OMFG Elena Kong won a Best Actress
To me, this story starts a long time ago. I don’t recall exactly how long ago, maybe 2005 or 2006, when they were showing War of In Laws in local television at dinner time.
War of In Laws was, as far as I am aware, my first exposure to Hong Kong dramas. And I hated it. I really hated War of In Laws. I probably still hate it. I hated how well, 野蛮 the 奶奶 was, which really, is the entire premise. It’s probably why to this day I do not like Liza Wang (whether this is her fault or not, I really don’t know, and I’m not going to watch the drama again to find out).
My view of Hong Kong dramas improved within the next few years after seeing the following shows on local television (whether at dinner time, or sneakily later on during the night), the order of which I do not exactly recall:
Ten Brothers / Bar Benders / Trimming Success / The Gentle Crackdown / Healing Hands III / La Femme Desperado
But then one day at dinner time, maybe sometime in 2008, it was showing Flaming Butterfly. It was 40 episodes and really draggy (I was, and still am, accustomed to Hong Kong dramas being quick and snappy at 30 episodes maximum.) I can’t comment on the artistic merit of Flaming Butterfly, and have no interest to rewatch it to find out. This was the first ATV drama, as far as I’m aware, that I watched, and suffice to say that I didn’t like it. The only good things about it, as I recall, was that the female leads (Rain Li, Monie Tang) were pretty and the second aunt or third aunt (or whoever she was) caught my eye and I wanted to see more of her. But she had pitifully little screentime and in my brief google, I failed to find out who she was or anything about her.
Due to The Gentle Crackdown, I had become a fan of Michelle Yim, and sought out quite a few of her dramas to watch on my own volition (Into Thin Air, The Academy, Heavenly Sword Dragon Sabre 2000, The Brink of Law, Law and Order (aka the 1988 ATV show with Damian Lau), The Awakening Story, Heart of Greed, Moonlight Resonance, Beyond the Realm of Conscience). For clarity, I don’t think I had watched all the mentioned shows before Flaming Butterfly was shown on local television, but I believe that I had probably watched some. Michelle Yim subsequently also won a best actress for her work in Moonlight Resonance in the TVB anniversary awards and the Asian Television Awards. I have to admit that I didn’t think she would win the Asian Television Awards, but did not express my view to anyone at that point, but I hoped she could win it. I had however, said to a fellow fan of Michelle Yim (who had become an online friend) that I don’t think she’s going to go home empty handed if she’s flying to Singapore. I maintain that that’s what I said, but it was misinterpreted to mean that I didn’t think she would get it (well yes I thought so before I heard she was flying to Singapore, but I didn’t say anything about the matter prior). I tried to explain but I had probably used too many double negatives (and yes, I was guilty of thinking that she wouldn’t win), so that wasn’t very successful. We fell out because of that.
Nonetheless, I was interested in watching The Seasons of Fate when it came out. At that point, asianfanatics was still alive, and I had met two (other) online friends on asianfanatics who were also interested in watching Michelle Yim in The Seasons of Fate. She was acting someone who had lost her memory and acted like a teenager. There was also Esther Kwan, Roger Kwok and Ng Wai Kwok.
Even though I didn’t like Michelle Yim’s character much for most part of the show, it was a good show. It had a great theme song which I love till this day. And Ng Wai Kwok’s character was in love with Michelle Yim’s character (both before and after she regained her memory). Oh he was also married to Elena Kong’s character AND having an affair with his secretary Mimi Lo’s character.
Elena Kong caught my eye. She didn’t have that much screentime, but she had things to do (cute scenes with Oscar Leung who was acting her adopted son), and basically express her frustration and jealousy (justified) over Ng Wai Kwok’s character’s affair with Mimi Lo’s character or one sided crush on Michelle Yim’s character.) At some point I thought she looked familiar and wondered why, and then after doing some googling, I managed to figure out that she was the one acting the second aunt or third aunt (whatever it was) in Flaming Butterfly.
