From Dan to Musculinary Nüchou : Tam Lan-hing’s comic role from Cantonese Opera to Hong Kong Film

Tam Lan-hing’s career is defined by her physical transformation from Dan (female lead) to Nüchou (female comic), which must be understood as a radical, non-assimilationist trans (Wang Citation2013). By studying three key films, Scent of Wild Flowers (1935), Fatso Married Skinny (1956), and My Kingdom for a Husband (a.k.a. The Romance of Jade Hall (Part One)) (1957), this article contends that Tam actively re-signified her non-normative body. The rigid aesthetic hierarchy of Cantonese opera, which mandated slenderness for the Dan, excluded Tam after her weight gain in the 1950s. This ‘gendered necessity’ forced her into the realm of comedy. Comedy, as such, becomes a trans zone to legitimate Tam’s transgressive body. To overcome the constraints of the passive Nüchou stereotype, Tam developed a ‘musculinary’ performance strategy. This strategy re-signified her fatness as ‘fierce, tough’ dominance, a ‘foreignising translation’ that contrasts starkly with the ‘soft, feminised Anima’ trope of male fat Cantonese film comics like Leung Sing-por. Situating Tam’s performance within the traditions of Cantonese opera (Dan vs. Chou) and regional fat-thin duos, this article illuminates how Tam’s ‘musculinary’ trans disrupted gendered hierarchies and redefined the meaning of comic corpulence in Hong Kong.