Who was this lady?

Update 24 August 2017: Sally Chan has confirmed that the lady in question was indeed Barbara Yung. Sally scanned the photo from a microfilm a while ago. Thanks, Sally!

A few months ago, Cynthia sent me some photos of Michael Miu and Barbara Yung, many of them I had never seen. One of them was the photo above that I eventually used in the "In the Rain" MV.  Cynthia labelled the photo as an MB photo, hence I took it that the woman on Michael's lap was Barbara. However, I always had my doubts about the photo, because the scan quality is so low. Plus, the woman could very well be Jaime.

Then, a few days ago, a new reader Nelly contacted me and talked about some MB things, including this photo. I asked Nelly if she was sure that the woman was Barbara, and Nelly said she was certain. The woman had a smile diagnostic of Barbara. Then I asked Hannah too, and Hannah also said she thought the woman was Barbara. Since I was still in doubt, I did a simple experiment with the photo to see if the woman was Barbara... or Jaime.



What I originally did was, as Nelly did, just tilted the photo such that the woman's profile was straight. However, I was still not convinced she was Barbara. Then, last night I happened to watch Chor Lau Heung Ep 19 when Fell Cut left Siu Ching in the temple for Chor tai-gor to find. Before Fell Cut left Siu Ching, back in the village, SC asked Fell Cut to bring some firewoods, and she was rather merry about it. Below are the screen caps of her laughter.

I then combined the two screen caps with the scan photo as follows:

That woman started to look like Barbara. However, to eliminate the possibility that she was Jaime, I had to combine the photo with Jaime's side profile.  I then remember that I did have her screen shots with Michael in Yang's Saga (1985). Hence... this composite below:

First row: Barbara (in CLH'84), Second row: Jaime (Yang's Saga)

Now it's clearer to me that the woman was indeed Barbara. Jaime's chin is not as pronounced as Barbara's. Babs had more definition on her chin, a distance between her chin and her neck, if that makes sense. Also, Barbara's jaws were more defined than Jaime’s. Jaime's photo on the right-hand side (where she was holding a knife) showed the difference between her jaw and chin profile with those of Barbara's (above Jaime's photo).

Nelly, you were correct too about Barbara’s smile (thanks a lot, anyway!). The woman on Michael's lap showed distinctive teeth, which reminded me of Barbara’s rabbit teeth (see Barbara's Siu Ching screen shot on the left side). Actually, the woman's teeth was indeed diagnostic of Barbara's feature...

Now that I'm more certain that the woman on Michael's lap was Barbara, a better way to glue the conclusion would be to have the original article of that scan. I take it that it was a scan from a newspaper article...

Also, this conclusion then begs another question: what was the setting around Michael and Barbara back then? They indeed looked too cozy to be just friends...