I would again, watch Beauty Knows No Pain as it came out. It had a shit theme song (if you even call it a theme song), but it was a great show. I loved the show. I liked all of Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yim, Joyce Tang and Elena Kong in the show. And they gave such cute interviews together about how much they enjoyed working together etc. I wondered how that was possible seeing that Michelle Yim and Joyce Tang are firmly protagonists, Elena Kong is firmly an antagonist and Maggie Cheung is probably a semi-villain. (I liked her Jackie alot when I was watching the drama back in 2010, I can’t say that I would like Jackie watching it now, but I did then. Yes, more than Michelle’s Noble, because I didn’t agree with how she dealt with her husband, the baby, as well as maybe Gordon Lam’s character.) Elena Kong was a really likeable antagonist, and I was not the only one who thought so.
I think by this point in time I was a fan. I don’t exactly recall the order in which I watched her shows, but I believe that I must have been a fan by this point because I wanted her to win Best Supporting Actress in 2010, and I recall monitoring whether I thought she had a chance to win or not. So I think I was already a fan. I can’t comment on whether I had watched No Regrets or Gun Metal Grey at this point, but my guess is probably not. However, seeing that she had just transferred over from ATV to TVB (Flaming Butterfly was her second last ATV drama, and The Seasons of Fate was her first), there wasn’t really much. It was really not easy (I’d probably say impossible) to find her ATV dramas online (except for Forrest Cat) at that point.
So, I kept an eye out of her, while watching dramas with other actresses I liked (Michelle Yim, Maggie Cheung, Louisa So). I also liked Kenix Kwok, Gigi Lai, Melissa Ng Mei Hang, Nnadia Chan after I had first watched them in their respective shows, but I don’t believe I sought them out to watch after watching that initial show. In part, this was due to the fact that I knew that they were retiring and/or getting married (or had already done so), and as a matter of self preservation, I didn’t want to become a fan of someone where there wasn’t going to be new content and I had to keep looking backwards.
I think a similar logic applied to Elena Kong, I knew that I had to wait for content to come out instead of getting into it now.
I believe that chances are I had watched Lives of Omission prior to watching River of Wine. And I think it was only after that that I started watching her guestings (like Only You, Gun Metal Grey, No Regrets etc). I was definitely a fan by the point that I had watched River of Wine. Yes, even though reviewers would write things like portraying the love interest who is the carbon copy of the righteous male character, the third time’s a charm or she’s perfected the art (of doing so) or something like that. Or saying that she is a competent actress but spoke too calmly with perfect diction (specifically on River of Wine). Whatever it was, I liked her, I liked her acting, and that was that.
Specifically on River on Wine, loved the drama. Really loved the theme song. Literally can’t watch the happy ending when the theme song is playing with Bowie Lam and Elena Kong’s characters sitting around the table and with Bowie Lam’s character narrating his letter to his family without crying. Other scenes which are so good: Elena Kong’s character asking Bowie Lam’s character helped the Sung family to bully her, 天大地大的确是没有我们两个容身之所 (ep 17), 你就当我们有缘无份吧 (ep 24), 所以如果你有什么不测， 我一定不偷身在世，我今天来，是要让所有人知道，我要堂堂正正地去爱你梁正尧 (ep 25). All tearjerkers. This doesn’t even consider the ones before that. To this day this is probably my favourite Elena Kong role.
I think somewhere around this point, The Other Truth was showing on local television, and Kristal Tin had a guest role in the last few episodes. I liked her in her guest role, and I believe I either knew or quickly found out that she was an ATV escapee, like Elena Kong. I believe I wanted to watch more, which is I think how I ended up watching Only You (came out in the same year, and sounded more interesting than her other 2011 drama). Since Elena Kong had a guest role in it, so directly went to the episodes which Elena Kong was guesting in to kill two birds with one stone.
I really really liked Elena Kong in Only You and thought she did really well there. I must have come out of watching those 2 episodes liking Elena Kong more than Kristal Tin because I’ve never finished watching Only You. (To be fair, I got the impression online that Elena Kong and Raymond Wong had really touching guest story so it wasn’t really apples and apples. In addition, I really liked the interaction between Elena Kong and Evergreen Mak when he won his Best Supporting Actor, and also some of the behind the scenes they were posting from No Regrets.) 2012 was a slower year in terms of non-guest roles. I’m reasonably sure that I watched both Ghetto Justice (where I recall she had pretty good role) and Tiger Cubs.
