Ashes of late Cantopop icon Anita Mui missing for 3 months, family reveals

The family of late Cantopop star Anita Mui has appealed for information after discovering that an urn containing her ashes was taken from a Lantau monastery almost three months ago.

In a statement dated Saturday, the family said a fan who went to pay respects to Mui at Po Lin Monastery on July 18 found that a screw had been loosened at the late singer’s columbarium niche. The urn containing her ashes was not inside.

“The fan immediately notified Mui’s family, and Mui’s family quickly filed a police report,” according to the Chinese-language statement shared on the artist’s social media fan pages.

“But the police’s investigation has gone on for almost three months, and there has been no progress,” the family wrote.

Mui, one of the city’s biggest Cantopop icons, died in 2003 at the age of 40 after a battle with cervical cancer.

The family’s statement was made on her birthday. Mui would have been 63 this year.

‘Utterly heartbroken’

The statement added that, coupled with the recent death of Mui’s mother, who passed away in August at the age of 102, the family was “enduring a double blow and [was] utterly heartbroken.”

They appealed to anybody who was at Po Lin Monastery on or before July 18, who might have seen anybody suspicious or appearing to hold an urn, to reach out to the family.

They also asked motorists who had driven near the monastery in July, particularly before July 18, to submit dashcam footage.

A celebrated artist in Hong Kong and abroad, Mui began performing at a young age to support her family, launching her career before completing her secondary school education.

According to the website for tourist attraction Avenue of Stars, which has a statue honouring Mui, the late singer’s 1985 album Bad Girl achieved the best sales records of her time.

“Her new rebellious image made her an icon of independence and individuality for the younger generation. Mui broke another record two years later for the largest number of concerts staged in a single year,” the attraction’s website states.

Anita, a biographical film released in 2021 chronicling her life, was one of the top-grossing local films of the year.

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Hillary Leung is a journalist at Hong Kong Free Press, where she reports on local politics and social issues, and assists with editing. Since joining in late 2021, she has covered the Covid-19 pandemic, political court cases including the 47 democrats national security trial, and challenges faced by minority communities.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Hillary completed her undergraduate degree in journalism and sociology at the University of Hong Kong. She worked at TIME Magazine in 2019, where she wrote about Asia and overnight US news before turning her focus to the protests that began that summer. At Coconuts Hong Kong, she covered general news and wrote features, including about a Black Lives Matter march that drew controversy amid the local pro-democracy movement and two sisters who were born to a domestic worker and lived undocumented for 30 years in Hong Kong.