Wanted: Miss So Ching

So Ching in Gold Button (1966)

Why is it that I find myself tortuously intrigued by Hong Kong actresses about whom I can find scant or absolutely no information in English? Such is the case with So Ching (蘇青). Looking at her filmography, she appears to have been part of an attempt by the Mingxing Film Company to cash in on the "Jane Bond" film craze ignited by Connie Chan and Josephine Siao in the mid-60s.

During the peak of the genre's frenzy, So Ching made four "Jane Bond" films for Mingxing: Gold Button (1966), The Golden Gun (1966), The White Swan (1967), and Pink Bomb (1967). All four films co-starred Cantonese cinema's all-purpose leading man Wu Fung, Fanny Fan (who had just reignited her sex bomb image in Shaw Brothers' The Golden Buddha), and Cathay hunk Roy Chiao Hung (who was branching out into Cantonese films).

So Ching also made two swordplay films for the studio with Josephine Siao and Cheung Ying-choi: The Golden Bat (1966) and Return of the Golden Bat (1966). Here's an advertisement for all four of Mingxing's "gold" titled features from that year.

After 1967, So Ching was absent from the silver screen until the end of 1969, when she showed up supporting Patrick Tse Yin in a swordplay film called The Charming Killer. By 1970, it appears that her flash in the pan was beginning to dim. She made four films that year, one of which — The Sexual World — appears to have set the course for the brief remainder of her career.

Besides what I've been able to glean from her filmography, the only mention of her that I've come across is this one from Hong Kong film critic and independent filmmaker Bryan Chang's essay "Waste Not Our Youth: My World of Sixties Cantonese Movies". Reminiscing about the Cantonese actresses of his childhood, Chang says:

Then, one day, I was drinking with friends and the name of So Ching was mentioned. Everybody shouted 'Bravo!' To put it truthfully, she was not a first-rate actress but she was as pure as an angel in her sex appeal. She specialized in playing spies and secret agents strutting about in hot pants. So Ching is the alternative cult figure who can fill the gaps of those who dislike the sexpots Tina Ti and Fan Lai.

I wish I could tell you more about So Ching, but that's all I know. While I can't give a reward to anyone offering information leading to my further appreciation of her, here are some glamor shots that certainly capture some of her "pure as an angel" sex appeal.


From The Screen & Stage Pictorial (August, 1966)


Postcard featuring Miss So Ching

References

• Bryan Chang, "Waste Not Our Youth: My World of Sixties Cantonese Movies", The Restless Breed: Cantonese Stars of the Sixties (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1996)