There's a certain bittersweet irony that in Rouge, Anita Mui's most acclaimed film role, the star plays a ghost from Hong Kong's bygone past lingering into the present day. It's been almost five years since the world lost the 40-year-old Anita Mui Yim Fong to complications from cervical cancer, yet in Hong Kong - and indeed the entire Chinese-speaking world - the woman once dubbed "The Madonna of Asia" continues to be an almost palpable presence. Countless memorial shrines, compilation CDs, even a Mainland TV biopic have kept her spirit alive and center-stage in the East Asian pop culture landscape. In life her flashy, constantly evolving onstage personas earned her another nickname - "The Ever-changing Anita." In death, her immortal place in entertainment history might well warrant a new title - "The Ever-living Anita."
Solid Gold Idol
Her rise to fame is the stuff of fairy tales. Mui Yim Fong was born October 10, 1963 to a family of modest means. Her father died when she was only five, and Anita helped support her mother and four siblings by performing Cantonese Opera and pop songs on the streets of Hong Kong, eventually dropping out of school to keep food on the table. For the next thirteen years, Anita and her older sister Ann worked the nightclub circuit, singing whenever and wherever they could find work. After more than a decade of grim prospects, Anita suddenly found herself on the fast track to stardom when TVB held its inaugural New Talent Singing Awards in 1982. Beating out over 3,000 contestants, Anita took top honors and the grand prize, a record deal with Capital Artists.
In addition to Anita, Capital Artists signed another promising talent in 1982, a young man named Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing. Anita and Leslie became fast friends, and although they remained solo acts, the pair quickly set about reshaping the Cantopop landscape in their own image. Along with Alan Tam, another close friend, Capital's two new stars set off an idol craze of Beatlemania proportions in Hong Kong. Anita's first album, Crimson, sold a strong 250,000 copies, with each subsequent album snowballing to higher and higher profits. By the release of her fourth album, 1985's Bad Girl, the Anita craze had shifted into high gear. Bad Girl not only sold an astonishing 400,000 copies in Hong Kong alone, it also cemented her reputation as the "Bad Girl" of Cantopop. The title track's risque lyrics and Anita's often gaudy, domineering onstage presence may have earned her a temporary ban in Mainland China, but her undeniable singing talent, charisma, and unconventional looks earned her a devoted following and a deserved place in Asian music history. In what is perhaps the greatest testament to her star power, Anita was named Best Female Artist five years in a row from 1985 to 1989 at TVB's Jade Solid Gold Top 10 Awards.
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