Yank Wong was born in Hong Kong in 1955 to a family from Mei County, Guangdong. In 1973 he went to France to study art and from 1975 to 1979 majored in oil painting at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, also taking a course in screen printing. He returned to Hong Kong at the end of 1979, became design editor of the magazine City Entertainment and held painting exhibitions. In the early 1980s, at the invitation of director Wong Chi, he was art director on the latter's debut feature (1981), entering the film industry and going on to handle art work on films including Fa Sat (1982), Hong Kong, Hong Kong (1983) and Long Arm of the Law (1984). In the mid-1980s he worked freelance for D&B on films such as Devoted to You (1986), favouring restrained art direction that served the story, and he handled the Hong Kong interiors of An Autumn's Tale (1987) as well as set design on two other D&B pictures. For The Lunatics (1986) he won Best Art Direction at the 6th Hong Kong Film Awards; other nominations for the same award included Painted Faces (1988), Beyond the Sunset (1989), Summer Snow (1995), Eighteen Springs (1997), Besieged City (2008) and Jiang Hu (2004), on which he was production designer. In the early 1990s he co-wrote the screenplay of Cageman (1992), winning Best Screenplay at the 12th Hong Kong Film Awards. Beyond painting he has kept writing; his essay collection, published in 1998, won the prose prize at the 5th Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature. He is a member of the band Mini Noise and has played live accompaniment for silent films. In 2018 Angie Chen made a documentary about him.
Moving from design editor at City Entertainment into film, Wong became known for restrained art direction that served the story, winning a Hong Kong Film Award for The Lunatics. A painter and writer as well, he won a literature prize for his essays, making him one of the few Hong Kong film workers to move fluently between art, writing and music.
Achievements
- 1986 · Won Best Art Direction at the 6th Hong Kong Film Awards for The Lunatics.
- 1992 · Co-wrote the Cageman screenplay, winning Best Screenplay at the 12th Hong Kong Film Awards.
- 1998 · Published his essay collection, winning the prose prize at the 5th Biennial Awards for Chinese Literature.