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  • Walter's Blog.
  • Home
  • Introduction
  • About Walter
    • 1980 Joining Up - Grafton Street >
      • Arrival and First Impressions
      • First Week
      • Training
      • Passing Out
    • Yaumati Cowboy >
      • Getting on the Streets
      • Tempo of the City
      • Jumpers, pill poppers and the indoor BBQ
      • Into a Minefield.
    • Why Tango in Paris, when you can Foxtrot in Kowloon? >
      • Baptism By Fire
      • Kai Tak with Mrs Thatcher.
      • Home; The Boy Returns
  • 1984 - 1986
    • PTU Instructor & Getting Hitched
    • Having a go: SDU
    • Starting a Chernobyl family
    • EOD - Don't touch anything
    • Semen Stains and the rules
  • 1987 to 1992 - Should I Stay or Go?
    • Blue Lights, Sirens & Grenades
    • Drugs, Broken Kids & A Plane Crash
    • 600 Happy Meals Please!
    • Hong Kong's Best Insurance
    • Riding the Iron Horse
  • Crime in Hong Kong
    • Falling Crime Rates - Why?
    • Triads
  • History of Hong Kong Policing
    • History 1841 to 1941
    • History 1945 to 1967
    • Anatomy of the 50 cent Riot - 1966
    • The Fall of a Commissioner.
    • History 1967 to 1980
    • Three Wise Men from the West
    • The Blue Berets.
    • The African Korps and other tribes.
    • Getting About - Transport.
    • A Pub in every station
    • Bullshit Bingo & Meetings
    • Godber - The one who nearly got away.
    • Uncle Ho
  • Top 20 Films
    • 2001 - A Space Odyssey.
    • The Godfather.
    • Blade Runner
    • Kes
    • Star Wars
    • Aliens
    • Ferris Bueller's Day Off
    • The Life of Brian
    • Dr Strangelove.
    • Infernal Affairs
    • Bridge on the River Kwai.
    • This Is Spinal Tap.
    • Chung King Express
    • An Officer and a Gentleman
    • PTU
    • Contact
    • Saving Private Ryan
    • Family Guy Star Wars
    • Zulu
    • Hard Day's Night
  • The Long Read
    • New World Order - Something is going on!
    • How The Walls Come Down
    • War in Ukraine - the narrative and other stuff.
    • The Hidden Leader
    • The Big Game
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Walter's Blog

"But how can you live and have no story to tell?" Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Reflections on recent events, plus the occasional fact free rant unfiltered by rational argument. 

"If you want to read a blog to get a sense of what is going on in Hong Kong these days or a blog that would tell you what life was like living in colonial Hong Kong, this blog, WALTER'S BLOG, fits the bill."  Hong Kong Blog Review

29/12/2021 0 Comments

Anita - An Allegory for Hong Kong

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"Undoubtedly the emotive stuff hit the right notes with audiences seeking to remember a lost Hong Kong"
This movie is a highly sentimental, sanitised and somewhat truncated account of Anita Mui's life. I saw her perform a couple of times and know the dodgy 1980s nightclubs she worked with her sister in Yaumati.

First off, the lead actress, the largely unknown Louise Wong, is superb. She captures Anita's pathos, although her voice is markedly different. Also, the film is a journey through the monumental changes Hong Kong experienced in the 1980s, 1990, and 2000s.

Recreating long-gone settings, such as the Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park, captures a time and place that anchors the life of Hong Kongers from that era. With Jordan Road street scenes, Dai Pai Dongs and the trams making the turn outside the Lee Theatre, I had a tear in my eye.

Along the way, original footage of her iconic performances comes cleverly intermingled to give the film an authentic feel.

The movie's leitmotif is Anita's many failed relationships, her friendship with Leslie Cheung and her overwhelming tenacity to succeed. In the end, she foregoes love to marry the stage, appearing in a wedding dress for her final performance.

Although, in truth, there is another Anita Mui story to be told, and while this film alludes to it, they didn't opt to explore the deep triad links that controlled the entertainment business. The infamous slapping incident is covered, but the fall-out of two murders and a brewing triad war gets breezily ignored.

Likewise, the role of Anita's family as the film only focuses on her sister. Whitewashed from the story are her mother and brothers. That's another story. I guess the nasty family stuff and complications of intersecting on the fringes of the criminal underworld would change the tone of movie.

Anyway, I enjoyed the stroll down memory lane. Also, describing Anita as the 'Madonna of the East' is far from the truth. She was a much more talented singer than Madonna and a better actress.

Undoubtedly the emotive stuff hit the right notes with audiences seeking to remember a lost Hong Kong; that yearning for the past is especially evident after the self-destruction of 2019.

Thus, I can do no better than leave you with the lyrics of 'Song of the Setting Sun', her signature song and final performance on 15 November 2003. Cancer took her 45 days later.

In many ways the movie makers have given us an allegory of Hong Kong and this could be the anthem.


The setting sun seems limitless, yet it’s radiance doesn’t last
Gradually dispersing with the crimson clouds
It glows, fades and doesn’t return.

As months and years pass,
Life’s upheavals are hard to endure
Clouds gather and scatter, tangled in weary twists of fortune

​Along the endless road, suddenly aware of a fading life
After all, happiness is brief and won’t return
Who has seen that my dreams are ordinary?​

Having weathered so much wind and rain
I stagger towards my hopes and dreams
Having met your sincere shoulder and arm
Which carried me through my suffering

Rushing through the prime of life, my heart is dispirited
The road ahead is full of twists and turns
I want to go back one day, but it is too late.


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    Walter De Havilland was one of the last of the colonial coppers. He served 35 years in the Royal Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong Police Force. He's long retired. 

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