- published: 20 May 2015
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Lydia (Assyrian: Luddu; Greek: Λυδία) was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian.
At its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia (known as Sparda by the Achaemenids) was a satrapy (province) of the Achaemenid Empire, with Sardis as its capital. Tabalus, appointed by Cyrus the Great, was the first satrap (governor). (See: Lydia (satrapy)).
Lydia was later the name for a Roman province. Coins are thought to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century BC.
The endonym Śfard (the name the Lydians called themselves) survives in bilingual and trilingual stone-carved notices of the Achaemenid Empire: the satrapy of Sparda (Old Persian), Aramaic Saparda, Babylonian Sapardu, Elamitic Išbarda. These in the Greek tradition are associated with Sardis, the capital city of Gyges, constructed in the 7th century BC.
Lydia Shum Din-Ha, also known as Lydia Sum (Chinese: 沈殿霞; 21 July 1945 — 19 February 2008), was a Hong Kong comedienne, MC, and actress known for her portly figure, signature dark rimmed glasses and bouffant hairstyle. She was affectionately known to peers and fans as Fei-fei (肥肥, literally Fat Fat, Fat Sister or Fatty). She appeared in numerous Hong Kong films and was an iconic TVB entertainer over forty years. For a brief spell in the 1990s, Shum left TVB to work at rival ATV.
Shum was born in 1945 in Shanghai to Sung Shen Gee (沈賢祺; 1913–1978, with ancestral home in Shanpei, Ningbo) and Sung Tan Sun (沈邱淡素; 1913–2008). She entered the Hong Kong entertainment industry at the age of 13 in 1958. She made her film debut in 1960, joining Shaw Brothers as a teenage actress at the age of 15. She took some time to adjust to Hong Kong as she found the Cantonese cuisine very different from that of her native Shanghai.
While she worked at Shaw Brothers, her popularity grew and she became one of the first stakeholders in the up and coming TV broadcast station TVB. In 1967, Shum's stardom took off with the popular television variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight. She first sang in the Cantopop group the Four Golden Flowers. Later, she played a Shanghai woman in the 1970s. She also sang as the partner of Roman Tam from 1971 to 1973.