Ting Ling the Bell-Ringer … and Heart-Breaker

On the packet from Hong Kong to Macao, in May of 1933, Errol fell head over heels for a stunning Eurasian beauty named Ting Ling O’Connor.

The young women with Errol in the photo below may be Ting Ling, or his inspiration for the Ting Ling story. It certainly appears Flynn is tingling. Ting Ling, too.

Errol and Ting Ling headed straight for the notorious “Street of Happiness” – Rua de Felicidade – then the city’s main red light district. Since the mid-1800s, during the late Qing Dynasty, the area was packed with hundreds of brothels and opium dens, in addition to fan-tan parlors. Ting Ling seemed to know her way around the Street of Happiness quite well. It was the wickedest street in “the wickedest city in the Orient.”

Errol thought he had found “the love of [his] life”, … until he woke up the next morning and found that Ting Ling had snuck out of town. Worse, he learned she was a prostitute who played suckers for their money, apparently in cahoots with various casinos and gangsters. In fact, her name wasn’t Ting Ling O’Connor at all, he also learned. She used a series of aliases, her last before Flynn being Yok An Lee.

Errol was badly hurt (emotionally and financially) by Ting Ling’s betrayal, calling it “one of the worst heart drops that had ever happened to [him]”.

So it was back to Hong Kong for Erben and Flynn.

— Tim