Lee Sing-man

Lee Sing-man (born 1944), commonly known as "Uncle Man", is a paper-tearing artist in Hong Kong. He was once a volunteer in Kowloon Walled City Park, creating his works there, before he was invited to demonstrate in Tsim Sha Tsui and became known. Lee Sing-man was born in 1944 in Guangdong, China, and attended primary school there. At a young age, he had trouble focusing at school. When he was around fourteen years old in 1958, he moved to Hong Kong and continued his studies in secondary school. In order to get into secondary school, he had to pass an entrance exam that he failed five times. He persevered in his studies and passed the exam on the sixth attempt. Right after graduating from a secondary school, he studied business administration for a year and moved to Chinese literature. Eventually, he ended his undergraduate studies because his family objected to it, and he began to work. At first, he worked at his cousin's watch company. He then worked as a quality control checker in a garment factory, followed by a debt collector in a stationery wholesale company, then a delivery courier. It was during this time that he started doing paper-tearing. According to him, working as a local delivery courier was difficult but rewarding. He usually gave out his paper-tearing artwork to the companies while delivering goods to them. He was very pleased to see the companies decorating their offices with his creations. Soon he became famous for paper-tearing. Consequently, he resigned the job of delivery courier due to increasing paper-tearing lessons, performances and voluntary work, and he started to concentrate on promoting paper-tearing art. During the Lunar New Year's Eve in 1983, Uncle Man created his first paper-tearing work. It was composed of the two Chinese characters "Dai Kat" (大吉), which means an expectation of a great fortune. Remarkably, he made it out of boredom with no one teaching him. Although the artwork was appreciated by his relatives, he did not have great affections towards paper-tearing at that moment.