Tsang Shan Fung was a Teochew opera female lead from Chenghai, Guangdong, trained in Thailand's old Po Shun Heung troupe. When the Sun Tin Choi troupe began making films in 1960 she was invited to appear in Lu Lin Hui (1960), a To Ying production; she had been intended to play opposite Chan Chor-wai, but because she was older and looked more mature she was paired instead with Cheung Ying-yim, beginning a long association with the troupe. In Judge Bao Meets Empress Li (1961) she still played Chan Chor-wai's mother, but from The Phoenix Hairpin (1961) onwards the two became a lasting romantic pair, appearing together in The White Bone Beauty (1961), The Revenge (1962), Yan Lanzhen Breaks the Jade Vase (1962), The Jade Hairpin (1962), Liu Zhang Descends the Mountain (1962), The Peacock Flies Southeast (1962), Li Zichang Paints from Life (1963), Four Complaints (1964), The Real and Fake Golden Peony (1965) and Xue Dingshan and Fan Lihua, parts one and two (1967) — more than thirty dialect films in all. She usually played ill-fated tragic heroines and was popular with audiences who favoured sorrowful dramas, though she also showed delicate comic timing and, in Xue Dingshan and Fan Lihua, sustained sequences of martial action. When Chaozhou-dialect cinema faded after 1966 she remained the troupe's female lead on its tour of Thailand, again opposite Chan Chor-wai in The Jade Hairpin and The Emperor's Sister Liu Jinding.
Paired for years with the female male-lead Chan Chor-wai, Tsang became a fixture of the Sun Tin Choi troupe's films, creating a large gallery of tragic heroines across more than thirty Chaozhou-dialect pictures. After 1966 she toured with the troupe in Thailand, helping Teochew opera and dialect film persist among Thai Teochew communities.
Achievements
- 1960 · Appeared in Lu Lin Hui at the invitation of the Sun Tin Choi troupe
- 1961 · Co-starred with Chan Chor-wai in The Phoenix Hairpin, beginning a long romantic pairing
- 1967 · Co-starred with Chan Chor-wai in the two-part Xue Dingshan and Fan Lihua, which included martial action sequences