How Tsui Hark and Tony Ching followed up on the classic fantasy film A Chinese Ghost Story

Directed by Tony Ching Siu-tung and produced by Tsui Hark, A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) set the style for the colourful fantasy martial arts films of the 1990s.

The story, set in a mythical China, featured Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing as a naive debt collector who falls in love with a beautiful ghost played by Joey Wong Cho-yee.

Here we look at two very different sequels Tsui produced.

A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997)

Animations have never been a favourite of Hong Kong producers, despite the popularity of Japanese anime in the city. This 1997 Tsui Hark-produced production, coming a few years before the McDull films, was the first local animated film.

It keeps the bare bones of the original storyline, but makes it more appealing to younger teens by focusing on a virginal romance, with lots of anime-style ghosts and monsters.

The main theme of a female ghost (voiced by Anita Yuen Wing-yee) seeking to lay her spirit to rest with the help of her mortal lover (Jan Lamb Hoi-fung) is the same. But the similarity stops there.

Tsui’s main concern is whizz-bang cartoon action with characters and style in the vein of the Japanese Dragonball Z anime series, which was popular on local television at the time.

A still from A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997). Photo: Film Workshop

“The animated version sees Tsui remould the story for a young 1990s audience,” this writer wrote in the Post in 1997. “It is action-packed, mixing the ghostly atmosphere of the original with some anime style characters and wild computer-generated effects.

A Chinese Ghost Story: The Tsui Hark Animation (1997)

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