Started on Silver Spoon Sterling Shackles, and based on my records, I probably got until episode 15 (without clicking) and quite enjoyed it before going right to the end to see if the ending was something I was prepared to watch through 40 episodes for. The ending was great, and somehow I didn’t feel like I had to watch what happened in between. To this day I’ve never finished it. I think this might have come down to the fact that I didn’t like her acting the third wife of Damian Lau. I’ve never really appreciated her acting with Damian Lau, which I think is affected by the yawning age difference, as well as the fact that I am a fan of Michelle Yim. I also had Kristal Tin content to watch that year, No Good Either Way (which I enjoyed regardless of what the reviews were) and King Maker (stopped watching at episode 24 when she died. She was a very very likeable character, and I so wanted her to have a good ending with Wayne Lai.)
2013 rolls around, and yes, I like Triumph in the Skies II. Honestly I also like many characters in Triumph in the Skies II (but definitely not all), as much as I’m happy to admit that it is a potato chip for the brain. Yes, I ship her and Kenneth Ma’s (characters) together in Triumph in the Skies II, and get really annoyed at how people keep insisting it’s a May December romance when the age difference is all of three years, and no one EVER says anything when actresses act with actors who are like 20-30 years senior. Brother’s Keeper also comes out this year and I love Kristal Tin in that, and I watched all of the Macau scenes, but hardly watched the Hong Kong scenes. There was hype for Elena Kong to win Best Supporting Actress and for Kristal Tin to win Best Actress. If I had it my way, I would have wanted both of them to win. But I didn’t think (and I don’t think I was wrong) that they would give both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress to ATV escapees. I had then decided that I preferred Kristal Tin to win Best Actress, because my view was that Elena Kong would win her Best Supporting Actress eventually. She had always been in Best Supporting Actress contention since 2010 when she made first made the top 5 for Beauty Knows No Pain (which wasn’t even a show that did very well in terms of ratings), and by the time 2013 had rolled around, people generally did not talk about Best Supporting Actress without her name coming up. I think I also wasn’t sure if I wanted her to win a Best Supporting Actress for Triumph in the Skies II, when people were saying that she didn’t have much to do, and would have preferred her to win for other shows eg. Bounty Lady, Silver Spoon Sterling Shackles, even Lives of Omission. I hate Bounty Lady as a show and would hate it if she won for Bounty Lady. Also, I considered that Elena Kong would have other opportunities to win Best Supporting Actress, but this might be Kristal Tin’s only chance to win Best Actress. Given who 2014’s Best Supporting Actress went to, I think I am reasonably confident in saying that she could’ve won it for Line Walker, given the success of the show, as well as the amount of acting she had to do there.
Given the kind of shows she was doing prior to 2013, I think my view that this might be Kristal Tin’s only chance to win Best Actress is not poorly founded. I do think that her career benefitted greatly from winning the Best Actress.
I couldn’t find a stream, and had to keep refreshing asianfanatics for the results. I was already in disbelief when Elena Kong won the Best Supporting Actress. I was not the only one who viewed Elena Kong taking the Best Supporting Actress as detrimental to Kristal Tin’s chances of winning the Best Actress, and I think I was already prepared for that outcome. And then Kristal Tin wins the Best Actress. And then still manages to win the Favourite Female Character award. I was speechless. I’ve said that no award show would ever top that for me. Ten years later, I think that is still true.
Then came along Line Walker (which I liked, and more than came around to her and Michael Miu’s relationship in the show despite it’s dubious beginnings), Ultimate Addiction (lousy show, and I think affected by the changes in casting), Smooth Talker (I liked, despite the reviews being poor), Come With Me (approaching the level of Bounty Lady difficult to get through because I didn’t like her character, or pretty much anything about it).
On a Kristal Tin aside, after watching Return of the Silver Tongue (which I liked), I watched Black Heart White Soul as it came out. I really liked it. Pretty much watched every minute of it at the edge of my seat. Can’t say that I’m sure that it has rewatch value (since I’ve never rewatched it since), but while I watched it, I was engrossed.
