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By Peace | April 9, 2011
The legend of Anita Mui: Shining star’s lonely life“Instant shining is not eternity. Show business is a hard life. I wonder how many people will remember me after I leave the business for good. My hope is that when they feel bored and look at the stars in the sky, people will think of my name.” ~ Anita Mui
It was like watching a TV show, but it was not watching TV show. It was Hong Kong. I was watching a foreign place in Hong Kong, a place which I had never seen before. There was a circular ring with lamp posts (painted green). There were stairs leading to this elevated ring. Below this ring, the same stairs would led you to a pathway that would walk to the hotel/motel rooms. All throughout this ‘dream show’, I laid on the bed, but ‘watching a show’. I was not in the dream at all! It was indeed a strange phenomenon and first time I had such a ‘dream’.
It was about Anita Mui! The scene focused on the ring. I did not get to see the faces of the ‘cast’ well, or they were vague. But it was being ‘told’ who were these people and the ‘storyline’ as well. So sitting on one of the bench at the ring was a woman, the mother of Anita Mui…. surprisingly, these woman(the mother, but not really the ‘real’ mother) were sitting at the bench and it was Anita Mui’s job to ‘entertain’ her for ONE HOUR when her FATHER finally came to the hotel/motel room at the LOWER FLOOR. This was the FIRST TIME that Anita Mui would talk to this woman, her ‘mother’. Never in her life, had she wanted to speak to this woman… But this time, her purpose in talking to this woman was to prevent her from walking back to the hotel/motel room.
In the hotel/motel room, it was the father who had come. I never get to see the hotel/motel room at all. It was like a ‘silent narrator’ exposing the details of the scenes so that I know what exactly I was ‘watching’. The father seemed to be having two wives then! It is a case about illegitimate child. The father, though I did not see, but in my mind, it was someone dressed in black, the kind of Chinese Gong Fu Master would wear. In the room, it got to be the ‘other woman’…
That was all about this special ‘HONG KONG Play’. I am not a fanatic who follows idols. I did not follow or even trace the lives of Anita Mui though I like some of her songs. To know more about a person, I would check up Wikipedia. At Wikipedia, you would see what people know about Anita Mui. Surprisingly, little was known about her family. Listed as her parents were only the name of her mother:Tam Mei-kam (mother), who had contested her will — In 2008, the mother of Mui, Tam Mei-kam, aged 84, contested the will. Anita Mui’s estate was estimated to be worth HK$100 million. Tam was a beneficiary under the will, to the sum of HK$70,000 per month, for life. Tam argued that Anita was mentally unfit when she executed her will in 2003, weeks before her death from cancer. The High Court ruled that Mui was of sound mind when she signed the will, and that Mui simply did not trust her mother on managing money.
Anita Mui Yim-fong (10 October 1963 – 30 December 2003) was a popular Hong Kong singer and actress. During her prime years she made major contributions to the cantopop music scene, while receiving numerous awards and honours. She remained an idol throughout most of her career, and was generally regarded as a cantopop diva. Mui once held a sell-out concert at Hammersmith, London, England, where she was dubbed the “Madonna of Asia“. That title has stayed with her throughout her career, and has been used as a comparison for both Eastern and Western media.
In the 1980s the gangtai style of music was revolutionised by her wild dancing and femininity on stage. She was famous for having outrageous costumes and also high powered performances.Her fanbase reached far beyond Hong Kong, and into many parts of Asia including Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia as well as the overseas market. In the Hong Kong entertainment industry where stars often come and go, Mui was able to remain a major star in the spotlight for 20 years. Her career only came to a stop in 2003 when she was suddenly diagnosed with cervical cancer, dying at the early age of 40. Even so, her music and film legacy continues to live on. Her success reached well beyond that of the entertainment circle with humanitarian work, donations and charities that played a major role in helping society even well into the present day.
Early years
Anita Mui experienced many hardships and difficulties in her childhood. She was the youngest daughter of a family with five children. She had an older sister, Ann Mui, who was also a singer. Her father died when she was only five years old, thus Mui and her siblings were raised in a single parent family. At an early age she had to help provide for her siblings, dropping out of school to do so. Other hardships follow in her family as her mother ran a bar, which had also been burnt down. To make a living, Anita herself, first entered show business at the age of five. She performed Chinese operas and pop songs in theatres and the streets. Both Anita and her older sister Ann Mui basically performed in any night club that offered them a chance to make a living.
It made a lot of sense to me, as Anita Mui was the extremely poor girl, who started to work at four at an amusement park to help make ends meet and because she was blessed with a voice and an ability to steal hearts. She climbed a hard ladder and made her a star.
She often referred to herself as “unbeautiful,” and that her regret was she was, “uneducated,” and “did not have much schooling.” I wish she didn’t. We loved her regardless, Anita was a reflection and heroine for the underclass and the plain over looked, weird girls and boys everywhere. I for one is of the later.
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