Latest news with #HongKongPop
South China Morning Post
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How Hong Kong singer-actress Karen Mok went from Stephen Chow's co-star to Mandopop queen
This is the 54th instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades. Advertisement Karen Mok Man-wai is one of Hong Kong's more internationally acclaimed stars. However, it is in the nearby Mandarin-speaking places that she has enjoyed greater success. Despite growing up in a city where the majority speak Cantonese, she has released 13 Mandarin albums – the most of any woman singer who debuted in Hong Kong – and has spent the better part of the past decade touring in mainland China. Mok was born in Hong Kong as Karen Joy Morris. She is of Chinese, Welsh, German and Persian descent, and comes from an academic family. Mok at an interview with the Post in 1996. Photo: Jon Hargest Her grandfather was one of the first principals at the prestigious King's College school for boys in Sai Ying Pun. Mok herself studied at another distinguished establishment, the Diocesan Girls' School, where she was active in drama groups and school plays. Advertisement In the 1985/86 school year, at about age 16, Mok was one of 10 girls who won the first Hong Kong Outstanding Students Award, given to secondary school students across the city for academic, extracurricular and community-service achievements.
South China Morning Post
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong singer-actor Julian Cheung's career from Cantopop to TV to police movie regular
This is the 51st instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades. Born in Hong Kong in 1971 to a mother who as a beauty queen won the city's 1962 Miss Exhibition Pageant, actor Julian Cheung Chi-lam once said he was a 'pretty rough guy from an ordinary family'. His extended family has no shortage of entertainers, though – his maternal uncle, Charlie Cho Cha-lee, is an actor known for his soft porn film roles, while his cousin Anna Ueyama was an actress before she switched to working in insurance. Cheung's parents separated when he was a child and, when he was 16, he and his father moved to Sydney, Australia. In 1990, Cheung was introduced to a talent manager through Ueyama while he was visiting Hong Kong during a summer holiday. Julian Cheung at a fundraising event in 1994. Photo: SCMP In November 1991 Cheung debuted as a singer, releasing Modern Love Story – his first duet album – with actress and singer Maple Hui Chau-yi. His first solo album, Make Me Happy, came out in October 1992.
