[2014.11.01] SYLVIA CHANG DISCUSSES SUCCESS AND FAILURE

Sylvia Chang and CU president Joseph Sung

The forum has old photos of stars: Brigitte Lin

Joan Lin
courtesy of mingpao.com

Actor, director, singer and producer Sylvia Chang (Cheung Ngai Ga) has been in show business for 40 years and accumulated a lot of experience in the industry. She was an example of success. Yesterday the Hong Kong Chinese University invited her to speak at a forum titled "Failure is the Nutrient of Success" and share her secrets to success. CU president Joseph Sung (Shum Cho Hiu) personally welcomed her.

Cheung Ngai Ga spoke at the CU to an auditorium of several hundred students. She joked that originally she thought she would only speak to several dozen students in a classroom. "Perhaps I should sing a song for everyone." She joked. The topic of her talk was about success and failure. She recalled when she was young, she was rather popular. Yet after she first got into show business and made movies, she suffered many failures. At the event she talked about her first film 40 years ago. She explained that it was when action film was in full bloom. In the film she was merely decoration. She said, "After making three movies I started to sense something was wrong. My manager also felt that I wasn't doing well. Then I gave up making movies in Hong Kong and returned to Taiwan to become a singer. However I also was unable to coordinate with the singing style that was popular then. I knew that I had a lot of flaws, knew that I had to start from zero. The criticisms I got at the time were setbacks in life, they made me consider whether I should be in show business."

Cheung Ngai Ga said that in the past many young people have asked her about show business. She said, "Since everyone knows about the successful me, what about the failure me? Everyone thinks that success is something that is deserved." As for success, she felt that when everything was done to its best then it was a success. Young people made success very complicated. She said, "I enjoy the process the most. Whether successful or not it is beautiful."