A Thousand Dreams of Leslie
Essay By Chelsea Shieh
This essay was originally published in Issue #4 “ACROSS 岸”. Order a copy now on BLURB.
On April Fool’s Day, 2003, Leslie Cheung sat alone on the balcony of his room on the twenty-fourth floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, observing the bustling streets of Hong Kong far below. He ordered a glass of orange juice, and soon afterwards, requested a pen and some paper from the
receptionist. After about an hour, against the backdrop of a beautiful sunset over Victoria Harbour, Leslie climbed over the railing and leapt to his death.
It was shocking, amazing, and absolutely horrible. An immense outpouring of sorrow spilled out from fans around the world at the premature death of their beloved star. Leslie was a legendary artist, Hong Kong’s greatest male diva, who had managed two tremendously successful music and film careers — and he had now left the world stunned.
Speculations ran wild after news of Leslie’s death spread. Some cynically claimed that he committed suicide out of sheer vanity, as an aging star unable to face his fear of growing old and forgotten. Others believed he had become haunted by the various characters he had played in films that had committed suicide, and, unable to distinguish reality from fiction any longer, consummated the act by leaping to his death. But the explanation that stuck the most was simpler: “Depression!”, the first word at the top of his suicide note. It was revealed soon after his death that Leslie had been struggling with severe depression and insomnia throughout the past year. Yet, given all that he had accomplished, all the barriers he had broken and all the hearts he had captured, Leslie’s story is not yet over.
Beginnings: A Displaced Starlet
It may come as a surprise that Leslie was not met with immediate success from the moment he set foot in the Hong Kong entertainment industry. In fact, it took him the better part of a decade to gain recognition for his talents, though he himself never doubted his own star quality.
Part of Leslie’s self-assurance may have been the result of his own experience with dislocation during the seven years he spent attending school in England. It was in England where Leslie settled on his English name because, as he would explain years later, “I love the film Gone With the Wind. And I like Leslie Howard. The name can be a man’s or a woman’s, it’s very unisex, so I like it”. And so, all alone in a new country, Leslie was born.
After he returned to Hong Kong at the age of twenty, Leslie competed and won second place in ATV’s 1977 Asian Music Concert with his performance of “American Pie”, allowing him to gain his initial footing in the Hong Kong entertainment industry — but the next few years would be difficult ones. After a fruitless venture with Polydor Records in the late 1970s and unrecognized efforts in film and TV roles, Leslie was barely scraping by.
He became despondent, staying out all night, chainsmoking in the corners of the discotheques he frequented. Yet something good also came out of this time — one night in 1982, Leslie happened to catch the eye of a kind young banker who lent him several hundred dollars to help Leslie stay afloat. This man, Daffy Tong, would become Leslie’s long-term partner for the next twenty years.
Despite his increasingly dire situation, something inside Leslie pushed him to keep going, as if he knew that he was meant to become a star — and after a few years, it finally happened. He managed to sign another contract with a music label, this time with Capital Artists, and released his first major hit in 1984, the catchy, contagious single “Monica”. From there Leslie swiftly climbed his way into the top ranks of Hong Kong’s Cantopop idols, and into the hearts of thousands of fans.
Onscreen: The Lonesome Lover
Alongside his rising music career, Leslie also began delivering more acclaimed performances in front of the camera — towards the latter half of the 1980s, Leslie starred in many landmark films of Hong Kong’s Golden Era of filmmaking. In his first big breakout role in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986), Leslie played Ti Lung’s morally upright, naïve younger brother. In Ching Siu-tung’s A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), Leslie was a bumbling scholar who falls in love with a beautiful, enigmatic ghost played by Joey Wong. However, it wasn’t until Wong Kar-wai cast Leslie in Days of Being Wild (1990) that he established his archetypal film persona — from then on, Leslie became known for portraying doomed, narcissistic characters who also displayed a touch of self-loathing. In a tribute piece to Leslie, film critic Richard Corliss writes,“[Here] was the irreducible, enigmatic ‘Leslie’: a beautiful man whose sexuality is a gift or a plague to those who fall under his spell”. And indeed, Days of Being Wild cemented Leslie’s image as a “bird with no feet”, mesmerized by the journey and the beauty of life, yet unable to find a place for himself to land.
At the same time, Leslie also became associated with a sort of male femininity. When Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan asked Leslie about his views on this, Leslie explained simply: “I have some unique quality. The audience identifies with it. Maybe a kind of sensitivity. Especially in romance. Something soft.” It was this sensitivity, this softness, that led many to suspect that perhaps Leslie had different sexual inclinations, and the Hong Kong media began to steadily
devour Leslie’s every move, attempting to root out the truth.
