Hong Kong veteran singer-actor Law Kar Ying revealed he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The 78-year-old was in China to promote his stage play Mr Donkey recently, when he revealed his condition in a video interview published on May 27.

He said: "I am diagnosed with cancer for the fourth time. I asked the doctor, for prostate cancer, how long more do I have to live? If I undergo treatment with injections and medication, he said I have about eight years left.

"Now that I know that I have about eight to nine years left, to be able to live till 90, that's a long life. Why do I need to live even longer? I am not afraid [of death] at all."

Kar Ying, who is married to Hong Kong singer-actress Liza Wang, was diagnosed with stage-three liver cancer in 2004 and underwent surgery in 2005. In 2013, he was found to have a two-centimetre tumour in his liver and went for surgery again. He was found to have cancerous cells in his prostate in 2019 and underwent surgery in the same year.

He said in his latest interview: "I am not going to go through chemotherapy or electrotherapy. I am just going to say goodbye to everybody comfortably."

The interviewer asked him to share his "secret" to his vigour at this age, to which he said it's because he's "not afraid of death".

Kar Ying added that when he was first diagnosed with cancer in 2004, he recited the Heart Sutra every day.

He said: "I had too many thoughts on my mind, so I stopped thinking about them and recited the Heart Sutra. I came to a realisation - 'emptiness'. Life is empty, we come with nothing and leave with nothing. So if there is no concern, [there is no fear]. I think that's what life is all about."

Before turning to movies, Kar Ying was a Cantonese opera singer in the 1970s. He is widely known for playing the monk Tang Sanzang in Stephen Chow's A Chinese Odyssey movies (1995).

In recent years, Kar Ying continues to perform opera, including his collaboration with the Hong Kong Cantonese Opera Artists Club to perform at the Kreta Ayer People's Theatre in Singapore in 2023.

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yeo.shuhui@asiaone.com

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