Alice Fung So-bor
Alice Fung So-bor, also known as 波姐, is a Hong Kong actress. She is an actress of ViuTV and has worked for Asia Television, TVB, and Hong Kong Television Network. When she was 5 years old, she was arranged by her father, director Fung Fung, to act in the film The Kid.
Early life
Alice is born into a family of performing arts. Her father Feng Feng was a Cantonese film actor and director in the 1960s. She has 10 siblings. Her ninth half sister, Petrina Fung Bo-bo, is a famous Hong Kong actress. Her seventh half brother, Fung Hak-on, was a Kung Fu film actor and martial arts instructor in the 1970s and 1980s. Her sixth half brother, Fung Chi-on, who does business in Indonesia, was convicted of forgery and fraud. Her eighth half brother, Fung Kit-lung, was a former TVB senior executive. Her eleventh half brother, Fung Kwok-on is former Chief Superintendent of the Hong Kong Police Force. As Alice had been in and out of film sets since childhood, she had known the late actors Charlie Chaplin of the East Chau-shui Yee and Clark Gable of Hong Kong Billy Fung.She was born in So Bor Lane of Go Dai Street, Canton, and later went to Hong Kong to attend the Kit Ling Kindergarten, which was opened by her aunt and her friends on the ground floor of 369 Prince Edward Road. At the age of seven, in 1951, she started attending primary one at Wing Hong Middle School Affiliated Primary School which was located at Wing Hong Yuen, Sheung Yuen Leng Village, opposite Tai Hom Village in Diamond Hill. Later, she attended Tack Ching Primary School in Sham Shui Po, Primary School Section of Southwest Middle School in Bonham Road, Hoi Ming School at 506-508 Queen's Road West, Sik Kwong School on Kam Hong Street, near King's Road, Hong Kong Pui To Primary School and Guangzhou Zhibaoqiao No. 5 Central Primary School. In the 1950s, she studied at Guangzhou No. 29 Middle School, which was renamed as Sai Kwan Pui Ying Middle School, located in Liwan District, Guangzhou. In 1959, she returned to Hong Kong with her father and settled in the Studio Hotel on Prince Edward Road in Kowloon City. Due to the political turmoil before and after the Cultural Revolution, she did not return to Guangzhou to complete her studies.
Her name "Fung So Bor" was named after So Bor Lane in Guangzhou; a maternity home located there was her birthplace. When she was a child, she liked to act as a Cantonese opera performer and could also sing Cantonese opera songs. In 1964, at the suggestion of her mother Cheung Syut Ying, Alice and six other child actresses, Josephine Siao Fong-fong, Connie Chan Po-chu, Petrina Fung Bo-bo, Nancy Sit Ka-yin, Felicia Wong and Sum Chi-wah became sworn sisters as the "Seven Princesses". Alice was the eldest among them. Alice met Bruce Lee when she was a child, and the two became friends because they lived in a dormitory near the Diamond Hill Studios. At that time, Li went with her to play in the fields. Alice subsequently lost contact with him until they met again at a party shortly after he returned from studying in the United States.
Regarding her place of residence, Alice was born in China, but was brought to Hong Kong by one of her father's wives, Cheung Syut Ying, to escape the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government and the Chinese Communist Army. Her family moved frequently. In 1949, she lived in a three-storey building on Junction Road in Kowloon City, Kowloon. She then moved to a tin house at no. 123 Pak Tai Street, Sung Wong Toi, To Kwa Wan, a stone house near the Grandview Film Studio in Tai Hom Village, Diamond Hill, a cubicle room in the Hill Road Market, Shek Tong Tsui and a tenement building on Marble Road in North Point. In 1954, she moved to Ma Tau Kok Road.
Career
After graduating from primary school in Hong Kong, Alice returned to Guangzhou with his father, completed secondary school courses there, and went to the Southern Cantonese Opera Academy, now called Nanguo Fine Arts College to study art. She learned singing from Xu Pei in the 1960s, after that she became a resident singer at the King Kung Restaurant and Nightclub in Tsim Sha Tsui from 1965.。After the Seven Princess filmed the movie Seven Princesses in 1967, a nightclub owner invited her and the other six "princesses" to sing on stage when the Kai Tak Amusement Park opened. Then gradually she got more career opportunities. At the request and encouragement of the nightclub owner, Alice decided to temporarily give up her acting career and concentrate on being a singer in the nightclub for several months. Soon, she met a brother and sister who were engaged in the acrobatics industry, and through them, she was introduced to the person in charge of a Thai nightclub "Honey Night Club".
