Paula Tsui Siu Fung has been one of my favorite female Hong Kong singers since the day I started listening to Hong Kong pop music, circa 1973. My mother played her vinyl albums on our console stereo, which was enclosed in a mahogany cabinet and took up a large corner of our living room. Next to it was my mother's collection of records, which emigrated with her from Hong Kong, as well as the many she added whenever we had a chance to visit New York City's Chinatown. We would spend hours in the record shops looking through all the albums, and if the shop owner was nice, we'd be able to sample songs from his inventory before we purchased them. We never went home from visiting a Chinatown record shop with less than 10 albums in a large shopping bag, and one of them was usually Paula's latest release. We always went to New York on the pretense of visiting my grandparents, but I think my mother had other intentions.

Thirty years later, I am still listening to Paula's music, but now on CDs, MP3s and HKVP Radio. My Paula cassette collection has worn out due to excessive airtime in my car while I was commuting to work. I've tried to replace as many of them I can find on CDs so that my kids can grow up listening to her, too. But I guess it'll be a little hard for them to appreciate her with their limited understanding of Cantonese.

Her singing career started in 1966 when she won first place out of 2000 contestants in a singing competition. She wasn't planning on a singing career, but in 1970, she released her first album and the rest is history. During the decade between 1985 and 1995, she held 132 concerts in the Hong Kong Coliseum, with 43 alone in 1992, in addition to the many held in major cities around the world. She commands a high price tag for each performance, but it is worth every penny to hear her perform. She has won many awards over her career, proving that she is an outstanding talent. Besides singing, she has been involved in much of the Hong Kong entertainment scene, including movies, TV series, advertising, radio, and has been a frequent guest in other performers' concerts and TV specials.

Paula's adaptability to a wide range of singing styles makes her one of the most versatile artists in the Hong Kong music industry. I don't think there are many other singers, in the past or present, who can rival her talent as far as the ability to sing well pieces from Chinese opera to folk songs to modern pop to love ballads to movie and TV theme songs. Paula can do them all.

The most notable aspects of her music are in the strength of her voice, and the exceptional quality of her lyrics and music. The lyrics are always meaningful, the tunes are unique and the arrangements cover a variety of styles. She's had a brilliant team of songwriters, lyricists and composers who have created many high caliber songs for her - Joseph Koo, Cheng Kwok Kwong, Lam Man Yee, Freddie Aguilar, and Lo Dong Nei, to name a few. They are all accomplished masters of their trade, and helped make Paula popular and successful during the peak of her career in the mid-1980s.

If you have ever had the pleasure of attending, viewing or listening to one of her concerts, it is quite an extraordinary treat. We are dazzled by her stunning dresses and outfits, mesmerized by her elegant beauty and grace, and touched by the sensuality in her voice. Her singing appears effortless, lips moving ever so gently, as though she is kissing every word that is reverberated from her mouth. It is remarkable how such a tiny woman can have so much power and conviction in her singing.

If you listen to her speak between numbers during a concert performance, she builds up quite a rapport with her audience and has a very subtle and witty sense of humor. In one of her 1988 TV specials, Michael Hui, a well-known stand-up comedian, actor and director, joked that Paula was probably the only person who could bend the rule in comedy by delivering jokes effectively at a slow pace.

Her last all-new CD release came out in 1991, and she is no longer working in the recording studio, but continues to make guest appearances on award shows, TV specials, radio programs, and she will grant an occasional interview. In one of them, she was asked what one thing makes her happy. She replied that it was hearing the sound of an audience clapping. I am hoping that she makes a comeback one of these days, and if she has a concert anywhere within my traveling range, I will certainly be there to clap for her.