From praising Andy Lau to praising Jiang Tao, Leung Ka-fai's words exposed the current situation of the Hong Kong entertainment industry
How crazy are Hong Kong's top stars? The actor Leung Jiahui had to go around when he saw it.
Between the lines, Leung Ka-fai inadvertently showed his emotion at the changes of the times.
In the past, no one would make a fuss about Hong Kong stars running all over the streets, but now a traffic star who can't get mixed up in the mainland runs to Hong Kong, and Causeway Bay can't wait to change its name to Jiang Tao Bay, and the actor has to go around when he sees it.
From leading the Chinese entertainment trend, to picking up the mainland to play the rest of the trend is even inferior to the mainland, the Hong Kong entertainment industry - seeing him rise high, watching him banquet guests, seeing his building collapse.
Why did Hong Kong entertainment, which was once popular, fall into this situation? To know the answer to this question, we must start with what Hong Kong Entertainment relies on.
In the thirties and forties of the last century, Chinese mainland fell into the long War of Resistance Against Japan, and the fall of Shanghai and Peiping one after another, causing the entire Chinese world to lose its cultural center, and a large number of people from the literary and artistic circles poured into the last refuge - Hong Kong.
Among them, there are two middle-aged people: Yu Zhanyuan, a famous actor in Peking Opera in Beiping, and Shao Zuiwen, the owner of Shanghai Tianyi Film Studio.
You may not have heard of them, but you must have seen their "works", Chinese movie masterpieces - Hong Kong action movies.
The former is the ancestor of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung's first generation of martial arts in Hong Kong, while the latter is the brother of "Shaw Pictures", the founder of TVB TV and Run Run Shaw.
Therefore, Hong Kong's original cultural and entertainment power was not at all "relying on itself" as some Hong Kong people said, but was jointly built with the efforts of 40,000 compatriots.
Therefore, in the early years of TVB film and television dramas, you can see many actors speaking Shanghainese, not deliberately, but because the actors are originally Shanghainese.
However, if the entertainment industry wants to develop, in addition to the accumulation of talents, a relaxed social environment is also essential.
After the fifties, everyone understood that Taiwan Province also entered a 38-year period of martial law, and looking at the two sides of the strait and three places, Hong Kong once again became the only open window for the Chinese world, and the landmark event was Bruce Lee's success.
In 1959, 19-year-old Bruce Lee came to San Francisco from Hong Kong, and after a period of study, successfully signed a contract with the American film and television giant - Twentieth Century Fox.
50 years after its founding, Hollywood finally welcomed the global superstar belonging to Chinese for the first time, and the "kung fu culture" from the Eastern world gained global influence for the first time.
In the 80s, Hong Kong entertainment, which experienced 30 years of accumulation, finally ushered in the era of blowout of excellent works.
In 83, Andy Lau debuted, and the TV series "The Condor Heroes" won the ratings championship that year;
In 85, Jacky Cheung debuted, and the sales of his first album "Smile" exceeded 200,000;
In 86, Liming debuted and won the third place in the Hong Kong Rookie Singing Competition;
In 90, Kwok Fucheng debuted, and the album "Can't Finish Loving You" sold more than one million in Asia.
When the four heavenly kings were assembled, the most golden years of Hong Kong entertainment arrived.
To what extent was Hong Kong entertainment at that time? Leslie Cheung was called Little Fresh Meat for ten years; The king of comedy, Stephen Chow, ran for seven years before he survived.
If you still don't have a concept, at the "Hong Kong Forget-Me Performance" in 1991, more than 500 big names in the entertainment industry in Hong Kong gathered together through satellite television, covering 2.7 billion people in 48 countries around the world, and performed for a full seven hours, just to donate to the disaster relief performances in East China.
Its scale and luxury are unprecedented.
The question is, from movies to television, from the literary world to the music world, why can so many entertainment stars be born in small Hong Kong?
The answer is in the times.
In 1978, the mainland announced reform and opening up, and in 1987, martial law ended in Taiwan.
Hong Kong entertainment capital suddenly found that the huge entertainment gap in the Chinese world was waiting for them to fill.
There are talents, accumulation, and more markets, so Hong Kong, with a population of less than 10 million, has cultivated a cultural and entertainment industry far beyond its size.
But Hong Kong cannot always occupy advanced productive forces, and it is too small compared to the Chinese mainland of 1.4 billion people.
In 1990, in the most glorious era of Hong Kong's entertainment industry, the first inland variety show "CP Variety Show" came out, and five years later, private capital was allowed to get involved in film and television operations.
In 1998, in order to make up for the deficit, satellite TV Shangxing TV desperately sold advertisements, and the entire mainland entertainment industry began to take off, and under the siphon effect, more and more Hong Kong artists focused their careers, and even the whole person moved directly to the mainland.
The first to settle in the mainland was Huang Yishan, a supporting role of Stephen Chow, who decided to stay in the mainland when he was invited by Guangdong TV to be a guest on the program "Finding the Roots" in 2003.
Ten years later, the first influential Hong Kong star, Chan Wai Ting, settled in Beijing, because his personal work has little to do with Hong Kong since "The Four Famous Arrests".
But the most striking thing is that Nicholas Tse, known as the last hope of Hong Kong entertainment, settled in the mainland, and his answer in an interview about when the new album will be released is impressive.
Perhaps in Nicholas Tse's eyes, the entire Hong Kong music scene has lost its vitality, and no one knows what the future path should be, only confused, or follow the same trend.
And when the older generation of artists gradually withdrew and young and promising artists came to the mainland, what is left in the Hong Kong entertainment industry?
In 2021, the Miss Asia contest began, according to normal logic, it is not required to produce a Cai Shaofen every year, at least not a Luo Yufeng, but the most popular (best effort award) that year is this one.
The "round" body shape and "innocent" eyes really shocked everyone to some extent.
You think it's hype? No, no, ATV is serious about wanting to hold her, and received more than 70 advertisements for her in 2022, and Zhang Jiahui sighed when he saw it.
More outrageous is still to come, in April this year, she released a new song "One Plus One Equals Ah Yi", which exceeded one million views in seven days, in contrast, I am still more willing to watch Hua Chenyu.
In general, the decline of Hong Kong's entertainment industry cannot be called decline, but it has returned to its historical positioning, an ordinary Chinese port city.
Hong Kong Entertainment was born with the "east wind" of the global cold war in the second half of the 20th century, and it will inevitably stop with the wave of world integration and economic globalization.
We can certainly miss that era, but we must not stop at that era.
Because the country is developing, the aesthetics of the people are also improving, and everything must be looked forward.