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[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “Jack Ng’s Night King: Elegy for a Vanishing East Tsim Sha Tsui” by Jonathan Han

Jack Ng (director). Night King, 2026. 132 min.

Growing up, East Tsim Sha Tsui was always a place for primary-school excursions. The history and science museums were an annual destination, filled with relics and gizmos, placards and diagrams, the value of which I did not particularly understand as a child. Afterwards, in classic field-trip fashion, we would have a picnic in the Centenary Gardens, a plaza of typical 1980s Hong Kong design, with square tiles that turn pink or white depending on the trajectory of the sun.

Visit it then or today and the area appears to be an anomaly. It is flanked by the populous district of Hung Hom on one side and the popular shopping destination of Tsim Sha Tsui on the other. Among the empty malls and banquet halls, there remain very few signs of what was once a vibrant and raunchy nightlife. Even the ruins are gone. The space is a limbo, waiting to become unrecognisable to those who still remember how it once was.

Night King attempts to arrest that memory. EJ Entertainment, a nightclub set in East Tsim Sha Tsui and the last of its kind, is threatened by a hostile takeover. Dayo Wong Tze Wah plays Foon, the manager of EJ Entertainment and the self-proclaimed King. Opposite him stars Sammi Cheng, who plays Diva V, Foon’s ex-wife and initial threat. Their animosity is short-lived, as Diva V’s attempted takeover is hijacked by a more capitalistic, vengeful antagonist, Prince Fung (Chun Yip Lo). Helped by a cast of hostesses, the divorced couple must reunite to preserve their livelihoods, scrounging up cash however they can to retain ownership of all they once built.

Jack Ng’s film could be categorised as a dramedy, depending on whether one appreciates its blue humour or treats its nightclub drama seriously. The film, in its original form, does well to skirt the boundaries of parental guidance, never revealing too much of either the voluptuous or the seedy side of nightclubs. Although the tragic nature of being a hostess is occasionally acknowledged, the tropes of the “fallen woman”, innocence lost, shame, and tragic endings, are nowhere to be seen in this Chinese New Year film. Bound by these constraints, the dramedy instead draws its strength from the less debauched themes of love, loyalty, and regret.

Sprawling with barbed jokes, a heist-like plot, three relationships, and a love triangle, the film proclaims these themes over all the action, at the risk of sounding moralistic. The same mantras are repeated, as if to drive the point:¹

“All these years, why couldn’t we live up to our own promises?”

“We will only share our suffering, but never our wealth.”

“A girl has to leave to make a man remember her forever.”

In the glitzy world of nightclubs, there is no subtlety to wisdom. The film does, however, contain softer touches, an artistic style reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai, and quiet moments between lovers. Paired with the rapid-fire witticisms of classic Hong Kong comedy, it is an effective crowd-pleaser. It therefore comes as no surprise that the film has broken local box-office records.

Following the success of the film, the director’s cut was released two months after the original. Extending the film by an extra half-hour, the new rendition develops the backstories of various hostesses. With its new Restricted rating, the film exposes the broken homes, deferred dreams, debt, rape, and abortions that constitute the trauma of many of these women. In response to this trauma, the women use their sexuality to gain agency in a darker world. This struggle forms a new subplot, lending greater depth to the director’s cut. One hostess uses her relationship with a financier to trade in insider information. Another attempts to undermine her absent father by sleeping with one of his friends. Such actions come with emotional costs, and in their moments of weakness, the women console one another. Where the original is a snappier comedy, the new release carries greater weight, even if the result is a more unwieldy story.

Beyond these familiar themes and traditional styles, Night King is not afraid to depict the decline of Hong Kong’s entertainment industry.

What remains consistent between the two versions is Night King‘s clearsighted depiction of the decline of Hong Kong’s entertainment industry. The film touches upon tensions between local and foreign labour. Mandarin-speaking girls, exotic and aggressively seductive, prove more profitable than the relatively reticent and lax Hong Kong hostesses. Local recruits must adopt affected accents, even speaking Japanese to draw in clients. At one point, Foon and Diva V look out at the Macau skyline and are reminded of how their old stomping grounds once possessed the same allure.

Our prior knowledge of the district’s demise may influence how we view Foon’s last-ditch attempt as foolish, admirable, or even fantastical. Yet Foon knows just as well that he is delaying the inevitable, and in that sense he is convincingly heroic and romantic to a fault. Diva V is an effective foil, portrayed as calculating and domineering, only to unravel under pressure. Together, their partnership is flawed enough to persuade us of the reality of their divorce, yet it remains resolute in the face of impending change. The allure of nostalgia proves as strong for them as it does for their Hong Kong audience, even for those who know the area only for its museums, where history is inevitably consigned.

1. All translations from Cantonese are my own. ↩︎

^{How to cite, Han, Jonathan. “Jack Ng’s Night King: Elegy for a Vanishing East Tsim Sha Tsui.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 20 Apr. 2026. chajournal.com/2026/04/20/night-king.}

Jonathan Han is a Hong Kong-based writer. His work has appeared in Essays in Criticism, Hong Kong Review of Books, and Asian Review of Books. His chapbook Quinquennial was published by Pen and Anvil Press. Follow his Substack @jhantheman. [All contributions by Jonathan Han.]