Naam Hoi Sap Saam Long (1910 – 1984), born Jiang Yuliu and also known as Jiang Feng, came from Zhangcha in Nanhai, Guangdong, and was a leading Cantonese-opera and film librettist of Republican China. He was the thirteenth son of Jiang Kongyin, a late-Qing scholar-official known as the Jiang taishi whose family was famed in Guangdong and Hong Kong for its refined cuisine; his mother, a maid in the household, died soon after his birth. Raised in Guangzhou, he went to Hong Kong to study medicine at the University of Hong Kong but left his studies to follow a lover to Shanghai and, caught by the January 28 Incident, could not return, turning instead to the theatre. In 1930 he wrote Sam Sing Lui Ying for Sit Kok-sin's Kok Sin Sing troupe; performed by Sit himself, it became a celebrated provincial and Hong Kong hit and made his name as a leading librettist, while Hung Fan Kam Gwo was staged the same year. He went on to write Yin Ching Heung, Qin Huai Yue, Jyun Kwai Jan Mei Kwai and other plays with Sit, elegant in language and intricate in plot, and he helped shape the young Tong Tik-sang, the future master of Cantonese opera. During the war he wrote anti-Japanese plays in Hong Kong and in 1940 joined Kwan Tak-hing's resistance troupe in Shaoguan at the invitation of the Guangdong governor Li Hanhun; after Shaoguan fell in 1945 he led the troupe to Heping county and kept performing until Japan's surrender. In his later years he drifted and suffered mental illness, at times staying in Castle Peak Hospital. He died in Hong Kong in 1984, and his extraordinary life became a stage play and film, The Mad Phoenix (1997), written by Raymond To, directed by Clifton Ko and starring Tse Kwan-ho.
One of the brightest Cantonese-opera librettists of the 1930s, he wrote elegant, widely admired scripts and mentored Tong Tik-sang; his dramatic life later inspired the stage play and film The Mad Phoenix, restaged and screened many times over, making him a fixture of Hong Kong cultural memory.
Achievements
- 1930 · Wrote Sam Sing Lui Ying for the Kok Sin Sing troupe, a hit that made his name as a Cantonese-opera librettist.
- 1940 · Joined Kwan Tak-hing's resistance Cantonese-opera troupe in Shaoguan as a librettist at the invitation of Guangdong governor Li Hanhun.
- 1997 · His life was adapted by Raymond To into a stage play and film, The Mad Phoenix, directed by Clifton Ko and starring Tse Kwan-ho.