Alice later went to Thailand and worked as a singer. She once went with the resident band to the Chitralada Royal Villa in Thailand to sing "Green Island Serenade" and "Rose, Rose, I Love You" in front of King Rama IX Bhumibol Adulyadej and other royal family members. Eleven months later, she left Thailand due to visa issues, and was scheduled to perform in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 1967. However, soon after arriving at the place, she was forced to stay in the hotel for a month. With the help of the construction company employees, she flew back to Thailand and finally returned to Hong Kong. While developing her career in Thailand, she was spotted by a film producer and negotiated a contract, but ultimately failed.
Alice was later invited by the female owner of the Hong Kong nightclub "Show Boat" to join her company as a singer for three months. As her contract was about to expire, the female boss seconded Alice to Singapore to perform for Peking Garden Restaurant for six months. In 1969 and 1970, Alice went to the "Hai Tian Cabaret" in Mong Kok to sing both morning and evening shows. At the same time, she sang Mandarin pop songs in the "Ciros Ballroom", "Empire Nightclub" and "Royal Capital Nightclub" in Tsim Sha Tsui. In 1980, as Alice was getting older and needed to take care of her family, and as Hong Kong nightclubs were declining, she needed a stable job. She worked as a warehouse clerk in a department store, responsible for handling communication and coordination between workers and warehouse logistics.
Once, the behind-the-scenes staff of the TVB "Enjoy Yourself Tonight" production team came to the warehouse where she worked to look for workplace interviewees for TV interviews. She was selected as an interviewee. After the interview clip was broadcast in 1984, Asia Television producer Chuen-Yee Cha contacted her to stage a comeback and star in the TV series "Butterfly Killer". Another producer, Yuen Wai-yuen, also invited her to star in one of his series, "I Love Mermaid". Prior to 1983, Cheung Chi Kok had invited Alice to star in "Fatal Love" through Cheung Chun-Fai, Alice's husband, who was the former musician and worked for the advertising department of Asia Television. When Tsui Siu-Ming, then producer of Asia Television, learned that Alice had appeared on screen, he advised Alice to officially return to the screen and resign from her position as a warehouse clerk.
In 1990, Alice was poached by TVB. She then continued to serve TVB until 2012. After her comeback in the 1980s, she owned a lounge called "H20" in Wan Chai and also opened a lounge called "Poly Lounge" in Tsim Sha Tsui. In 2012, after her contract with TVB expired, Alice joined Hong Kong Television Network under Ricky Wong. She left Hong Kong Television Network in 2014, ending a two-year employment relationship. In May 2015, she was invited by Catherina Tsang to return to TVB.
Starting from 2020, Alice signed a non-exclusive one-show-a-year contract with TVB, so she can film dramas for media other than TVB. In November 2022, the TVB drama "I've Got the Power" and the ViuTV drama "Dead End" starring Alice were broadcast at the same time slot, making it a rare opportunity for Alice to appear on two TV channels at the same time. However, this coincidence became one of the fuses for her feud with TVB. Alice said in an interview after leaving TVB in 2024 that she had applied to the TVB Artist Department when she took on the filming of "Dead End" in 2022. Since her contract with TVB was for one drama per year, the head of the artist department had no right to prevent her from taking on programs for other TV stations. However, she pointed out that the person in charge later questioned why she did not inform the company earlier that "Dead End" would be broadcast at the same time as "I've Got the Power", and asked her whether she would attend the promotional activities for the "Dead End" drama. Alice believed that this action angered the senior management, resulting in a significant reduction in her subsequent work at TVB.
In 2021, Alice was invited to be the guest host of the Commercial Radio 1 program "Elderly Empire" and has been on the program ever since. In March 2024, she announced her departure from TVB on social media. In May of the same year, she won her first acting award - Best Actress at the World Film Festival in Cannes, for her role in the short film Garbage directed by Mak Yuen-yan about elderly abuse.
In the mid-2010s, Alice was approached by a production company to organize a concert. The opportunity came in 1990 when he participated in the play A Kindred Spirit and was arranged by the company to perform in Beijing. The event organizer knew that Alice was a talented singer and invited her to perform at the opening ceremony of a real estate project. In 2012, WSM Music Group also invited her to perform. The production company then sponsored Alice's solo concerts starting in 2014. In addition, Alice is a member of the Japanese Buddhist organization "Soka Gakkai International of Hong Kong" and a member of the "Performing Arts Group" of the organization's headquarters.