Lee Siu-wan, born Lee Bing-tat in 1916 in Xinhui, Guangdong, came from a scholarly family steeped in classical learning, Cantonese music and opera. Without formal training, he turned his literary grounding to writing Cantonese opera libretti. His first work, Returning Swallow, won the approval of the celebrated actor Sit Kok-sin and entered the repertoire of his Kok Sin Sing troupe, for which Lee went on to write The Stranger on a Lonely Road, Mother of the Flower Street, The Cuckoo's Soul in March and others. Among his many stage works were Rain and Wind Weeping for Ping-ji for Ho Fei-fan, Emperor Guangxu's Midnight Mourning for Sun-ma Sze-tsang, The Red and White Peony for Hung Sin-nui, The True and False Wu Pan-an for Yam Kim-fai, and The Crab Beauty for his wife, the opera star Yu Lai-zhen. Besides writing, he ran the Tai Fung Wong, Lai Si and Chung San Sing companies, the first built around Sit Kok-sin and Ma Si-tsang among others, Lai Si around Yu Lai-zhen, and Chung San Sing around Lam Ka-sing. From 1950 he turned to film screenwriting and by 1970 had written some 150 screenplays, many adapted from his own stage hits such as The Crab Beauty (1957) and Rain and Wind Weeping for Ping-ji (1963). Their palace-strife plots launched the headless-empress and Zhong Wuyan supernatural opera-film cycles. He founded the Yau Lee, Tai Fung Wong and Lai Si film companies; Lai Si alone released nearly a hundred pictures between 1959 and 1967, among them The Golden Phoenix Slays the Dragon (1961) and Dragon and Phoenix Vie for Command (1967), preserving traditional Cantonese opera staging and acrobatics, as well as modern-dress titles. He retired in the 1980s, emigrated to Canada with his family, and died in Toronto on 21 July 2002.
Combining playwright, troupe manager and producer, Lee Siu-wan was a vital bridge between Cantonese opera and Cantonese cinema in mid-twentieth-century Hong Kong. He brought many stage hits to the screen, preserving gems such as The Crab Beauty and Rain and Wind Weeping for Ping-ji on film. His Lai Si Film Company released nearly a hundred titles in eight years, safeguarding the traditional staging and acrobatics of the opera. The supernatural palace-film cycle he launched also shaped how later Cantonese films handled themes like the headless empress.
Achievements
- 1950 · Began writing for the cinema in 1950, accumulating about 150 screenplays over the following two decades.
- 1959 · Founded Lai Si Film Company in 1959 with Four Sons Visit Their Mother; it released nearly a hundred films between 1959 and 1967.
- 1967 · Lai Si released its last film, Sell, Pawn and Borrow, in 1967, after which he gradually withdrew from production.