Asian community mourns popular actress-comedienne
Lydia Sum, chair of many S.U.C.C.E.S.S. galas, dies of cancer at 60

Yvonne Zacharias
Vancouver Sun

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Vancouver's Asian community is mourning popular actress and comedienne Lydia (Fei-Fei) Sum who died Monday in Hong Kong.

She died around 6 p.m. Vancouver time of liver cancer at the age of 60.

Sum, whose last name is often spelled Shum, began her career as a teenager with Shaw Brothers studios in Hong Kong.

The chubby, jovial actress played pillow-talk girlfriends, classmates, sidekicks, siblings, handmaidens, chorus girls, bridesmaids and was a comic foil for an entire cavalcade of Hong Kong's Golden Age leading ladies, according to the Hollywood Internet database site.

Vancouver publicist Andrew Poon said Sum emigrated to Vancouver in the mid-1980s. Because she emigrated prior to the influx of Hong Kong immigrants, she wound up bringing along a lot of the cast from the television show, said Poon.

Tony Moy, director of resource development at S.U.C.C.E.S.S., said Sum chaired almost every fundraising gala at GM Place for the multi-service immigrant agency for the past 11 years. She missed maybe two or three. He said the actress did so on a voluntary basis.

"There is no replacement," Moy said flatly. "No comedienne can even come close. She was the equivalent of [U.S. comedienne] Roseanne Barr. No one will ever replace Lydia for the laughter she brought to people and the legacy she left behind."

Moy said he knew Sum was very ill and in a lot of pain; he knew that one day he would get the news that she had died. "But when I heard it, I had tears in my eyes. I just couldn't grasp it. I couldn't face it. Somehow, nothing prepares you for it."

Moy said not only did Sum chair the gala event for S.U.C.C.E.S.S., she did the same for big fundraising variety shows in Hong Kong, performing in them alongside actors such as Jackie Chan.

"Lydia has always been an MC," said Moy. "And she was an amazing one. She did the Miss Hong Kong pageant for a long time."

Moy said Sum attended the S.U.C.C.E.S.S. gala last year to see her only child, daughter Joyce Cheng, perform. Although her last name is often spelled Shum, Moy insisted that Sum was the correct spelling.

Moy said Sum eventually moved from Vancouver back to Hong Kong where she did most of her performing, but she would come back here three or four times a year to visit her mother and her daughter who lived in a house the actress owned here.

She was diagnosed during the latter part of 2006 and was treated for the cancer in Hong Kong.

Poon said the star was deeply saddened by the recent death of her mother. He added that Sum's home in Shaughnessy had recently been sold.

He said Sum was plump and pretty.

"In the 1960s, she wore these dark-eyed, cat's-eye glasses rhinestones. They were her signature look."

Poon said Sum could do almost anything on stage. "When you are coming out of a movie studio, you are trained to sing, dance and act."

Although she initially built her career in Hong Kong, her popularity later spread to Singapore where she anchored the sitcom Living with Lydia.

"She was always funny and she had been chubby all her life," he added, explaining that is why she was nicknamed Fei-Fei, which means fat-fat. "She used to say she always had a healthy appetite and that she would not deprive herself."

She is survived by her daughter, her ex-husband Adam Cheng -- who is also a popular actor in Hong Kong -- and many brothers and sisters. Sum was the youngest of nine children and is the sister of Canadian designer Alfred Sung.

No date for funeral arrangements or memorial services has been announced.

Funeral will be at the end of February at Forest Lawn Cemetary.

"Fei-Fei" was in practically every movie and TV show I saw in HK when I lived there. Such a likable, bouncy presence; RIP.