The World of Tsai Chin

Yes, there is a Hong Kong singer called Tsai Chin, but I want to write and copy text about the other Tsai Chin. Oh, now she is very stately actress with a flavorful resume, a lauded autobiography, and her new film, LUCKY GRANDMA. Tsai Chin has an entertainment history that goes way back. She is the first Asian "Bond girl" for her brief role as Ling at the beginning of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, where she shared a bed with Sean Connery, who was playing Bond in his fifth film.

Bond: "Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?"

Ling: "You think we better, eh?"

Bond: "No, just different. Like Peking duck is different from Russian caviar." (Personal aside, the opportunities for me to use this line are dwindling fast.)

After promising the best duck (ha, ha), Tsai Chin packs him off to be executed on the bed by two charging men holding machine guns. Of course, it is just a ruse....

Tsai Chin was back in a Bond film years later, but Connery wasn't.

Around that YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE time, Tsai Chin made five appearances as Lin Tang, the daughter of Fu Manchu. If you heard, "A favor, father," you were in trouble.

But Bond, or Fu Manchu, or her appearances in other films, like THE JOY LUCK CLUB, are not the subject of this blog. In part, the music feats of Tsai Chin is the main subject of this blog.

I can't really afford what is offered on eBay (besides, I don't have a record player), but I have a researcher's interest in her hit single and subsequent two albums, one of whose back copy text is rendered here. She had an international hit with "The Ding Dong Song." Remarkably, it was a familiar and beloved song to many at the time, though for me its appeal is not frequent listenings. Perhaps even to Tsai Chin, too.

The song was part the British stage production of THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, which featured Tsai Chin in the starring role as Suzie Wong. Afterward, Tsai made two albums: THE WORLD OF TSAI CHIN and THE WESTERN WORLD OF TSAI CHIN.

Since the eBay photo is small and this listing can disappear, let me write what is said about her in the back of her first album written by the album's producer, Hugh Mandl. British grammar has been kept.

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'Mr. Wong.
How are you?
It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht."

In this quotation--ripped untimely from the singer's repertoire--can be seen all the dilemma of being Tsai Chin.

Not that she is aware of any dilemma. If she does examine herself--and every serious actress, however delicious, has to do so sometimes--it is probably only to laugh at what she finds.

And that is where the dilemma lies, for she must know that there is more to her complex character than she admits.

There is charm and warmth and innocence--and there is an enchanting sense of humour which is never malicious. There is also a tremendous wisdom and a dedication to the job in hand which you will only find with completely professional actors. 

Tsai Chin was born in China--in a trunk, for her father was one of that country's greatest actors. She came to England to train at RADA, where she won no prizes at all. "I supposed I was lazy," she says. She lives in London--in Battersea where she has bought a Victorian house on which she is lavishing considerable skill in decorating.

She beguiled several thousand people as Suzie Wong during the two-year run of 'The World of...', and several thousands more with her record of 'The Ding Dong Song', which Lionel Bart cooked up for her, and which became an international hit.

Making this album has taken Tsai Chin six months, working very hard and sometimes very seriously. Often, late at night, her musical director, Harry Robinson, and I have wanted to go home and sleep--but every time we've been bewitched by her into working just a little longer.

We have been touched by her sweetness, impressed by her erudition, shamed by her humility and beguiled by her elfin humour.

We have also been brought near to bankruptcy by her appetite. She is always hungry--and of course there is always an enslaved male to pay for a meal. One afternoon at 4 o'clock, a recording session was interrupted while the star had tea. She ate roast lamb, new potatoes and runner beans. Then she ate a poached egg--on toast--and followed this up with a large Viennese cake. Two cups of coffee and a scrounged cigarette, and she was ready to go back to work.

Yet she's as small and frail and graceful as you could wish, and her subtle mixture of pride and humility are an object lesson to any western performer.

We've tried to convey a little of all the different sides to Tsai Chin's character in this record, only excluding this hunger. 

Come to think of it--'I'd 've baked a cake' gives a clue to that, too.