Growing Pain (Part I)

圓圓面兒害羞像紅霞　只是笑不說話

If you ask people of my generation in Hong Kong what the most memorable children program on TV is, most would say 《小時候》, 《跳飛機》or even 《醒目仔時間》, few would bring up《小太陽》. Even for those who remember such a program, they would find themselves lost in words if asked to give a synopsis of the story, for they remember the program only because of its theme song, worse still they might say it is just like《小時候》.

That’s just too bad. It is true that both《小時候》and 《小太陽》were released roughly the same time, both were directed by the same person and both shared some of the same child actors in the cast. While《小時候》 was a RTHK program, 《小太陽》was actually produced by TVB (I have seen numerous references erroneously listed it as RTHK’s). More importantly, the former focused on the carefree and innocent anecdotes of childhood whereas 《小太陽》often placed a child in an imperfect but realistic world. Case in point is this memorable episode:

The specialized in dog women extraordinaire 余慕蓮 was given a rare opportunity to play a three-dimensional character – a single mother struggling to raise a family by hawking newspaper on the street. To make ends meet she pushed her daughter to bring some of the 龍虎門-like violent comic books to her primary school to sell it, much to the displeased of the child’s principal. Pressured from both school and home, the tension eventually became too much and the child ran away from home. Bringing only with her a beloved pet bird she wandered off to the controversial hot spot of last year, the Queen’s Pier. In a very symbolic gesture, the girl opened the cage and set the bird free. The image of the child looking at the bird as it took flight on the famed Victoria Habour was beautifully captured…Story like this will not be found in 《小時候》

According to this blog TVB歷年來電視劇集列表《小太陽》made its debut at TVB on July 7, 1976. Directed by 單慧珠, it shared the same kind of kitchen-sink realism with her other more famous works like 《忌廉溝鮮奶》, 《江湖再見》 or 《煙火人間》. A search on 單慧珠 from internet leads me to a 2003 article "單慧珠走過抑鬱" which briefly mentioned 《小太陽》:

“…《小時候》早已是兒童劇的經典，可謂後無來者；但《小太陽》亦相當「前衛」，劇情包括貧富懸殊、喪母、破碎家庭，調子意外地悲涼。”

Prove that there do have people out there who noticed the peculiarity of this “children program”. Today very few information can be found on 《小太陽》, no DVD/VCD has been or likely will be released, no listing in Wikipedia and no video clip on YouTube. It seems the entire series only exists as some relic of childhood memories, except this song by 路家敏.

My recollection of the theme from the program seems to be slightly different from this version. Chances are this is a re-recorded version. The fact that it comes from an album released three years after the series seems to support this. Maybe because of the TV series, I always sense an extra touch of sadness most people wouldn’t find in the lyric: “太陽倦了便回家 夜裏有些少驚怕”, particularly when you consider the previous line is ”我把心願交給它 (太陽)”. However, the ever ebullient lyricist 黃霑 (some sources say 鄭國江) cleverly completed the emotional arch with ”明晨月兒落旭日重來 依舊往上爬”.

The resilience of a child can never be underestimated indeed.