In fact, according to Corliss, Leslie’s sexuality was “the worst-kept secret in HongKong showbiz”. Throughout his career in the spotlight, Leslie flashed hints (sometimes quite overtly) of his non-heteronormativity, but never articulated any explicit alignments with LGBT identity, save for an offhand remark he made in a 2001 interview where he stated, “It’s more appropriate to say I’m bisexual.” Nevertheless, Leslie remained insistent on keeping his personal life private, which only fed into the Hong Kong media’s decades-long endeavors to expose his sexual preferences. Though Leslie never officially “came out”, he was the first, and remains the only, Hong Kong superstar to
have been in a confirmed relationship with a gay lover. Because of this, Leslie is not only remembered as a Cantopop or film star, but also as a complicated, treasured Hong Kong LGBT icon.
In the end, however, there is still something slippery about Leslie that places him beyond our reach. Leslie can be seen as embodying both the lover and the loved; he exists as the object of desire as well as the desiring subject. But whom does Leslie love?
As Cheng Dieyi in Farewell My Concubine, it was his male opera counterpart, Duan Xiaolou. In his private life, it was his lover, the thoughtful banker Daffy Tong. But as a star, Leslie truly only loved himself. This unresolvable, maddening tension is what constitutes his allure as a star — Leslie belonged to all of us, yet he also belonged to no one.
No one, but himself.
Crossing Shores: An Abrupt Departure, A Glorious Return
In 1989, at the height of his fame, Leslie suddenly decided to completely quit the entertainment industry and retire. Perhaps he wanted to quit while he was ahead, and live out the rest of his days knowing that he was unsurpassable.
At his goodbye concert series Final Encounter of the Legend, which ran for an unprecedented thirty-three consecutive nights, Leslie did something he rarely ever did — he broke the illusion of a barrier between the performer and the self by bursting into tears in the middle of performing his hit song “The Wind Continues to Blow”. As he sang the lines “The wind continues to blow / I can’t bear being so far apart from you / I didn’t allow the tears in my heart to fall as I looked at you”, Leslie became overwhelmed with emotions and couldn’t hold his tears back any longer — he loved the stage, he loved his fans, and most of all, he loved being loved. And in that moment, he couldn’t bear to let it go.
Nevertheless, his plans had already been set in motion. Leslie obtained a Canadian passport and citizenship and relocated to Vancouver, following trends of transnational mobility among wealthy Hong Kong citizens who, by the 80s and 90s, had zeroed in on Vancouver as a prime overseas destination. Leslie set off for the balmy seaport city, where he spent his days playing mahjong with friends and walking around in Chinatown. But — to no one’s surprise — Leslie’s days as a Canadian didn’t last very long. Soon, he began receiving calls from film directors, including John Woo and Wong Kar-wai, practically begging Leslie to return to Hong Kong to star in their films. And beginning to itch for the life in the spotlight once more, Leslie did just that.
When explaining the motivations behind his return, Leslie simply stated: “东方的月亮还是更加美 (‘The Eastern moon is more beautiful’)”. And the moon led him to new heights in his career — upon returning to Hong Kong, Leslie immersed himself headfirst in his film career. Expanding on the qualities he had already established as an actor, Leslie starred in a number of diverse, critically acclaimed, and well-received films throughout the 1990s. Interestingly, his most exquisite and enduring performance coincided with his first collaboration with a Mainland director, which was his role as Cheng Dieyi in Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (1993). Leslie’s tragic role as a Peking Opera star who identifies with his onstage persona of Concubine Yu was stunning, sublime, and also conflated with his personal life, bringing the discussion of Leslie’s sexuality roaring back to the forefront of the press.
While Leslie began dabbling in excursions across the border, he also surged in popularity in Korea, Japan, Thailand, and the rest of the Sinophone world, achieving a truly impressive transnational following for a Hong Kong star. By now Leslie had reached new heights — it seemed as if he was unstoppable, destined to forever soar among the stars in the sky.
Reaching Beyond the Stars: A Second Life
As Leslie’s film career took off in the 90s, six years passed before Leslie resumed his role in the spotlight as a Cantopop idol. Leslie’s second era as a singer was distinctly different from his first — whereas he had been marketed as a dandy and teen heartthrob in the 80s, by the latter half of the 90s Leslie had more daring ambitions. At his 1997 New Year’s concert, the eve of Hong Kong’s turnover to China, Leslie danced in red high heels and a flowing skirt,
and replicated the infamous Happy Together (1996) tango with a male dancer, reveling in his performance as not only an object of desire, but also one that was provocatively homoerotic. At a concert later that year, in an unprecedented yet skillfully navigated move, Leslie dedicated a cover of “The Moon Represents My Heart” to his lover, Daffy Tong. The media went wild at this, but his fans loved him all the more for it. One of Leslie’s favorite songs that he wrote during this time, a self-dedicated anthem titled “I”, captures his unswaying faith and pride in himself:
“I am what I am
A firework of a different color
Among the wide sky and broad ocean
I must be the strongest foam”
With this, Leslie continued to make bold moves in his music career, wanting to transcend the realm of what idols were allowed to do, wanting to cement himself as a legend. For his controversial 2000 Passion Tour, Leslie regaled the audience in a full-blown camp aesthetic, donning a long black wig and eight outfits designed especially for him by French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, among them a miniskirt and angel wings.
