Lydia Sum
| Lydia Shum 沈殿霞 |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||||||
| Background information | |||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Pinyin | Shěn Diànxiá (Mandarin) | ||||||||
| Jyutping | sam2 din6 haa4 (Cantonese) | ||||||||
| Birth name | Lydia Shum Din-ha | ||||||||
| Origin | Hong Kong | ||||||||
| Born |
1 June 1945 Shanghai, China |
||||||||
| Died | 19 February 2008 (aged 62) Hong Kong |
||||||||
| Nationality |
 Canada
|
||||||||
| Other name(s) | Fei-fei (肥肥) Happy Fruit or Happy Nut (開心果) Sister Fei (肥姐) |
||||||||
| Occupation | MC, actress, singer | ||||||||
| Genre(s) | Cantopop | ||||||||
| Voice type(s) | Contralto | ||||||||
| Years active | 1960 - 2008 | ||||||||
| Associated acts | Four Golden Flowers | ||||||||
| Spouse(s) | Adam Cheng (m. 1985; div. 1988) | ||||||||
| Children | Joyce Cheng (b. 1987) | ||||||||
|
Awards
|
|||||||||
Lydia Shum Din-ha or Lydia Sum (Chinese: ; 1 June 1945 – 19 February 2008) was a Hong Kong comedian, MC, and actress known for her portly figure, signature dark rimmed glasses and bouffant hairstyle. She was affectionately known to peers and fans as Fei-fei (, lit. "Fat Fat" or "Fatty"). She appeared in numerous Hong Kong films and was an iconic TVB entertainer over forty years. For a brief spell in the 1990s, Shum left TVB to work at rival ATV.
Shum was born in 1945 in Shanghai to Sung Shen Gee (; 1913–1978, with ancestral home in Shanpei, Ningbo) and Sung Tan Sun (; 1913–2008). She entered the Hong Kong entertainment industry at the age of 13 in 1958. She made her film debut in 1960, joining Shaw Brothers as a teenage actress at the age of 15. She took some time to adjust to Hong Kong as she found the Cantonese cuisine very different from that of her native Shanghai.
While she worked at Shaw Brothers, her popularity grew and she became one of the first stakeholders in the up-and-coming TV broadcast station TVB. In 1967, Shum's stardom took off with the popular television variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight. She first sang in the Cantopop group the Four Golden Flowers. Later, she played a Shanghai woman in the 1970s. She also sang as the partner of Roman Tam from 1971 to 1973.
By August 1972 she was sufficiently regarded to be one of the first Chinese to ceremonially ride through the Cross-Harbour Tunnel on its opening day. TVB general manager Stephen Chan has said that there was no substitute for Lydia Shum, and that every person who worked with her professionally eventually became well known in Hong Kong. Her openness to appearing in sport bikinis and ballet costumes despite her weight earned her respect in image-conscious Hong Kong.
...
Wikipedia