Costumes glittering with gold and silver sequins, dense hand embroidery, scripts rescued one by one from being thrown away—what Tam Dik Suen (Dickson Tam) has gathered is more than a personal passion for Chiu Chow opera and music. It is cultural inheritance made tangible. His collection holds both reverence for the past and an urgent question about the future: as audiences shrink, what will keep Chiu Chow music and opera alive in Hong Kong?

 

Half Chiu Chow Person* by Birth

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“Dickson, are you Chiu Chow person?” When asked about his ancestry, he laughs. “Half. My mother’s from Puning; my father’s from Xinhui.” Officially, his ancestral home follows his father’s line, but he grew up inside his maternal grandparents’ Chiu Chow world. The household was always playing Chiu Chow opera recordings, and he became a devoted fan. Ironically, he did not grow up speaking the dialect. His grandmother had long settled in Hong Kong, where Cantonese dominated daily life. “When my grandmother was alive, I couldn’t speak Chiu Chow dialect  at all,” he says. “I only really learned it later, after I joined the troupe, because we needed it to communicate and perform.”

 

His path into the profession did not begin with a traditional apprenticeship. It began with a child’s fascination with the stage. From the age of six or seven, he followed his grandmother to performances, spending entire summer holidays lingering near the backstage area. In 1993, at thirteen, living in Kwun Tong, he spent his summer vacation at the Ngau Tau Kok Chiu Kiu Yu Lan Festival stage. Over time, he became familiar with the performers and crew. That era exposed a widening generational gap in Chiu Chow opera: audiences were mostly elderly, and many performers were aging as well. When Lau Sai Chu, proprietress of the Sun Tin Ngai Chiu Chow Opera Troupe, noticed this unusually serious young fan, she recognized something rare. She even wanted to adopt him as her godson, introducing him to musicians and quietly opening the door into the opera world.

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Training Through Practice

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His family initially opposed his involvement, but Tam describes himself as “mature” even at thirteen—clear about what he loved and willing to commit to it. During the seventh lunar month’s Yu Lan festivals, Sun Tin Ngai performed from the first to the twenty-ninth day, moving from venue to venue with a packed schedule and too few hands. Tam filled gaps wherever he was needed: if no one played drums, he played drums; if no one struck gongs, he struck gongs. This baptism by fire forced him to learn every part of production—music, scripts, costumes, gestures, choreography—and it built a foundation that was unusually complete.

 

During off-season months, he went straight from school to Sun Tin Ngai’s headquarters on Choi Hung Road (opposite Ng Wah Catholic Secondary School) to rehearse and drill. Troupe leader Wong Wan Man became his first teacher, training him in the fundamentals of Chiu Chow music and percussion. He also studied scripts at the home of the renowned performer Chan Chor Wai. By the following summer, at fourteen, he was already on stage. Even after finishing Form Five and entering the workforce, his dedication never faded. For decades, “helping out every seventh lunar month” became a ritual—one that steadily turned amateur participation into professional-level skill, both onstage and behind the scenes.

 

"Real Gongs, Fake Drums": A Stage Philosophy

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In pure Chiu Chow music, string instruments—especially the erxian (two-stringed fiddle)—take the lead. In Chiu Chow opera, however, percussion dominates. Gongs and drums carry immense weight, and Tam’s specialty is drumming. He quotes a saying from within the industry: “Real gongs, fake drums.” He explains: “What audiences really hear is the gong sound, not the drum. You can only learn drums after you’ve mastered the different gongs. The drum is more like a guide—responding to the actors’ emotions onstage, then directing the gong players so their strikes stay synchronized and build atmosphere. The drummer isn’t just a musician; he’s more like a stage director, watching the actors while leading the musicians and coordinating the gongs. You have to know the script by heart—if you’re looking down at the text, the whole performance falls apart.”

 

He shifted from gongs to drums around 1998 for a practical reason: Hong Kong simply did not have enough drummers, and with performances coming up, someone had to step in. The role required talent and hard work—but also teamwork and social intelligence. “The gong players are all older than me, all my seniors,” he says. “Every time, I pour tea and look after them, because one drummer coordinates five gong players. Without cooperation, it doesn’t matter how brilliantly you drum—it’s useless.”

