---
id: "post-40-en"
title: "Cantopop Golden Hits, Singing the Memories of Hong Kong"
type: "review"
authors: ["Yang Zhixiang"]
publicationDate: "Fri Aug 21 2026 17:22:53 GMT+0800 (Hong Kong Standard Time)"
publisher: "Taipei Fringe Festival"
originalUrl: "https://tpac.org.taipei/en/festival-fringe/2026/comment-writer/1638"
tags: []
relatedEvents: ["Karaoke"]
liveUrl: "https://www.rooftopproductions.hk/en/review/karaoke-tff-1638"
---

# Cantopop Golden Hits, Singing the Memories of Hong Kong
** Beyond 'O' and 'K': Karaoke**


**Post Details:**
- **Type:** review
- **Author(s):** Yang Zhixiang
- **Published:** 21 Aug 2026
- **Publisher:** Taipei Fringe Festival
- **Original Source:** [Link](https://tpac.org.taipei/en/festival-fringe/2026/comment-writer/1638)
- **Related Events:** Karaoke


---

## Content
Looking as if she had just walked over from the KTV booth next door, the simply dressed actor kicks off the show by playing a "guess the song" game with the audience. Without needing to say much, she quickly warms up the crowd. Using Cantopop hits like Hacken Lee's *Red Sun* (紅日), Ekin Cheng's *Years of Friendship* (友情歲月), and Beyond's *Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies* (海闊天空), she instantly pulls the audience back to the era of Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s.

This is not a solo concert. Actor Michelle Li begins to introduce herself: born in 1985, she grew up during the golden age of these songs. Loving to sing from a young age, she joined the Hong Kong Children's Choir and sang, *"Children are the future of Hong Kong..."* at the 1997 handover ceremony. That child is now approaching forty, yet her inner resistance to Cantonese opera pieces like *The Reunion of Sword and Hairpin* (劍合釵圓) remains, because "those are Mom's songs." Meanwhile, her ailing father, who immigrated to the US, has always longed to hear her sing again. Though she has sung countless songs in her life, she struggles to immediately pick one that adequately responds to this familial love. Looking back on all this, it is clear she has walked toward a different future than her biological parents.

But this is not just a personal family history. She can't forget that day on July 1, 1997, singing in the rain and feeling dead tired. Despite being the precious "future of Hong Kong," the children's dinner was an absolutely awful British sandwich (she still remembers every exact detail of what was inside it that day). She knows her maternal grandfather fought in the Chinese Civil War but never made it to Taiwan; he eventually landed in Hong Kong, where her mother was renamed and given away, leading to a difficult life. She remembers her father moving first to China, then to the US, returning to Hong Kong one year to meet her in a deafeningly loud K-room (KTV booth), urging her to make time to prepare for the immigration process.

All these past events remain deeply etched in her mind. However, in recent years, despite repeatedly verifying and trying to clarify facts, she finds it increasingly difficult to be certain whether the annual televised "Lunar New Year Address" was actually broadcast in 2020. On the surface, she is excavating her own life story, but as you gradually piece the clues together, you realize she is more likely aiming to display the turbulent, changing history of Hong Kong.

And this is clearly not a political stand-up show. Her intention is not to mock anyone, nor is she critiquing the current political climate just for laughs. The climactic key that the story steadily builds toward is her father, far across the Pacific, being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in recent years. At this point, Michelle Li drops her lively and humorous persona. Using a computer to look up information, she calmly reads out the symptoms: cognitive and memory decline, language impairment, and loss of attention. The father and daughter never had the experience of living together long-term; they only share deeply etched memories of visitations. Today, the only surviving evidence to prove their relationship is a childhood photo that remains blurry even when enlarged (and they are even wearing sunglasses in it). However, as an audience member, there is no way to verify whether the actor's narrative is entirely factual—it depends on whether you choose to believe it in the moment.

At this point, I finally realized that the performance isn't meant to showcase singing skills (though she truly sings beautifully), nor does it attempt to recreate the glamour of an era. It is not merely reminiscing about childhood pasts, nor sighing in lament over Hong Kong's changes. What Michelle Li clearly wants to ask is: **How can we trust our memories? Is memory ultimately reliable? For a generation that has witnessed and grown up amidst drastic changes, what remains constant and trustworthy? And how do we now cross the boundaries of time to continuously trace and rebuild fragmented emotional connections?**

Amidst joy, loss, and vacillation, she found a way—and it is something she excels at. That is: to continue singing Cantopop pop songs! Especially the chart-topping hits that everyone knows the second the intro drops!

Since they are golden hits, the memorized lyrics and melodies are naturally the relatively unchanging elements. Yet, to summon them, they must be sung over and over. Thus, the life experiences the singer has accumulated so far, the boundless nostalgia of the listeners in the moment, and the current social situations both find themselves in—all of these continuously expand the hidden interpretive and imaginative space of the lyrics and melodies. Because of this, when Michelle Li looks back on her childhood memories, juxtaposes them with the historical backdrop, and sings them once again today, all these overlapping layers gain meaning without being strictly defined by it. She is not trying to preach a political ideology or mourn her lost youth. By speaking about Alzheimer’s disease and questioning memory, she folds a tightly echoing script into rich layers open to interpretation.

Therefore, for *Karaoke*, there is no question of whether it is "OK" or not. Beyond dialectically questioning the reliability of memory, forty-year-old Michelle Li now wants to know something else: *Which song should she sing next?*

> *"I miss / I miss the past years / Appearances have long changed / Circumstances have all changed / Yet the feelings remain unchanged / All that's left is yearning..."*

In the end, through the microphone, she chooses to sing Anita Mui's *Years Flowing Like Water* (似水流年, 1985), dedicating it to her father whose memory is gradually crumbling.

As the show ended, a torrential downpour hit Taipei. I fell right back into the day in Michelle Li's memory—July 1, 1997, in Hong Kong. Trapped in the theater, I couldn't bring myself to leave the venue for a long time.

> *"Looking at the stretch of sea / Filled with weariness / No tears and no words / Looking at the stretch of sky / Only feeling my emotions in turmoil..."




*Originally published in:  Taipei Fringe Festival. We create a mirrored version of reviews and articles about our shows for archival purposes, so that we can retain a version if the original disappears. We always link to the original publisher and credit the author. However, if you are the owner of this material and you would like us to remove it, please get in touch.*