Chow Yun-Fat's breakout? A gambling epic where losing teaches you more than winning ever could.
Season 1 • Episode 20
LatestU LAN is so ambitious as trying to snatch AH LOON's business into her own hands. After massive killings and bloodshed, she fails. AH LOON is sorry to have AH FU killed in the fight. CHOU returns to Shanghai and search for AH LOON for revenge. He takes AH LOON to the Nine-heavens tower for a big game of cards which constitutes the final climax of the series.
This series about gambler-rivalries in China. It was 1935 in Shanghai, a young country lad, Ah Long, who just arrived the city then to challenge Tu Yi Xiao (King Punter of the North) but soon he found himself insufficient and humbly begged to serve Tu as his master. Soon, Tu's gambling business expanded so fast cause other gangs felt annoyed and rivalries began.
Acting
Chow Yun-Fat before stardom, raw and hungry as Ah Long.
Production
Wong Tin-Lam recreates 1935 Shanghai with period detail on TV budget.
Writing
Gambling scenes as character studies, not spectacle.
Creator
Wong Tin-Lam
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
1981 Hong Kong television often used Republican-era settings to critique contemporary British colonial anxieties through historical allegory.
Wong Tin-Lam directed his son, Wong Jing, in similar gambling themes; this series arguably birthed the 'god of gamblers' subgenre that defined 1990s Hong Kong cinema.
HK
