William So

A talent contest, a contract, and a decade of waiting

William So Wing Hong was born in Hong Kong on 24 September 1967 and arrived in the business the way most Cantopop singers of his generation did: through TVB's New Talent Singing Awards. He entered the 1985 edition and finished first runner-up to Alex To, which was enough to earn him a deal with Capital Artists and an EP.

What followed was not a rapid ascent. He moved from Capital Artists to Time Records between 1988 and 1991, releasing his debut album, Insomia, in 1989, then to Cinepoly in 1993. The run of records from the mid-1990s — The Passion of Love in 1995, Never Too Late To Love in 1996 — established him as a singer of slow, plainly sung heartbreak songs rather than a dance act or a teen idol, and that narrow specialism is what eventually stuck. One early marker of how long the career has run: the video for Men Shouldn't Make Women Cry was shot on a beach in Hualien, on Taiwan's east coast, decades before he first played a concert there.

He signed to Go East in 1997, and it was there, aged thirty, that the career turned.

The song that became the whole catalogue's front door

1998 is the year that still defines him. Kiss More, Sad More was written as the theme for the TVB medical drama Healing Hands, and it became his first song to top all four Hong Kong radio and television charts at once. It swept the season: the Ultimate Song of the Year and Most Favourite Song prizes at the Ultimate Song Chart awards, a Top Ten Jade Solid Gold award, and at RTHK's Top Ten Chinese Gold Songs both the Global Chinese Gold Song honour and the Outstanding Pop Singer award.

The catalogue around it is larger than most listeners realise — twenty-one studio albums, four live records and seven compilations, split between Cantonese and Mandarin, including So Fresh in 2003 and a 2003 live album shared with Andy Hui. He stayed with Go East until 2004, then Gold Label until 2010, and returned to Capital Artists from 2011. The last studio album in the discography is So I Say, from 2008, which makes the present phase of his working life almost entirely a live one: the records exist, the audience knows them, and the job now is performing them.

He has acted alongside the singing, in the File of Justice television sequels and Healing Hands itself, and in films including Tempting Heart in 1997 and 72 Tenants of Prosperity in 2010.

A 2002 case, reopened in 2025

In 2002, while working in Taiwan, So was arrested over ecstasy possession and use, and underwent a short period of compulsory detoxification. The fallout was personal as well as professional — he had married Jane Foong in 1999, and the marriage ended in 2003. He married Anita Fung in 2014 and has a son.

The case was treated as closed for more than two decades, until it was not. So was booked to play the Wenzhou Olympic Sports Centre Gymnasium in Zhejiang on 6 October 2025. On the morning of 16 September 2025 the ticketing platform Damai removed the concert listings, and the Zhejiang provincial culture, radio, television and tourism department confirmed the same day that the show was cancelled, after a member of the public reported the 2002 conviction to local authorities. People's Daily ran commentary arguing that cancellation alone was not sufficient and that further accountability under law and regulation was required; other mainland outlets restated the position that one drug offence means a lifetime performance ban.

The practical effect is that the largest Chinese-speaking market is shut to him, and that his touring now runs through Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the North American Chinese-diaspora circuit instead.

Where he stands in late 2026

The response to the mainland closure was to tour everywhere else, and in volume. The Big Four reunion — So with Andy Hui, Edmond Leung and Dicky Cheung — opened at the Hong Kong Coliseum on 9–11 August 2025, their first shows at that venue in twelve years, with rotating guest performers on each Hong Kong night. The tour then went to Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore on 13 December 2025, Pechanga Resort Casino in Los Angeles on 21 February 2026, the Palms in Las Vegas on 22 February, Graton Resort in Northern California on 28 February, and the Arena of Stars at Resorts World Genting in Malaysia on 23 May 2026.

Between those, the solo shows. On 18 October 2025, three weeks after the Wenzhou cancellation, he played the Taipei International Convention Center — his sixth ticketed Taipei concert, and a sold-out room. He opened with I Just Want Happiness, then bowed for roughly ten seconds before moving into Sorry with the lyric altered to tell the audience he loved them. He spent little stage time on the controversy, saying instead that every song in the set had been chosen for a reason, and weighted the night towards Cantonese material more heavily than any previous Taiwan show, including Let Me Warm Up a Little, which he had never performed in Taiwan before. In the encore he announced a Kaohsiung date for April, calling it something that had not been easy to arrange.

That show happened on 25 April 2026 at the Kaohsiung Music Center, his first concert in the city after more than thirty years of working. Tickets went on sale at 2pm on 7 February 2026, sold out, and a second night was added for 26 April at 5pm. He told the Kaohsiung audience he had finally felt the enthusiasm the city's crowds are reputed for, and praised them for being the first venue on the run to start on time, which let him play longer. On 26 and 27 September 2026 he made his debut at the Hualien Moon Viewing Original Sound concert at Dongdamen Plaza, a free two-night, open-seating event running 7pm to 9.30pm with Teen Top's NIEL, Shen Wen-cheng, Wang Hong-en and ABAO, and performers from Okinawa and Sabah.

The next date

The one date currently on sale is Singapore: So In Love at the Esplanade Theatre on Sunday 8 November 2026 at 8pm, tickets having gone to public sale on 18 August 2026 and priced from 98 to 258 Singapore dollars across six categories. The Esplanade bills it at two hours with no interval, in Mandarin, open to ages two and above, with no support act listed — it is a single-performer evening built on the ballads, which is how he has structured the solo shows throughout 2025 and 2026.

It will be his second Singapore appearance inside a year, after the Big Four night at Sentosa in December 2025, and the two are not the same proposition: the group show is four singers trading songs and banter across a reunion, while So In Love is him alone with a catalogue the audience can sing without prompting.