He Walked Through TVB With Red Ink on His Chest

1991, Clear Water Bay TV City, Broadcast Drive.

Alex Man walked out of the makeup room. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt. Across the chest, written in red marker, was a line of characters. Where the pen had crossed the cotton, the ink had bled, so from a distance it looked like blood. The words read: Begging the Chicken Feather Commander to grant us studio time.

The red marker was still in his hand. He walked along Broadcast Drive, past the outdoor sets, past the prop room, past the doors of soundstages with “Filming in Progress” signs taped to them. Some crew members stopped what they were doing and looked at him. He didn’t stop.

The reporters came quickly. Shutters clicked in a continuous burst. Someone pushed a microphone toward his face. He stood there, said nothing, let the cameras get a clear shot of the words on his shirt.

That day he was filming The Big Family. Forty episodes, compressed into twenty-five days. The crew worked eighteen hours a day. Extra actors in costume lay down on the soundstage floor and slept. He had gone to the producer. He had gone to the executives. His request was simple: extend the shooting schedule, let people breathe. The reply was no reply.

The next day the photo was on the front page of the entertainment papers. Later there were reports that more than three hundred people gathered in front of Shaw Studios, holding up their work permits. TVB’s stock price fell. Then the full production schedule was extended by thirty percent. The hourly wage for extras went up forty percent. The crew was given a daily cap on working hours.

The cost came quickly too.

State of Divinity had been set to star him. They replaced him. Other lead roles in other dramas were swapped out one after another. Endorsements were cancelled. Variety show appearances were pulled. The steady stream of offers stopped. He went to TVB and asked why. The answer was: you incited trouble.

For one drama, the costume test photos had already been taken and hung on the makeup room wall. The next day he got a call saying he wasn’t needed. He hung up, tore the photo off the wall. He tore it halfway, stopped, folded it, and put it in a drawer.

In 1995, after finishing Endless Love, he left TVB. After that he went into the garment business in Guangzhou. He did it for more than ten years. Then the financial crisis hit, and he lost money. After 2004, he disappeared from public view.

He reappeared in 2010. He came back to acting in mainland China, in dramas like Years of Pride and The Romance of the Condor Heroes. When he returned, he said: I’m not young anymore.

Diabetes was hereditary. High cholesterol, gout, several conditions tangled around him. Long-term medication, rapid weight gain, memory loss. At his worst, he gained thirty kilograms because of diabetes and had to stop working to recover. In recent years he has been photographed multiple times needing someone to support him, sometimes in a wheelchair.

Wong Jing later mentioned him in a video. He said Alex Man’s diabetes had gotten worse because he loved drinking too much, that he needed a wheelchair to go out, and that he now mainly relied on paid appearances and bar shows to get by. Wong Jing also said: his emotional investment in acting is something many actors can’t match, but once he starts acting he gets carried away, can’t control himself, and that’s one reason he got fewer and fewer roles later on.

Videos of his paid appearances circulated online. He stands in the atrium of a county mall, on a makeshift stage, with discount promotion signs behind him. His suit is loose. His legs shake badly. But he finishes the song, and he bows. Some people say he’s fallen on hard times.

Fewer people know where that money goes.

A booker who worked with him said Alex Man takes about eight paid gigs a month. The fee is thirty to fifty thousand yuan. Sometimes if they can’t agree, he’ll take thirty thousand. He has set up a split for himself: seventy percent of his appearance income goes directly to donations, twenty percent goes into a charity fund, and he keeps only ten percent for basic living expenses. His average annual donation exceeds two million yuan, mostly to schools in remote areas. He helped set up forty-seven school partnerships, reaching more than twenty thousand students.

In the account book of a primary school in Xiangxi, there is a record of monthly transfers of twenty thousand yuan from “Mr. W.” This record has lasted seventeen years. It wasn’t until the principal recognized Alex Man at a county mall performance that “Mr. W.” turned out to be him.

After the Henan floods, he donated six hundred thousand yuan of his performance fees. During the pandemic, he donated five hundred thousand. When Yuan Longping died, he went to pay his respects at four in the morning.

Backstage crew once filmed a video. During a break in the performance, he hides in a fire escape, lifts his shirt, and gives himself an insulin injection. After the injection, he lowers his shirt and walks back to the stage.

He was born in 1957. This year he is sixty-nine.

When he bows, the insulin pen shows from his suit pocket. Someone in the audience holds up a phone and films him. He straightens up and walks toward the backstage.