The Passion Tour was Leslie’s proudest artistic achievement, but it was met with intensely mixed reception. Not surprisingly, the Hong Kong media tore him apart, and Jean-Paul Gaultier, feeling humiliated, emailed Leslie to tell him that he would never design for a Hong Kong star again. Devastated, Leslie bemoaned the press for their incessant attempts at trying to tear him down.
While he continued to try to work on ambitious projects, Leslie began to display a touch of a weariness in his face; the narcissism and vulnerability he had so effortlessly embodied in his youth had now transformed into the complex fragility of a man entering his middle-aged years and, despite still being at the top of everything he did, was starting to face the prospect of having to move on from his days as a star.
Wong Kar-wai once told Leslie that he should wait until he was old and couldn’t act any longer to become a director. Leslie had tried his hand at directing music videos and film scenes here and there, but hadn’t yet penned his own feature-length film, which had been a dream of his for a long time.
In 2002, Leslie set up his own production company, and wrote and rewrote the script for his first film, Stolen Heart, a tragic love story set in 1940s China. He stated in an interview, “No matter how much anyone [tries to] convince me about how good-looking I am, or how strong I am, I know I am ageing. Think about it, Leslie Cheung is already 45. I shouldn’t complain but obviously I am not as nimble as before. Hopefully, there’s such a thing as ageing gracefully.” Leslie knew he had to come to terms with growing older and leaving the spotlight. But in the end, he couldn’t make the transition. His first film — his “baby”, in his own words — never materialized, and the script, along with all of his plans, will remain suspended in limbo forever.
A Final Landing Place
Perhaps Leslie simply became too much for Hong Kong in the end. Years passed, times had changed, interests had shifted. By the latter half of the 1990s, Hong Kong’s film industry had entered a serious downturn, and Leslie sensed this. In a 2001 interview, Leslie lamented the new Hong Kong: “The place is so extravagant, vulgar, expensive. People have forgotten what integrity is. Money comes first. I may be too soft for Hong Kong. I don’t always count myself as one of them”. While he was undeniably the pride of Hong Kong, Leslie sensed at the same time an increasing alienation from his home — the place he had left for extended periods twice in his life but never failed to return to, the place that loved him, yet seemed to be on the verge of tossing him away for the next shiny new star.
On April 1st, that final day, Leslie decided to take one last look at the Hong Kong skyline from the balcony of his hotel room. Perhaps he saw defeat on the horizon, defeat in the form of aging and, his utmost fear, of becoming forgotten. On that final day of his life, the bird with no feet who was destined
to spend his life amidst the stars in the sky was finally driven to a landing place that was all too literal, all too painful: the pavement on Connaught Road in front of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. He was forty-six years old and will never be a day older.
Afterlife
Before Leslie, I didn’t understand how it was possible to miss someone I never even knew. For a long time, I felt like I was mourning the death of a loved one; I don’t think I had ever felt so much grief. But as I came across more and more people who were also processing Leslie’s life and death, who also cherished him and could not bear to let him go, I began to realize how Leslie was still with us, how our circulation of thoughts, images, and materials on Leslie were, in a way, an extension of his life. Maybe “afterlife” is more appropriate. And Leslie’s afterlife is flourishing, laced throughout cyberspace, displayed on the pixels of laptop screens, and sown deep in our hearts.
Fourteen years have now gone by, and along with it, an entire era of the Hong Kong entertainment industry. Leslie’s original fans who had grown up with his music and films have had to continue on with their lives without him. But Leslie is far from forgotten. His fans, young and old, strewn around the world, across continents and oceans, continue to pepper message boards and comment sections with expressions of love and longing for their beloved icon. Some, perhaps drawing from the plot of Moonlight Express (1999), remain hopeful that one day Leslie might reappear the midst of a crowd, just for a second, to flash a bright, wicked smile before disappearing back among the sea of faces. Corliss writes, “Couldn’t a body, just this once, come back as himself?” But in the meantime, we have a corpus of precious materials that Leslie left behind — sixty-one films, thirty-one studio albums, many live concert performances, interviews, and endless words and images that will forever remain in circulation, reminding us of the many lives he lived. May he sleep well, our sweet prince, ill-fated concubine, phantom lover, and eternal star, and rest knowing his afterlife now lies in our hands.
Original essay by Chelsea Shieh. Illustrations by Albedo Au. Banner by Jessica Peng. Medium article re-uploaded by Natalie Cheung.
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