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"First love never dies", a columnist's article on the memory of Weng Meiling, presented by Lu Dan.
(Nanchang Radio broadcasted on May 17 2012 a remembrance of Weng Meiling based on the article "Weng Meiling First love never dies", Phoenix 879 FM 87.9, host of "Queen of OK", Lu Dan)
Weng Meiling: First love never dies
By: The Grey [ Nanfang People Weekly ] 14 May 2012
Weng Meiling was a famous Hong Kong actress in the early 1980s. She became popular on both sides of the Strait for her role as Huang Rong in The Legend of the Shooting Hero. Born in 1959, she died by suicide at home in May 1985.
In 1984, the provincial television station broadcast the Hong Kong television series The Legend of the Shooting Hero. At the age of 11, I was spending my summer vacation at my grandmother's house and accidentally watched a few episodes. I didn't see the beginning of the series, but when it came on, I saw the silly boy Guo Jing coming out of the desert to the south of the Yangtze River meeting a little beggar in the market. The little beggar, ragged and dirty-faced, but with big, shining black and white eyes, tells Guo Jing that his name is Huang Rong.
Perhaps not many viewers, like me, who had not read the original and had not followed the plot, could have missed the fact that the boy was a woman in disguise. A few episodes later, the truth comes out, and on the riverside boat, the little demon girl looks back in awe, and at that moment I felt exactly how the silly boy Guo Jing felt: Oh my God, it's a girl, and such a beautiful and lovely girl.
Before that, we had already been exposed to Hong Kong TV series, "Huo Yuanjia", "The Legend of Chen Zhen", "Shanghai Tang", "Towards Tiger Mountain Again" ...... The most fashionable thing for the boys was to wear "Chen Zhen costumes" and "Xu Wenqiang bowler hats "The girls all like to wear Feng Cheng Cheng's pigtails, and everyone hums "The Great Wall never falls" and "Old bag, old bag, please be old bag for a while"... ...but The Legend of the Shooting Hero, Huang Rong, Weng Meiling, are still different, they come from a more unreal world, fresh, offbeat and unbelievably beautiful. Those big sparkling eyes, the delicate and soulful look, even those crooked rabbit teeth, are unprecedentedly beautiful, and every smile is lovely to behold.
Looking back, it's strange to think that it wasn't the boys who were most enamoured of Weng Mei-ling, but mostly young girls like me. We called her "Weng", "Rong'er", or "Barbara" in English, and discussed her beauty, her love, her works and her life... ...but we don't know much about her. There was no internet, no computers, no entertainment news on TV and very little in the newspapers. The school library had a copy of Chinese-Foreign Television, the magazine that covered the most information on the entertainment of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and every new issue was rushed by the whole school, students and teachers alike. We learnt about Ah Weng's life and career from the little information available. We knew that she grew up in England, majored in textile design, returned to Hong Kong and was unsuccessful in the Miss Hong Kong election, worked as a TV presenter and became popular through the TV series "Shooting Eagles".
She was really popular then, and even in our small town in the north, she was the number one celebrity from Hong Kong. In those days, the main fun we had was collecting stickers and black and white "art photos" or colourful postcards, and there were stacks and stacks of Ah Weng's stickers and "art photos" every stall was selling them. Each stall has stacks of stickers and "art photos" of Ah Weng. There would be many photos on each edition of stickers, and inevitably there would be duplicates, but it didn't matter, we went out of our way to buy them and exchange them. Those stickers were carefully stored in a small box and not many people were willing to tear them out and stick them on, and to this day, I still have a few complete editions.
But, no matter how popular she was, no matter how much fans she had, she only wanted the love of one person.
We only knew her less than a year. In the early summer of the following year, she died, at the age of 26, by inhalation of gas. Almost all the media used flamboyant words like "jealous of a beautiful woman" and "a beautiful death" to describe the tragedy, but even as a young girl I knew that death was not so romantic, that it was a death that was gone forever and would never return.
As an adult, time has changed, and the name "Weng Meiling" is not often mentioned in the media, except among some of my peers, where "Weng" is still used as a warm code word, a sort of keychain to communicate with the soul and trigger a memory. I finally found a comprehensive profile of Ah Weng on the internet and read the detailed reports back then, and finally understood in a nutshell the relationship that had been so much talked about back then. We all used to hate Tong, thinking that he was the murderer of Ah Weng, but now I look back and think that this man was a man with a heart and a commitment. He was the first of the "Five Tiger Generals", the "jade-faced youngster", and he has not been able to recover since the death of Ah Weng, and it cannot be denied that he has suffered needlessly. What else could he do? There is no such thing as a destined fate between people.
Weng Meiling stayed forever in 1985, but the whole world was still moving forward. Some of the people she loved, the friends she made, the partners she worked with, some kept on becoming more and more popular; some faded into obscurity; and some rose to prominence, from obscurity to worldwide fame. ...... The Hong Kong culture of the 1980s and 1990s has influenced a whole generation of Chinese people, with Cantonese songs, action movies, martial arts novels and TVB dramas. These are firmly rooted in our memories. The Legend of the Shooting Hero remains so popular that it has been remade over and over again, with various versions of Huang Rong popping up and debates everywhere: Weng MeiLing, Michelle Mi, Jade Chan, Zhu Yin, Zhou Xun, Ariel Lam ...... Who was the best Huang Rong?
But there are always those people, like me, who will not argue with you about this. The girl with black eyes and rabbit teeth is the one I think of as Huang Rong, who accompanied me through my youth and the most exciting part of my life.
