) and Nomad (1982). That year she was invited to be a writer-in-residence under the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. In 1982 she worked on the post-production of Record of Blood, a documentary produced by her husband Lee Kwok-chung, and after writing Cherie in 1984 she moved to France, continuing to script the RTHK series Miracle of Orient. In the 1990s she completed Crossings (1994), Give & Take... Oh! Shit! (1994) and The Christ of Nanjing (1995). Also active in literature, with newspaper columns, serialised fiction and several books, she now lives in Canada.
Joyce Chan's television scripts such as Hotel and A House Is Not a Home helped set the narrative pattern of Hong Kong's long-form serials in the 1970s, while film scripts like The Secret and The Spooky Bunch became key texts of the Hong Kong New Wave. Her work across both television and cinema shaped later generations of Hong Kong screenwriters in their realist and genre explorations.
Achievements
- 1973 · Joined TVB's drama division as a screenwriter on long serials such as Hotel and A House Is Not a Home
- 1979 · Wrote The Secret, which with Ann Hui's debut helped open the Hong Kong New Wave
- 1984 · After scripting Cherie she moved to France, still writing the series Miracle of Orient