Cheng was born in 1972, the only child of Norman Cheng Tung-hon, a record label tycoon in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He was often in his father’s office and recording studios, and was well acquainted with several music producers in his father’s company.
Cantopop superstar Sammi Cheng’s story – and her rocky romantic life
Cantopop superstar Sammi Cheng’s story – and her rocky romantic life
After majoring in business and minoring in music history at Mt San Antonio College, a community college in the US state of California, Cheng worked as an amateur backup singer. His work included vocals on Hacken Lee Hak-kan’s 1992 single “Red Sun”.
In 1995, aged 23, he was hired as one of Cantopop superstar Jacky Cheung Hok-yau’s backup vocalists.
A year later, Cheng launched his first solo album, In a Dilemma, recorded in Mandarin and which featured a duet with Cheung. The duet shot him to stardom in East Asia and, at the end of 1996, he released his second Mandarin album, Do Not Love Me – another big hit.
Between 1996 and 1999, he released nine studio albums, which scored him two best new singer awards and prizes in various best song categories. He was often regarded as a successor of Cheung.
While this was happening, Cheng was regularly making Hong Kong tabloid newspaper headlines.
Reports accused him of losing his temper, and of resorting to violence, when he drank.
As the tabloid reports about his behaviour snowballed, Cheng’s career took a nosedive.
In February 2000, while on a flight from Los Angeles to Taipei, he was reported to have smoked cigarettes in the toilet, drunk excessively and put a female flight attendant in a headlock for refusing to serve him more alcohol, before the pilot knocked him out using a flashlight. The plane was diverted to land in Alaska, and Cheng was arrested.
Although he managed to avoid being sent to prison, he was fined US$2,500 after admitting assault and had to pay compensation to the airline, Eva Air. Cheng later told media almost all the royalties he had earned went on paying the damages.
In a public apology, Cheng swore to never drink alcohol again – but the following year, he was arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of drink-driving.
The singer, in an interview with the Post in 2006, said that fame had come to him “too easily” and that he “drank to escape” as he did not know how to focus his career.
All the doors to recording studios seemed closed to Cheng, so he turned to acting in comedies instead and picked up four TVB acting credits between 2000 and 2002.
His first leading role came in the comedy Dragon Loaded 2003, also directed by Kok, which topped the Hong Kong summer box office for two weeks in a row. It was followed by the 2005 sequel Dragon Reloaded.
That year, he relaunched his singing career with the Cantonese album Before After, from which came “Rascal”, a song that has since become representative of Cheng’s early career.
The lyrics of the track, which won 11 best song awards in China, detail the inner conflicts of a man with a reputation as a loser, who gets drunk, makes mistakes and feels low about it.
“Rascal”, symbolic of Cheng’s repenting, is known as one of the best public apology letters in Hong Kong history and remains a popular karaoke song in Hong Kong.
In March 2010, on the same evening that news surfaced that the two had secretly married in 2006, Cheng and Choi attended a news conference to confirm this was true – but that they were in the process of getting a divorce.
Cheng has since moved on – in July 2011, he married Sammie Yu Sze-man, a former television host to whom he is still married. She gave birth to their daughter in the same year and a son in 2015.
Today, he is known as one of Hong Kong’s most popular comic-film stars, a respected singer and a dedicated father and husband.
In 2021, he won several best song awards for “My Only One”, the theme song of ViuTV series Single Papa, in which he played the lead role as a single father.
