A Life of Splendour

Cultural pioneer Rebecca Pan, who appears on Tatler's Asia's Most Stylish list this year, looks back at how she thrust Chinese fashion and Hong Kong arts into the international limelight

- Zabrina Lo

Rebecca Pan turns 93 this December. When Tatler arrives at her apartment in Ho Man Tin for the interview in mid-July, the actress pushes herself up shakily from her chair. She says with an apologetic smile, “My body isn’t too well these days. I can’t stand up to greet you.” Despite her outward frailty, her hearty laugh, effervescent personality and candy pink locks interlacing her silver hair reveal traces of the daring, stylish, modern starlet that she was decades ago.

The name may not ring a bell today, but Pan was a celebrated multilingual singer in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s who was fundamental in putting the city’s art scene on the international map, especially when mainland China opened its borders to the western world in the late 1970s. She is also a fashion icon known for wearing qipao during her performances.

Her six decades of legacy and achievements are now celebrated at With the Sun, She Quells the Night—A Tribute to Rebecca Pan, an exhibition by Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (Chat) in Tsuen Wan. Featuring Pan’s photos, costumes, jewellery and news clippings, the show spotlights the key moments and impact of her life. “Rebecca is an icon and figure of nostalgia,” says Bruce Li, one of the curators of the show. “But of course, she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t like staying in the past. She is always one step ahead.”

Pan’s avant-garde approach to life from an early age can be explained by the environment she grew up in. She was born Pan Wan Ching to a middle-class family in 1930 in Shanghai. The city had recently had an influx of British bankers and French artists—and along with them, jazz, films, cabaret, nightclubs, dance and literature that turned it into China’s most modern city.