He is known as the "slayer of kings," Canto-pop kings, that is. But at 35, singer-songwriter Emil Chau Wah-Kin is not your regular Canto-pop star. He is married with two young children and is not exactly in the same rugged-good-looks category as Andy Lau Tak-Wah, nor can he boast the nifty dance moves of Aaron Kwok Fu-Shing.

That isn't to say he doesn't have his own cheerful charm. Chau's slightly goofy smile has become a popular one in Hong Kong and, while the economy might have been slow, Taiwan-based Chau has been laughing all the way to the bank, leaving Hong Kong's four Canto-pop "kings" in his wake.

His Mandarin and Cantonese albums have been consistently among the top sellers of the year and a series of concerts, scheduled to run from January 27 to February 8, have long since sold out, leaving many fans scouring the town for tickets.

Recently Chau, who has just released his third Cantonese album, Full Chords, was also awarded the Billboard Asian Artistic Excellence Award for outstanding achievement in the Asian music industry.

While other singers revel in the limelight, fame is something that sits, uncomfortably on Chau's shoulders. Compliments are accepted with an embarrassed laugh and mumbled thanks.

"I have been very lucky but, to be honest, I'm still not quite used to the fame and attention. I don't quite know how to manage it," he says earnestly.

Chau describes himself as a worrier, a habit cultivated while he was making a name for himself. Ironically, although he has been a recording artist in Taiwan for almost a decade, it is only now that he feels he's stepped into the rat race of show business. Even the fact that all 13 of his concerts have sold out doesn't stop Chau from worrying.

"It's not over yet," he says, shaking his head. "I'm still nervous that, after seeing the show, people might say, 'If I had known it was like this, I wouldn't have bothered to go through so much trouble to get the tickets."

Perhaps the biggest satisfaction Chau received during the year was being accepted into the fold in his homeland once again. Chau was born in Hong Kong, grew up in the family home in Aberdeen and attended the New Method College.

He left for Taipei to attend the University of Taiwan when he was 19 and started singing folk songs in pubs around Taipei for four years before he was discovered by songwriter-singer producer Jonathan Li Zhongchen, who signed him with Rock Records in Taipei.

Chau released his debut album in 1986 with barely enough Mandarin to get through the songs. Although he hovered around number two or three in the charts, he thought that he would never quite reach the top.

And while he had long dreamed about bringing his music home, Hong Kong proved a harder market to to crack. Chau admitted he had only made half-hearted attempts at it until his record company sat down to plan his return in earnest 2 years ago.

"I released a few Mandarin singles here in those years but they didn't get much response," he concedes.

It finally dawned on the singer that he needed to be more "local" in Taiwanese terms. "I took up Taiwanese [Meinan dialect] and paid more attention to what the people liked to hear. Then my style slowly changed to something more in tune with the local tastes," he says.

Then came Let Me Be Happy, Let Me Be Sad, a Taiwanese hit that Sally Yeh converted into a runaway Cantonese hit here, followed closely by the best-selling Many Hearts, and Chau could honestly say he had come home.

But it was also the start of a battle to re-integrate into Hong Kong and get people to see him as a local and not as a Taiwanese.

Today, Chau regards himself as a Taiwanese singer but a Hong Kong person.

The success of his singing career has also given Chau the opportunity to fulfill another childhood dream: to be in a Hong Kong movie.

Although he acted in two Taiwanese films at the start of his career, it was always Hong Kong movies he had his eye on.

Last year, he saw that dream materialise when he was offered a role in Just Married, starring opposite award-winning actress Anita Yuen Wing-Yee. This was quickly followed by Sylvia Chang Ai-Chia's I Want To Live and Faithfully Yours, with Cecilia Yip Tung.

Even with Hong Kong, Taiwan and most of the Chinatowns around the world in his pocket, Chau still hasn't stopped worrying about things to come.

In 1991, in preparation for the time when he will stop performing, Chau set up his own production company, Stars Ferry.

"The production company is only to reassure myself of my future. I can't just retire when I stop singing because it may bring on a lot of other problems. So I've just found a job for myself first."

His next dream is to be able to slow down the pace of his work and strike a balance between work and time with his American wife, Contance, and his children. But he knows that, given his present popularity, this will be hard to achieve.

 

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