Suitor stood Lin Ching-hsia up

Suitor stood Lin Ching-hsia up

HONG KONG - Who would stand film goddess Lin Ching-hsia up, and for whom?

The actress-turned-writer shared a still juicy bit of old gossip at the launch of her new book, Cloud To Cloud, at the University of Hong Kong on Sunday. She said she once waited for a suitor, actor Charlie Chin, for a week in Paris, only to learn he had quietly gone there with her good friend, singer Teresa Teng, reported Apple Daily.

Lin said he began to court her when they were making the 1978 movie Love Of The White Snake, but they were not yet dating. Around the time, she flew to Paris for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and he said he would meet her there.

"I waited a week in Paris and a film boss told me to leave. And I thought, did he come with someone else? Then I went back to Taiwan and newspapers said he had gone to Paris with Teresa Teng," Lin recalled.

"I didn't mind, I didn't mind at all because it was Teresa Teng and I hadn't agreed to be his girlfriend."

But the friends had a little misunderstanding later, Lin said. Once, the media-shy Lin saw Teng but did not greet her because there was a reporter around. "Teresa said I looked like I was afraid of her, avoiding her, and I was sad," Lin said.

The late Teng is one of the friends Lin remembers in the book, her second collection of essays after 2011's Inside And Outside The Window. Like that title, the new book's title is drawn from her films, which include 1974's Gone With The Cloud and 1977's Cloud Of Romance, Lin said on Sunday.

She said she had writer's block at one point, like Tony Leung Chiu Wai's character in the 2004 film 2046.

"When I watched 2046 and saw Tony Leung holding a pen and staying still, I thought, 'Do you need to think so long?' But when I was writing on my iPad, my finger stayed still like that for an hour."

Then a friend advised her to play mahjong, and it helped, she said. She wrote three essays in one night afterwards.

Lin, 60, dated both the Chins of 1970s Taiwanese cinema - the other was actor Chin Han - before she married former Esprit chairman Michael Ying in the 1990s. The couple's three daughters attended Lin's talk on Sunday, along with her friends, including former actress Tao Min-ming, costume designer William Chang, director Yonfan and singer- turned-jeweller Cally Kwong.


This article was first published on Nov 11, 2014.
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