10th year anniversary of Leslie Cheung's death
Source: Mingpao
Translated by: aZnangel @ http://asianuniverse.net/forums/ & llwy12@http://asianfanatics.net
On April 1, 2003 at 6:40pm, Leslie jumped from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel building in Central Hong Kong, ending his life. Before Leslie's death, the last person he saw was his designer friend Alfred Mok. The two met for lunch and had a 3 hour conversation. After 8 years, Alfred accepts an interview with Mingpao Weekly and reveals the contents of that "last lunch" conversation.
Alfred Mok is the interior designer of Leslie Cheung's house and the two are also close friends. On that fateful day 8 years ago, Leslie took the initiative to invite Alfred to lunch in Causeway Bay that afternoon.
At the time, SARS was in full force and wreaked havoc in HK, so when he met up with Alfred, Leslie wore a mouth mask, and told Alfred to be careful, as someone was coughing near them. At the time, Leslie appeared a bit nervous and his hands were shaking, but his appetite was pretty good. During lunch, Leslie wanted to copy down Alfred's ID card number -- even though he had already copied the number about 6 months ago, he wanted to confirm it once again. It turns out that Leslie wanted the number so that he could leave a small present for Alfred as part of his will (this is found out later).
Leslie suffered from severe clinical depression and had been seeing many doctors -- at one point, he even consulted a geomancy master due to suspicions that he was possibly encountering demons, which caused him to descend even deeper into confusion and chaos. During their conversation, Leslie had expressed that he wanted to go to Sichuan to absorb some spiritual influence (吸靈氣), but Alfred suggested that he should go to the U.S. and consult with doctors there -- he even agreed to accompany Leslie to the U.S. Leslie asked if he (Alfred) had an illness that could not be cured with medications or treatments, what would he do? Alfred responded that he would probably swallow sleeping pills because in the event that he was discovered, there was still a chance at saving his life; however Leslie expressed that if he wanted to die, the most direct way would be to just jump off a building. Reflecting upon this after Leslie's death, Alfred expressed that he never would have guessed that Leslie would commit suicide by doing just that (jumping off a building).
Turns out that there were 'signs' earlier on that things would take a tragic course -- Alfred recounted that one time, after another one of their meetings, Leslie told Alfred never to call him again. Then later on, Leslie said something very peculiar, telling Alfred, "Looks like the windows in that hotel cannot be opened." After the last lunch meeting that the two of them had on April 1st, Leslie once again told Alfred never to call him again. At the time, Alfred sensed something wasn't right, so he immediately called Leslie's sister Cheung Luk Ping and asked her to keep track of his whereabouts. Around 6pm, Cheung Luk Ping called Alfred and told him not to worry, as she had already contacted Leslie and he said he was in the Central district doing some shopping and would meet up with his friend and manager Florence Chan shortly. Alfred was heartbroken when he learned 40 minutes later -- through various phone calls from friends -- that Leslie had jumped off the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel.
Alfred recounted that on that fateful day, he had received Leslie's phone call around 10am in the morning inviting him to lunch -- afterwards, Leslie had taken his car for a drive around town. During lunch, Leslie revealed to Alfred that he felt very pained and exhausted that morning and all he felt like doing was driving his car really fast in the hopes of getting into an accident and just ending it right then and there. At the time, when he heard this, all Alfred could do was console Leslie and tell him not to say such things.
Talking about that tragic day 8 years later, Alfred regrets that there was no way to prevent what had happened.
RIP Leslie.