Yam Wu-fa (1898–1978), a native of Renwei village in Foshan, Guangdong, wrote under the pen names Chow Pak-ping and Kam Nga-yi, and was a newspaperman, film critic, popular novelist, Cantonese opera playwright and film director active in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. As a young man he taught primary school in Foshan and was keen on the arts; his writing appeared in leading Guangzhou papers, and he was hired as a special contributor by the Sin Cheung and Yuet Wa papers and as a full-time literary-page editor of the Kwok Wa paper, which drew him to move to Guangzhou. Through the mid-1930s his work appeared widely in those papers as well as Kung Ping and Hong Kong's Wan Kau. He wrote librettos for Cantonese opera while also serialising popular fiction in the press, working in several roles at once. After Guangzhou fell in 1938 he moved south to Hong Kong, where he founded and ran the small papers Hung Luk Yat Po, Sin To and Jing Po, sustaining them by serialising his own long novels. He directed and wrote more than twenty films, mostly adventures, romances and detective stories, among them Big Battle with the Scheming Deep, Big Battle with the Glass Gang, Big Trouble in Mexico, Big Trouble in New York, Big Battle with the Chicago Gang, Crossing the Pacific, Smashing the Assassins and Blood Battle in Austria, matching the tastes of readers across Guangzhou and Hong Kong. His wife was the well-known dancer Zi Putao (Fung Chui-wa). Sharp-tongued in his writing, he once traded historical opera titles with the renowned playwright Nam Hoi Sap-sam-long, becoming a talking point in the region's cultural circles. He died in Hong Kong in 1978.
Yam Wu-fa straddled newspapers, fiction, Cantonese opera and film. His practice of serialising his own novels in his own papers illustrates how the Cantonese press and popular literature leaned on each other, and it left later readers a large body of adventure writing.
Achievements
- 1898 · Born in Renwei village, Foshan, Guangdong
- 1938 · Moved to Hong Kong after the fall of Guangzhou and founded the Hung Luk Yat Po, Sin To and Jing Po papers
- 1930–40年代 · Directed and wrote more than twenty films, including detective and adventure titles such as Big Battle with the Scheming Deep and Big Trouble in New York
- 1978 · Died in Hong Kong, leaving behind many serialised novels and Cantonese opera scripts