He attended McMurry College, Abilene, Texas for his freshman year and transferred to University of California, Berkeley, where he received a degree in architecture.

[1] His younger sister by 2 years, Jeanette Lin (林翠), was a film star at the time and provided Tsang with several connections in the industry which boosted his acting career.

In the mid-1960s, Tsang starred in detective films and classic kung fu movies with Hong Kong teen idols Connie Chan Po-chu and Josephine Siao.

Subsequent collaborations with Woo included the role of Ken in A Better Tomorrow 2 in 1987, police officer Danny Lee's murdered partner in The Killer in 1989, and the strict adoptive father of Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung and Cherie Chung in Once a Thief in 1991.

His first wife was Chan Laidi (張萊娣), stage name Lan Di (藍娣), a Malaysian-Chinese and his co-star in The Big Circus and had a son.

[5] However, the following day, he was found unresponsive in his room by health officials who arrived to conduct a PCR test,[5] and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.