 

Hong Kong Chiu Chow Opera: Similar, Yet Distinct

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​In Tam’s view, Chiu Chow music and opera cannot be separated: Chiu Chow music includes opera, and opera depends on Chiu Chow music. He traces Hong Kong’s roots back to 1930, when the Hong Kong Chiu Chow Merchants Mutual Assistance Society was founded with a music division whose members played instruments such as the yehu (coconut fiddle) and erxian to express nostalgia. In the 1950s, new waves of Chiu Chow migrants arrived in Hong Kong, alongside deity birthday celebrations and puppet theatre, and troupes such as Sun Tin Choi, Sun Tin Ngai, Sun Sing Ngai, Sun Hon Kong, and Yuk Lei Chun emerged as the art form flourished across the city. In the 1960s and 1970s, local performers began developing a distinctly Hong Kong style—one that leaned into martial arts sequences and pursued spectacle and excitement. Television stations also broadcast Chiu Chow opera films, creating what Tam describes as the golden years.

 

“Back then, Hong Kong opera stages were chaotic,” he recalls. “Buddhist chanting on one side, auctions on the other. If the performance was too subdued, it would get drowned out.” As a result, repertoire choices and staging in Hong Kong tended to favor showmanship. Even with small casts, productions had to look and feel big. Northern-style kung fu sequences became common, and Tam notes that Jackie Chan and the Yuen Stunt Team even appeared in Chiu Chow operas before they became famous. This emphasis on action shaped percussion as well: it had to drive atmosphere, punctuate movement, and hold a noisy environment together. Even in civil plays, Hong Kong versions often pushed emotion through more forceful musical choices and interpretation. Tam points to the “Meeting at the Well” scene in The White Hare, which became notably intense in Hong Kong productions—gradually solidifying into a local style.

 

But when Tam began participating—roughly from the 1990s onward—Hong Kong performers were already becoming scarce, and hiring mainland troupes grew increasingly common. Mainland troupes, he notes, excel at singing and typically place less emphasis on martial scenes.

 

Saving Scripts, One at a Time

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When he talks about collecting, Tam’s voice turns serious. Around 2000, a theatre he often visited was relocating and clearing out. Many items were left behind. He remembers “grabbing scripts one by one,” treating each rescued volume as something irreplaceable. “Because once the scripts are gone, the plays are lost forever.” For him, collecting is not a hobby—it is cultural salvage. “Some Hong Kong scripts can’t be found on the mainland,” he says. “Three Visits to the Imperial Sister is a Hong Kong script. The Fairy of Green Waves and The Women Generals of the Yang Family also differ between Hong Kong and mainland versions, with different melodies.” People have offered high prices, but he refuses to sell. “If they’re sold and adapted, they’ll be altered. These texts are evidence of how Hong Kong Chiu Chow opera was once performed—they’re invaluable.”

 

He is also frank about how harsh the reality has become. From the time he joined the troupe to today, “if you want to find someone roughly my age, there isn’t anyone,” he says. Performance opportunities have fallen—from occasional shows outside the seventh lunar month to what he calls “pitifully few” now, with even visiting mainland troupes appearing in drastically reduced numbers. While the mainland has formal schools for Chiu Chow music and opera, Tam feels that standardized training can make it difficult to cultivate versatile artists who can master both percussion and performance.

 

Still, he chooses to keep showing up. “Wherever there’s a need, I’ll help out. As long as there are seventh-month deity performances, I’ll be there.” He also resists pure pessimism. In Southeast Asia, he notes, Chiu Chow opera has developed in new ways—Singapore, for example, has drawn participation beyond the Teochew community with government support. Hong Kong, he believes, could learn from those models, widening access and building new audiences to create more possibilities for Chiu Chow music and opera.

 

* Teochew (also spelled Chiu Chow) refers to the people and language associated with Chaozhou (潮州) and the wider Chaoshan region in eastern Guangdong; the different spellings reflect different pronunciations and romanization traditions, with “Chiu Chow” common in Hong Kong via Cantonese pronunciation.