Ah Niu reminisces about late mum while acting in new CNY movie: 'You only know what you had when you've nothing left'

When Malaysian actor-singer Ah Niu was a boy, his mother left him with a convenience shop owner to go to the market nearby to purchase firecrackers for Chinese New Year.

"Although it was for just five to 10 minutes, I felt like I was abandoned and wondered if she would come back for me," the 48-year-old told AsiaOne in an interview recently.

While she did come back for him, that feeling of being left alone then was what he channeled while preparing for an important and emotional scene in his new movie Blooms of Happiness.

"I felt like I was back to being a young boy again, where in that moment, I knew my mother wouldn't come back for me. I shedded tears as I imagined saying goodbye to her," he said of the scene.

Ah Niu — best remembered for his 1997 runaway hit song Look Over Here, Girl — plays convenience store owner Gao Zhitian in Blooms of Happiness, who is facing a midlife crisis amid financial difficulties and on the verge of divorce from his wife, sales livestreamer Luo Sifen (Vivienne Oon).

Keeping their marriage crisis from their parents, they spend Chinese New Year's Eve together with them, which ends in an argument. Zhitian's mum (Hong Huifang) gets into a car accident and falls into a coma.

On the verge of breaking down, Zhitian meets the mysterious Mr Fox, who offers him eight chances to alter history by time-travelling with him — in different appearances — to that fateful day before the accident. In the process, Zhitian learns the power of kinship, his mother's unconditional love and treasuring his loved ones.

'You only know what you had when you've nothing left'

Playing Zhitian also marked Ah Niu's return to acting after six years, with the familial relationship portrayed in the movie drawing him in.

"One of the points that was touched on is about what Zhitian would want to say to his mother if he was given a chance to turn back time. When director Ryon Lee approached me with the script, both our mothers had just died in recent years and there are some similarities in the emotions that Zhitian and I experienced," he shared.

Ah Niu's mother died in December 2022 at the age of 72.

Remembering her, he told us: "It was only when my mum passed on that I realised, you only know what you had when you've nothing left. 'Having' could just mean her presence, but when she died, I had nothing left, as she didn't exist in this world anymore. That was when I realised how much she loved and cared for me."

Ah Niu, who remarried in 2015 and has one daughter from each of his two marriages, shared that as a parent, he understood the love that parents have for their children comes in the simplest form, which is to always ensure they are eating well.

Coincidentally, this is related to one of his most cherished memories of his parents.

When asked what he would want to relive if given a chance to time-travel, he shared that he wants to return to when he was a boy.

"I was a plump boy when I was young and I think it was because my parents loved us very much," he laughed.

His father was a lorry driver and would work late occasionally to earn extra cash.

"When he returned home at night, he would buy wanton mee and prawn mee. My mum would wake me and my four sisters up from bed, and we would have supper together. Those were happy times. If I am able to return to the past, that's what I would want to relive. I believe when my parents saw how well we ate then, they must have been very happy," Ah Niu recounted.

He added that there is a similar scene in the movie where Zhitian returns to eat reunion dinner with his younger self and his mother and when they were filming it, he told Ryon if this were to happen to him in real life, he would have "broken down in tears".

We asked Ah Niu what he would tell his parents if he could see them again.

Holding back tears, he said: "I would have told them, 'Thank you, I love both of you very much and am really grateful. I am able to get this far in life because of both of you. You gave me the most unconditional love in this world and the most perfect form of companionship.'"

Blooms of Happiness, which also stars Dennis Chew, is now showing in Singapore cinemas.

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yeo.shuhui@asiaone.com

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