My Date with a Vampire

Lore & Background

The series follows Fong Tin-yau, a Chinese guerrilla fighter turned vampire after being bitten in 1938 by Yamamoto Kazuo, a Japanese soldier who becomes a vampire. In 1998, Fong works as a policeman in Hong Kong while pretending his fellow vampire Fook Sang is his son. He becomes entangled in a love triangle with Ma Siu-ling, a sorcerer clan heiress, and her friend Wong Zan Zan. The plot involves Yamamoto Kazuo, a Japanese soldier turned vampire, who now runs a business in Hong Kong and plans to spread a vampire gene to turn all humans into humans. Fong teams up with Ma and allies to stop Yamamoto, who is killed early in season 1 and does not return in season 2.

Reader's Guide

My Date with a Vampire holds significance as a Hong Kong television series that successfully merged Chinese jiangshi traditions with Western vampire mythology, creating a unique hybrid that appealed to local audiences. Its production history reflects challenges in the industry: the script was initially rejected by TVB, and ATV management nearly canceled the project after Lam Ching-ying's death. The series' legacy includes two sequels and a planned remake by Fox Networks Group, which acquired it as part of a larger ATV inventory. The show also launched or boosted the careers of actors like Eric Wan and Joey Meng, the latter playing the newly created character Ma Siu-ling, a miniskirt-wearing ghostbuster. Its blend of romance, action, and horror helped it become a cult classic in Asian television.

Did You Know?

• The series was originally intended to star Lam Ching-ying, but he died of liver cancer in 1997 before production.
• Joey Meng's character Ma Siu-ling was not in the initial cast list; she was created after script changes following Lam's death.
• The script was written by Leung Lap-yan in 1997 and was rejected by TVB before being picked up by ATV.
• Fox Networks Group acquired the rights to remake the series as part of a 28-series deal with ATV.

Origins & Creative Genesis

Airing in 1998 on Hong Kong's Asia Television, My Date with a Vampire arrived as a deliberate spiritual successor to the network's earlier two-season series Vampire Expert, which had run across 1995 and 1996. Where its predecessor had explored supernatural horror through a particular lens, this new production wove together multiple mythological traditions into a single tapestry. The show fused the iconic image of the hopping Chinese jiangshi corpse with the gothic sensibilities of European vampire lore, then layered in broader elements of Chinese mythology and contemporary horror legends to create something distinctly hybrid. The series also carried a deeply personal emotional weight. It functioned as a tribute to Lam Ching-ying, the actor who had anchored Vampire Expert and become a household name through the Mr. Vampire film franchise. Lam's death from liver cancer in 1997 cast a shadow over the project's development, and the finished show served as a collective farewell to a performer whose on-screen presence had defined an entire genre for Hong Kong audiences.

Narrative & World-Building

The story spans two eras. In 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese guerrilla fighter Fong Tin-yau is locked in a duel with Imperial Japanese Army officer Yamamoto Kazuo when an ancient vampire named Tseung-san interrupts their confrontation. Both men, along with a young boy called Fook Sang, are bitten and transformed into vampires. Fast-forwarding to 1998 Hong Kong, Fong has reinvented himself as a police officer, with Fook Sang posing as his son. His quiet life shatters when he crosses paths with Ma Siu-ling, the heiress of a sorcerer clan devoted to eliminating supernatural threats. A complicated love triangle emerges between the three, complicated further by Ma's close friend Wong Zan Zan. The central conflict escalates when Yamamoto, now a powerful Hong Kong businessman, launches a scheme to convert the entire human population into vampires by spreading a so-called vampire gene through his followers. As undead creatures flood the streets, Fong and Ma rally their allies to destroy him. Yet the threat is not finished: a sorcerer called Rahu resurrects Yamamoto, enslaves him, and performs a blood-moon ritual aimed at world domination, forcing one final alliance to stop him.

Production Challenges & Bold Creative Decisions

The road to production was fraught with near-fatal setbacks. Writer Leung Lap-yan completed the script in 1997 and first pitched it to Television Broadcasts Limited, only to be turned away. He then brought it to Asia Television, where it was initially envisioned with Lam Ching-ying as the lead. However, by the time the script was finalized, Lam was critically ill and unreachable. Compounding the difficulty, ATV's senior management expressed dissatisfaction, feeling the material did not align with their expectations of how vampires should be portrayed, and they moved to kill the project after Lam's death. Faced with these obstacles, writer Chan Sap-sam overhauled the script dramatically, inventing the character of Ma Siu-ling, a money-hungry female ghostbuster in high heels and a miniskirt. Producer Sin Chi-wai then championed Joey Meng for the newly created role, an actress who had not been on the original casting list. When the male lead was offered to Eric Wan, he initially wanted to decline out of exhaustion but ultimately accepted once the story captured his interest.

Legacy & Future

My Date with a Vampire proved to be the opening chapter of a multi-year franchise. It was followed by My Date with a Vampire II in 2000 and My Date with a Vampire III in 2004, with Chan Sap-sam penning the scripts for both sequels, ensuring narrative continuity across the trilogy. The series also secured a place in the broader landscape of vampire fiction, appearing alongside entries in lists dedicated to vampire television and vampire film. More recently, the show's future has been secured through corporate acquisition. According to reporting from Netease, Fox Networks Group announced plans to remake the series. Cora Yim, who heads Fox Networks Group's Asian operations, confirmed that the company had acquired one-third of ATV's entire content library, a package that included twenty-eight television series. My Date with a Vampire was identified as one of those twenty-eight titles, positioning it for a new generation of viewers and a potential reimagining under the Fox banner.