Rice Wine & Dancing Girls
The real-life drama of a roving cinema manager in Fifties
Malaysia & Singapore

by Wong Seng Chow

Written in a fast-paced episodic style that pays fi tting homage to the black-and-white cinema adventure serials of yesteryear, this is an engaging memoir of the unpredictable (and at times perilous) life of the late Wong Kee Hung, an itinerant cinema manager swept up in the postwar cinema industry boom of 1950s and 60s Malaysia and Singapore.

Kee Hung’s line of work threw him into contact with a menagerie of characters ranging from movie stars and politicians to gangsters and headhunters. Armed with just a foldable camp-bed and mosquito net, his wanderings took him into unfamiliar and sometimes dangerous territory. This book follows him closely along these journey.

The notes and diaries he kept of his adventures were discovered by his son after his death and have been woven into a glorious first person account written from the perspective of Kee Hung himself.