Gregory Charles Rivers, Cantonese-speaking Australian actor who starred in Hong Kong TVB dramas, dies aged 58

He taught himself Cantonese using cassette tapes and volunteered as a chauffeur for the late superstar Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing and Cantopop icon Alan Tam Wing-lun when they performed in Australia in the 1980s.

Rivers said he was introduced to Cheung as Ho Kwok-wing through “some Chinatown people” to impress the star, and the name had stayed with him since. Ho means rivers in Chinese, with the first name borrowed from Cheung.

He dropped out of school in 1987 and eventually bought a one-way ticket to Hong Kong.

Rivers first worked as an English teacher, where he met his wife Bonnie, and then started his acting career after securing a contract with TVB, the city’s leading free television broadcaster, for a drama series at the time.

He soon became the go-to person for roles requiring a Cantonese-speaking Westerner at TVB, portraying a supervisor, police inspector and missionary. A generation of Hongkongers grew up watching him on TV.

Why Gregory Charles Rivers, also known as Ho Kwok-wing, is the ‘Real Hongkonger’

“I’m lucky because Hong Kong people don’t consider me a celebrity who can’t be touched, I’m one of their own. With every script that I got, I learned more Chinese,” he told the Post in an interview in 2022.

Rivers previously said he had never regretted coming to Hong Kong as he had made friends in the city and loved the culture and language, which he never stopped learning.

“The more fluent the language, the clearer you see society around you,” he said. If you don’t speak it well, you miss the details. Hong Kong has a lot of gweilos but not many integrate to the extent of speaking Chinese day and night.”