Adam Cheng Siu-Chow (born February 24, 1947 in Hong Kong) is a popular TVB actor and singer in Hong Kong.
He started his career in the 1970s, where he gained a reputation for being the suave leading man in wuxia drama series made by TVB. Many of these are based on novels by Louis Cha and Gu Long. He often sang the theme songs of the TV dramas he starred in, such as The Greed of Man, Cold Blood Warm Heart and Chor Lau Heung. Many of these series are considered classics. Recently, he played a role in The Driving Power, he sang the theme song in this one also.
He has a total of four daughters. The first one was from a low profile marriage that ended in divorce. He married Lydia Shum in 1985 after 14 years of courtship. They had a daughter, Joyce Cheng Yan Yee in 1987, but they divorced just eight months after she was born. In 1989, he remarried and had another two daughters.
He has continued acting in TV series by TVB today and is considered one of the most enduringly popular actors of the company.
In the 1990s, TVB aired the classic drama The Greed of Man, which centred heavily around the stock market, and the schemes and plots of those who struck it rich in the market. Cheng's character in the drama, Ding Hai, made an immense fortune by short selling derivatives and stocks during a bear market. Many people went broke, but the Ding family became richer and richer until an eventual defeat by the family's nemesis.
Cheng is associated with the Ding Hai Effect, a peculiar and unexplained phenomenon that apparently causes a drop in global stock markets whenever he stars in a new TV show. No reason is given for this effect, and it has been a popular topic amongst stock brokers years after the drama series was broadcast in Hong Kong in 1993.
NOTE: Most of the series mentioned where shown on the TVB Jade network
