Children’s Television in Hong Kong Before the Handover

Children’s television is a surprisingly under-explored and under-documented subject. This is particularly true of Hong Kong, whose children’s TV legacy is rarely discussed beyond the city itself.

The history of Hong Kong children’s television is generally traced back to 1976, with the launch of Hopscotch (跳飛機) on TVB Jade, widely regarded as the territory’s first dedicated children’s programme. Its successor, 430 Space Shuttle (430穿梭機), is often remembered as the genre’s golden age. Running throughout the 1980s, it became a breeding ground for future stars, most famously Stephen Chow and Tony Leung, whose post-430 careers would go on to define Hong Kong cinema.

What interests me more, however, is Flash Fax – the programme that followed 430 Space Shuttle, and the focus of this piece.

Flash Fax first aired in 1989, a moment of profound political anxiety in Hong Kong. The Tiananmen Square massacre in June of that year sent shockwaves through the city, accelerating emigration and intensifying public unease about the future ahead of the 1997 handover. Popular culture did not exist in isolation from this climate, and Flash Fax can be read very clearly as a product of its time.

The programme launched with several original sketch segments, including Auntie Woo-jok-jok (烏卒卒), Char Siu Bun and Hamburger (叉燒包與漢堡包), and Vampire Grandpa and Grandson (殭屍爺孫). Each came with its own theme song, all written and produced by the prolific composer Joseph Koo Ka-fai 顧嘉煇, who had been responsible for many of Hong Kong’s most recognisable television theme tunes since the 1970s.

What is striking is how different these songs sound from Koo’s earlier work for children’s television. They are noticeably more contemporary, drawing on synth-pop, post-punk and other left-field influences. This marked a significant departure from the more traditional, almost didactic tone of earlier children’s music. It seems unlikely that this shift was Koo’s alone; rather, it reflects a broader creative direction for the programme itself.

〈創美好明天〉 (“Build a Good Future”), the programme’s ending theme.

The most iconic of these recurring segments is undoubtedly Auntie Woo-jok-jok (烏卒卒), remembered as much for its extremely catchy theme song as for Helen Tam Yuk-ying’s exuberant performance. Viewed from a 2026 standpoint, particularly outside Hong Kong, its reliance on racialised caricature and cultural stereotyping is deeply jarring. The most troubling element is Auntie’s brown-faced sidekick, Mung-cha-cha (檬渣渣), whose name itself carries racial connotations, alluding to “Ah cha” (阿差), a derogatory term commonly used at the time to describe people perceived as Middle Eastern. Such language was broadly accepted and rarely questioned.

Yet there’s also something quite unsettling about the premise of the segment. The humour does not lie in the characters being foreign, but in their spectacular incompetence in English. They always find themselves in awkward situations and are forced to learn the language from local Hong Kong people around them. Would it have felt too intimidating, or even condescending, for the show to depict ethnically Hong Kong characters in that role instead? I wonder.

Some of the lyrics from the theme song are also worth noting. “(She) calls tea ‘cha’ / even gwei-lo are afraid of her” (要 tea 叫做茶，鬼佬都怕她). The line suggests that she does not know the English word for tea, which in turn explains why the gwei-lo – a common, if problematic, slang term for white foreigners – are frightened of her. More broadly, the lyric offers a clear insight into how English is regarded in Hong Kong. Beyond its status as the city’s second and official language, English functions less as a means of communication than as a marker of power and social standing. To speak English well is to claim legitimacy and status, while failing to do so risks ridicule. In Hong Kong at the time, no one would want to be laughed at by gwei-lo for speaking “improper” English

Vampire Grandpa and Grandson offers another curious lens. It follows a Chinese vampire grandfather and granddaughter as they explore the city. Unlike Western vampires, Chinese vampires can’t walk normally; they hop around with their arms stuck straight out. Living underground beneath a TV studio, they also lack a full picture of modern Hong Kong.

It is difficult not to read these ancient Chinese vampires as metaphors for Mainland Chinese, who are physically close yet culturally distant, often unable to reconcile with or fully understand Hong Kong because of ideological differences. Through their eyes, Hong Kong is presented in a whimsically alien way. It’s a rather imaginative way of looking at the city.

Char Siu Bun and Hamburger is arguably the most overtly political of the sketches. It can be read as a loose allegory for colonial Hong Kong, built around a constant tug-of-war between “Eastern” and “Western” identities. Char Siu Bun appears with a tray of pork buns balanced on his head, while Hamburger, a female character wearing an oversized hamburger hat, plays his rival. Their mission is to introduce different foods to children, but they are perpetually locked in petty fights and competitions, a setup perfectly suited to children's entertainment.

In one episode still available online, Char Siu Bun mocks Hamburger for reading, telling her that she needs to study only because she isn’t clever enough, using the idiom 將勤補拙 (“to make up for lack of talent through diligence”). It’s the sort of line that gives away an older nationalist mindset – the belief that Chinese people are inherently more intelligent than foreigners. That this turns up so casually in a children’s programme says a lot about the culture of the time.

The choice of cast is also interesting. Jay Leung, who played Hamburger, was raised in the United States. Her accent, code-switching Cantonese and heavy use of English mark her as a very recognisable social class within Hong Kong media culture: overseas-educated, privileged, culturally Westernised, and highly visible in the showbiz in Hong Kong.

The lyrics of the theme song, which shares the same title, encapsulates the dynamic between the two characters: “Char siu bun and Hamburger love to fight; there isn’t a single day when they don’t argue” (叉燒包、漢堡包，總喜歡吵與鬧，沒有一天不嗌交，開心快樂都要吵). This friction not only defines their relationship but also serves as a reflection of the ongoing tension between the competing cultural and political influences in Hong Kong.

Looking at it as a whole, Flash Fax feels like a remarkably accurate snapshot of Hong Kong before the handover: anxious, self-aware, and full of contradictions. Like many programmes of the period, it uses humour and caricature as creative tropes to make sense of these tensions. What sets it apart is how sophisticated it is for a children’s programme. To me, that says a lot about the period – even children’s television couldn’t avoid the tensions of the time and had to find ways to engage with them.