Lee Ching was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1912, his original name Lee Hon-ching, a native of Dongguan in Guangdong and known as the 'Iron Man of the Silver Screen'. He entered films in 1934, and after training at the actors' school run by Star Motion Pictures in Shanghai appeared in Bible for Girls (1934) and The New and Old Shanghai (1936). Moving to Lianhua in 1937, he took the lead in one episode of Lianhua Symphony (1937) and starred in such pictures as A Pearl in the Sea (1937). When war with Japan broke out he settled in Hong Kong, making his local debut in The Flirtatious Girl (1938) and starring in Blood-stained Baoshan City (1938) and Orphan Island Paradise (1939). During the occupation he toured resistance areas with a Chinese drama troupe, and after the war returned to Hong Kong for the Cantonese Iron Guts (1947) and the Mandarin Autumn Waters (1947). His 1950s work includes the Cantonese classics Blood of the Pearl River (1950) and Kaleidoscope (1950), as well as Mandarin pictures for Longma such as The Wall Between (1952) and Between Fire and Water (1955). In 1952 he was one of twenty-one partners who founded Union Film Enterprise, for which he appeared in films including A Light on the Sea of Woe (1953) and Thunderstorm (1954). In the late 1950s he also starred for Feng Huang and Sun Luen in The Whole Family (1955) and Who Is the Murderer (1957), and for the Overseas Chinese company in Thunderstorm (1957). He kept working through the 1960s and 70s, appearing in more than a hundred films before retiring in the late 1970s on health grounds. Lee Ching died on 14 July 2000.
Known as the 'Iron Man of the Silver Screen', Lee trained at Shanghai's Star studio and put down roots in Hong Kong after the war, starring in Cantonese classics such as Blood of the Pearl River and co-founding Union Film Enterprise, making him a mainstay of the 1950s golden age of Cantonese cinema.
Achievements
- 1934 · Trained at the Star Motion Pictures actors' school in Shanghai and made his debut in Bible for Girls
- 1950 · Starred in the Cantonese classic Blood of the Pearl River
- 1952 · Was one of twenty-one co-founders of Union Film Enterprise