How Cantopop classic The Bund took Hong Kong by storm and lives on in people’s hearts

Featuring Frances Yip’s commanding voice, The Bund, theme tune to a TVB series of the same name, was also a hit among the Chinese diaspora

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The Bund composer Joseph Koo (left), singer Frances Yip (centre) and lyricist James Wong in an undated image. Photo: Courtesy of Frances Yip

Published: 5:15pm, 15 Nov 2024Updated: 8:27am, 17 Nov 2024

With its assertive orchestral opening and diva Frances Yip Lai-yee’s commanding voice singing “long bun, long lau”, the first few bars of “The Bund” are immediately recognisable to many.

But just why has this 1980 Cantonese song, the theme of a television gangster romance set in Shanghai, become such an enduring anthem beloved by speakers of different dialects?

It helps that it was composed by Joseph Koo Ka-fai, with lyrics by James Wong Jim, two of Hong Kong’s greatest creative minds, during what was widely considered to be the golden age of the city’s popular culture.

“The Bund” was one of the earliest and most successful collaborations between Koo and Wong. Koo was then Hong Kong broadcaster TVB’s music director and tasked with writing the theme for a new series about love and loyalty in pre-communist Shanghai, starring Chow Yun-fat, Angie Chiu Ngar-chi and Ray Lui Leung-wai.

The powerful introduction, like a battle cry, instantly grabs the listener’s attention – and then Yip’s voice comes in with a memorable and poetic verse that translates in English as: “The waves run, the waves flow / The 10,000-mile-long river will never cease / All washed away, the world’s affairs, mixed up into a torrential tide.”