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Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter, or Telegram and WhatsApp channels for the latest stories and updates. Stanley Fung Shui-fan, a veteran Hong Kong actor whose hangdog expression and impeccable timing made him one of the city’s most beloved comic performers, died this week at the age of eighty-one. The news was confirmed on social media by fellow Hong Kong actor and director, Eric Tsang Chi-wai, who wrote, “Last night I received the tragic news that my dear friend Brother Fung had passed away. I am deeply saddened and heartbroken.” To understand Fung’s place in Hong Kong cinema is to understand a particular moment in the city’s cultural history—the decades leading up to the 1997 handover to China—when the film industry was less an industry than an extended family reunion, and when comedy was the lingua franca of a population facing the anxieties of colonial life and an uncertain future. Fung, with his deadpan delivery and gift for physical comedy, became an emblem of that era—a man who could make you laugh simply by standing still. The “Bas Sekolah” Moment Born in Guangdong, Fung came of age during Hong Kong cinema’s golden era of the nineteen-eighties and nineties, when the city’s studios were churning out films at a pace that would make even Hollywood blush. He appeared in dozens of movies, including “Her Fatal Ways” (精裝追女仔), often playing what the industry called a “cold-faced comedian”—a performer whose humour derived not from mugging or slapstick but from a kind of studied impassivity. It was a role that required a particular type of discipline, and Fung mastered it so completely that he became synonymous with the style. He was best known for his work in the “Lucky Stars” franchise—including “My Lucky Stars” (五福星) and “Winners and Sinners” (福星高照)—and “The Best Friend” (最佳損友) series, ensemble comedies that captured the manic energy of nineteen-eighties Hong Kong. For older Malaysians, Fung will be remembered for a particular scene at Penang International Airport that has lived on in collective memory: the yellow school bus sequence in “The Romancing Star” (精裝追女仔), in which he starred alongside Tsang, Chow Yun-fat, Chan Pak-Cheung, Wong Jing and Maggie Cheung. The 1987 romantic comedy featured a trip to Malaysia, and the image of Hong Kong stars cavorting around a “bas sekolah” as it passes through Gurney Drive—the distinctive yellow school buses that were ubiquitous in Malaysian childhoods—became an unexpected point of pride. The Last Laugh In May, Fung posted on social media about his declining health, revealing he had been hospitalised for more than two months and was now dependent on an oxygen machine. “I’ve been in the hospital for two months and three days, everything feels numb,” he wrote, his body visibly thinner in the accompanying photograph. I’m out now, but my blood oxygen is insufficient, so I have to rely on an oxygen machine. The post had the matter-of-fact tone of someone who had spent a lifetime delivering bad news with a shrug. Four days before his death, Fung wrote a tribute to Benz Hui Shiu-hung, another Hong Kong actor who had recently died: “Dear brother, wait for me over there. Your elder brother will follow soon.” It was the kind of line that, in one of his movies, would have been played for laughs; in life, it turned out to be a prophecy. Tsang, in his own tribute, noted the eerie prescience: “Life is like morning dew! Rest in peace!” READ MORE: [Watch] Hong Kong’s Most Cherished Supporting Star Hui Siu-hung Loses Cancer Battle At 76 Share your thoughts with us via TRP’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Threads.