Tiger Mom Blues came out at a time when I had to study, so I couldn’t get to it immediately, but I had heard negative news about her in relation to the show. I think the whole concept of Tiger Mom Blues hit too close to home, and I think in part because the reviews were good, and she was the female lead and Michelle Yim was in it, I had wanted to watch it with full attention (not clicking through) to give it due respect. I’ve only watched 4 episodes of it to date.
Watched The Unholy Alliance together with all the speculation on who was the big bad, and then decided that My Ages Apart was too many episodes, and it had Kristal Tin in it so it wouldn’t be a quick activity.
I had already suspected that there was something up between her and her boyfriend because he almost never showed up on her weibo anymore, and when I first started following her on weibo, he did use to show up on her weibo, and he would go with her to events too. Not only that since she was filming River of Wine (and crossing the road together with Pierre Ngo) there were rumours that he was cheating on her. So when the rumours about her breaking up with her boyfriend, I knew that they were true. I’ve never really liked him anyway, so it’s whatever. Breakup rumours became divorce rumours, and for a long while the news in relation to her was pretty much about the breakup turned divorce.
I knew that Sandra Ng helped her get her job at tvb (I believe she introduced her to some tvb executives), and that her boyfriend/husband was involved in her career (and might have been her manager at some point). There were rumours that she got frozen by tvb due to Tiger Mom Blues that looked more and more reliable given she was not filming anything. Then her contract with tvb changed to a per series contract, and I backed away from it so hard. Because I knew that we would be in for lean and difficult times with nothing to watch and for a good while everything that would come out would be about the divorce. I would be back when there was things to watch. There was no need to read a constant stream of bad news. I have admit that I didn’t know whether there would be things to watch anymore.
At this point, I think Kristal Tin also didn’t have many (if at all) shows, so I found other ways to occupy myself.
That was the state of affairs until Death By Zero. The first positive signs were the articles about her studying how to play a prostitute. But Death by Zero was finally upon us, and this was Elena Kong’s first drama since 2017. Watched this on a per week basis as it came out, and enjoyed it. I was really happy to have Elena Kong back with us, though I didn’t necessarily regard this as a positive sign for future shows because as far as I was concerned, a prostitute who was supposed to be the love interest of Wayne Lai, had her name written all over it.
I was excited about Line Walker 3, since I liked watching her with Michael Miu in Line Walker. I heard that it was a guest appearance which did not bode well (because why??). I was innocently on instagram one day, when it had just started broadcasting, and the scene where she passes away was plastered in an instagram story. Then, I didn’t have sufficient background and didn’t believe that she dies, but I googled it and she did die in Line Walker 3. The reason why it was plastered in an instagram story was because it had been released in advance on a Chinese streaming site. For that reason, I didn’t watch Line Walker 3 because as far as I’m concerned, they lived happily ever after in Line Walker. (I have watched this after she won the Best Actress.)
Fast forward to 2022. I was aware that she had work, because I was seeing that she was filming, but I had no indication on what kind of stuff she was filming, and didn’t really want to look into it in case it got my hopes up. Towards the end of 2022, I knew that she was leading Get On a Flat. I didn’t know who Lam Man Chung was. The poster looked very low budget family drama. However, burned by the Tiger Mom Blues incident, I knew that just because she can lead the show doesn’t mean anything. For all you know it’s back in the freezer for the next 5 years.
I suspected that it was doing well because of the number of promotional activities and the vibe I got from her was positive. Then she was asking people to vote for her for Best Actress. Because of that, I figured that she thought that she had a shot of winning Best Actress (and I had googled it by this point and realised that Get On a Flat did very well in terms of ratings). I didn’t want to jinx it by thinking about her winning.
The night of the awards ceremony, I was at a friend’s wedding.
I woke up for work to her instagram post holding an award. I googled it right away. There was an instagram story which showed them annoucing the winner, and I got emotional right after they announced her name. Was very very emotional watching it. The fact that Michael Miu was presenting the award to her, and she got a full standing ovation from anyone who was nominated helped.
I think it’s quite a miracle that she’s managed to pull it off, after being frozen by tvb back in 2017. Yet here we are.
Congratulations on winning a Best Actress!!
I don’t believe this is the end of the story and look forward to watching more shows from you.
[I would embed the video, but tumblr is protesting and won’t let me.]
