Halina Tam Siu-Wan 譚小環
Halina Tam joined TVB after winning the Miss Hong Kong pageant, played K.K. in Young and Dangerous 2, and earned a nomination for Glittering Days. After leaving her steady television work, she opened a fish-ball snack shop, recalling how her mother used to sell them. Later, Tam and her husband moved to Canada, where she once again stood behind the counter.
Halina Tam grew up in the Wah Fu district of Hong Kong, where her mother sold street food. After winning the Miss Hong Kong pageant in 1994, Tam went to work for TVB. On screen she was spotted early in Young and Dangerous 2. She played K.K., the girlfriend of one of the gang members, and returned to the role in Young and Dangerous 3. Ekin Cheng worked in the same company of actors and singers. Tam tried her hand at music, performed with him and took lessons from Roman Tam, a famous singer who also trained other aspiring performers. She had roles in series and made her own attempts to find a place between the stage and television. After a break, she returned to regular filming in the early 2000s.
In The King of Yesterday and Tomorrow, Tam appeared in a comedy about a man from imperial China trying to make a life for himself in the modern city. Her experience as a singer could have served her far better in Glittering Days. It is set among people who make their living on the stages of Hong Kong nightspots and know little about whether they will be able to step onto one next week. For this role Tam was nominated for a TVB supporting actress award. Later she hosted a daytime programme. From that job she kept the habit of calculating how much time she could still spend on a conversation before she had to move on to the next task. Her most notable farewell to a steady studio schedule was Forensic Heroes III. After it, Tam left TVB, though from time to time she agreed to new roles. At the end of the following decade she appeared in The Leakers and The White Storm 2: Drug Lords.
In 2007 Tam got married. Later she said that she and her husband had decided not to have children. When photographs of her husband with another woman appeared in the press, he apologised, and Tam said those pictures could not be used to judge how their marriage worked. The couple also had to get through her husband's serious illness. Tam herself told journalists about it. By that time they already had a business together. In 2014 they opened a fish-ball shop, and in 2016 another one. Tam wanted to bring back at least something of the street trade she knew. She remembered how her mother knew the regular customers and how children would come up to the counter to talk to the neighbours.
In practice, according to Tam, she first had to learn far simpler things. She had to get the kitchen running, work out how much stock to buy and personally keep an eye on what the customer received. Her husband explained to her what she had never known about running a shop, and her mother helped with the cooking. Tam did not limit herself to lending the shop her name. She worked in the business herself. In 2024 the last Hong Kong branch closed. Later she spoke about the closure without dramatic explanations and confirmed that there had been difficulties with the rent. She and her husband moved to Canada. By January 2025 Tam was already serving customers at a new café in Markham. During the soft opening, a queue formed outside the place.
In 2026 Tam was still working there. Among the visitors were people who knew her from Hong Kong television series. More than thirty years had passed since she first stepped out before the public at the pageant, and in a new city she was once again getting to know people one at a time as they waited for their food at the counter.