Songs played: #83 version of The Legend of the Shooting Hero. The world is always good to you.
source: https://m.weibo.cn/status/4759729841373363
南昌电台播出怀念翁美玲的文章《阿翁 我生命中的第一个糖人》2012年5月
南昌人民广播电台 凤凰879 FM87.9 《OK女王》主持人 陆丹
播出怀念翁美玲的文章 2012年5月17日
播出专栏作家 的灰 怀念翁美玲的文章《阿翁 我生命中的第一个糖人》
翁美玲，1980年代初香港著名演员。因出演《射雕英雄传》中黄蓉一角红透两岸三地。生于1959年，1985年5月在家中自杀身亡。
1984年，省城电视台播映香港电视连续剧《射雕英雄传》，11岁的我，在外婆家度暑假，无意中看了几集。开头没看到，一上来就赶上傻小子郭靖出了大漠来到江南，在街市上遇着一个小叫花。那小叫花衣衫褴褛，面目肮脏，却有着一双黑白分明的闪亮大眼，他告诉郭靖，他的名字叫黄蓉。
或许没有几个观众像我一样，没读过原著也没跟住剧情，完全没看出这个男孩是女子假扮。几集之后，真相大白，江边小船上琴韵婉转裙袂飘飞，小妖女惊艳回眸，那一刻我精准地感受到傻小子郭靖的心情：天啊，是女孩，而且是这么美这么可爱的女孩。
在那之前，我们已经开始接触香港电视连续剧，《霍元甲》、《陈真传》、《上海滩》、《再向虎山行》……男生们最时髦的是穿“陈真服”，戴“许文强礼帽”，女生们都喜欢梳冯程程的小辫，每个人都会哼“万里长城永不倒”，“老包啊老包，求你暂老包”……但是《射雕英雄传》，黄蓉，翁美玲，还是不一样的，她们来自一个更加虚幻的世界，清新、脱俗，美得不可置信。那双闪亮的大眼睛，娇俏灵动的神情，甚至那双长歪了的兔仔牙，都是前所未见的美，一颦一笑，都可爱得令人倾心。
回头想来也挺奇怪，貌似当时最迷恋翁美玲的，不是男生，大多数是和我一样的小女生。我们叫她“阿翁”、“蓉儿”，或者英文名“芭芭拉”，热烈地讨论她的美、她的爱，她的作品和人生……关于她的资讯，我们了解得并不多。没有网络，没有电脑，电视中没有娱乐新闻，报纸上的报道也很少。学校图书馆里有一份《中外电视》，算是报道港台娱乐信息最多的一份杂志，每一期新刊，全校的学生和老师都抢着看。我们从这些少得可怜的讯息中，知道了阿翁的身世、艺途，知道她在英国长大，专业是纺织设计，回港参加港姐选举落选，在电视台做过主持人，走红就是因为《射雕》这部电视剧。
她那时候是真红，就算在我们那个北方小城镇，她也是香港明星中的第一红人。那时候我们追星，主要乐趣是收集“不干胶”贴纸，还有黑白“艺术照”或是彩色明信片，每个贩卖的小摊上，都有整摞整摞阿翁的不干胶和“艺术照”。每版不干胶上会有很多照片，难免有重复，但不要紧，为了阿翁，我们不辞辛苦地买来整理交换。那些不干胶，都精心收藏在小盒子中，没几个人舍得撕开来贴用，直到现在，我还存有完整的几版。
但是，再红的艺途，再多的追捧，都没有用，她只要一个人的爱。
我们和她只共度了不到一年。第二年的初夏，她走了，开煤气自杀，年仅26岁。几乎所有的媒体都用“天妒红颜”、“香消玉殒”等华美的词汇来渲染这场悲剧，但是就连年少的我也深知，死亡没有那么浪漫，死亡就是永远离开，不再回来。
成年之后，时过境迁，翁美玲的名字，已经不大见媒体提起，只是在一部分同龄人中，说到“阿翁”，还像一个温暖的暗语，是某种沟通心灵、触发一段记忆的匙扣。我终于在网络上找到了阿翁的全面资料，看到了当年的详尽报道，终于也大略明白当年被传得一塌糊涂的那段感情。我们曾经都很恨汤镇业，觉得他简直就是谋害阿翁的凶手，现在回头看来，却觉得这个男人相当不易，有胸怀、有担当。当年“五虎将”的第一把交椅、红透半边天的“玉面小生”，自阿翁之死便一蹶不振，不能不说是受了无谓的连累，但是这么多年，他从不主动提起，没有一句怨言。他还能怎样呢？别去追究放入棺木的那把夫妻梳了，人与人之间，并没有多少注定的缘分。
阿翁永远地留在了1985年，但整个世界仍在往前走。她爱过的人，交过的朋友，合作过的伙伴，有的一直在红，越来越红；有的渐渐销声匿迹；也有的异军突起，从默默无闻到天下扬名……八九十年代的香港文化，整整影响了一代中国人，粤语歌、动作电影、武侠小说、TVB剧集，牢牢地植根在我们的记忆深处。《射雕英雄传》仍然那么受欢迎，重拍了一遍又一遍，各个版本的黄蓉层出不穷，到处都有争论：翁美玲、米雪、陈玉莲、朱茵、周迅、林依晨……哪个黄蓉最好？
但是总有那么一些人，像我，是不会跟你争论这些的。她们再好，与我无关。我心目中的黄蓉，就是那个黑眼睛兔仔牙的女孩，她陪我走过青春岁月，走过最为激荡的那段人生，她永远是惟一的、最好的，就像金庸小说里提到的那样，是我生命中的“第一个糖人”。
播放歌曲：#83版射雕英雄传# #世间始终你好#
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