Ng Chak was a craftsman and colourist who loved Chaozhou opera long before he faced a camera. In the late 1950s and early 1960s large numbers of Teochew people moved to Hong Kong, creating an audience for Teochew-dialect films, most of them adapted from operatic repertoire and carried by singing performers. It was in this setting that Ng was spotted by the Dongshan Chaozhou Music and Drama Society and taken on as a regular player, specialising in laosheng (old male) roles and known for a full, ringing voice. His screen debut came in 1961 in a Teochew-language film co-directed by Law Chi and Hsi Kin, followed that same year by Birthday Greetings and Princess Chang Ping, in which he played the Chongzhen Emperor. Further parts followed in 1962, and by 1965 he had appeared in more than thirty Teochew-dialect features, most of them produced by Tung Shan Film. Teochew films were typically small-scale and quickly made, built on tales of loyalty, villainy and folk legend, and his old-man persona suited such material. From 1963 he also acted for other companies, including Man Sing's Hai Rui and the Post-station Girl (1963) and Wing Wah's The Lantern Riddle (1964) and Xiangzi Bridge (1965). After Hong Kong's Teochew-dialect cinema faded around 1965 he left the screen. He toured Thailand several times with Dongshan and in 1969 joined the Sing Ngai Teochew Opera Troupe, performing across Southeast Asia and carrying the opera to overseas Chinese communities. His work belongs squarely to 1960s Hong Kong Teochew cinema, tracing how a stage tradition moved onto film and then travelled with migration.
Ng Chak worked consistently in the old-male (laosheng) line. His long association with Dongshan Film carried Chaozhou opera from stage to screen, and his later tours with opera troupes to Thailand and Southeast Asia trace both the rise and the decline of 1960s Hong Kong Teochew-dialect cinema.
Achievements
- 1961 · Made his screen debut in the 1961 Teochew-dialect film directed by Law Chi and Hsi Kin.
- 1962 · Played Emperor Chongzhen in the Teochew opera film Princess Chang Ping.
- 1965 · By 1965 he had appeared in more than thirty Teochew-dialect films, most of them produced by Tung Shan Film.