Of course, our sexual curiosity didn't have much of an oudet while we were at school; as I said before, our sisters were our sisters, and it just wasn't possible to think of them as girls, really.

But once we became old enough to start working outside of the academy on a regular basis, everything changed. This was Kowloon, after all, and during our travels to the studios where we did stunt work we'd get an eyeful of a totally different kind of woman. They were sleek and groomed, with long, carefully styled hair. They wore lush outfits of embroidered silk, and they had painted faces—but definitely not of the opera variety.

"Willya look at that!" said Yuen Tai as we strolled down the street one night. Yuen Kwai and I were straggling behind him, tired and frustrated from a long day as extras on a martial arts film. Despite all of our training, our inferior junior-stuntman status meant that we were forced into the very worst jobs on the set. We'd do practice stunts that never made it onto film, fetch and carry for the stunt coordinator, and, most humiliating of all, we'd be called upon to play dead bodies, lying on our bellies for hours at a time. By the time we headed back to school, we'd be covered with dust and sweat.

Yuen Tai had stopped walking and was staring in admiration. She was the tallest woman we'd ever seen, as tall as any foreigner, but with jet-black hair falling in soft waves around her exposed shoulders. Her body—^well, the girls we'd spent our lives with had their shapes disguised by loose-fitting practice outfits, so Madame was the only female available for comparison . . . and there was no comparison.

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 129

As we caught up to Yuen Tai, the woman shifted her weight from one long leg to another, causing her body to strain against her painted-on dress.

"Hey, pretty lady," he drawled, putting on his best attempt at cool. The woman slid her eyes over to us, taking in our ragged, dirty outfits and our still-gawky adolescent bodies. Without a sound, she turned on one heel and swayed into the neon-lit entranceway of a nearby club.

"What?" shouted Yuen Tai plaintively. Yuen Kwai and I held each other upright as we nearly collapsed in laughter.

"Guess you ain't her type. Big Brother," I said.

"That kind of girl, she's anyone's type," said Yuen Kwai. "You know, a 'chicken.' "

"What the hell's a 'chicken'?" I said, puzzled.

"A chicken's a woman who does it for money, litde boy," he snorted. "Don't think you can afford that kind of dish."

Yuen Tai kicked at the curb and then resumed walking, his face sullen. "Ah, screw you guys," he said. "All this talk about chicken's making me hungry. Let's go home."

And the whole way back to the school we hooted and made clucking noises in his direction, until he threatened to smack some respect into us if we didn't shut up.

Well, as badly as it turned out, Yuen Tai's close encounter with the goddess kept him from sleeping easy that night. Even after he'd called lights out, he kept muttering to himself, nursing his battered ego and cursing the whims of women.

"She was fine, wasn't she, though?" whispered Yuen Kwai to me. "Man, if we weren't stuck in this place, we'd meet women like that all the time, wouldn't we?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said, pulling my covers over my head.

"I mean, if we had money and nice clothes, we could really be big men," he said, yanking my blanket down. "We're almost movie stars, right?"

"I guess it could be fun," I mumbled. "Kissing and stuff."

"Kissing?" Yuen Kwai chortied, grabbing at his crotch. "Yeah, she could kiss this right here, brother!"

Yuen Tai broke off his agonizing long enough to deliver a swift kick to Yuen Kwai's leg. "Why don't you go to sleep, asshole," he said. "Closest you're gonna get to a woman is in your dreams anyway."

"Look who's talking. Big Brother," said Yuen Kwai. "Here, chickie chickie ..."

There was a muffled sound of struggling as Biggest Brother threw his blanket over Yuen Kwai's head and began punching him in the stomach. The rest of us turned onto our sides and slid away from the wrestling pair.

I didn't want to admit to Yuen Kwai that I had no idea what I'd do with

130 • lAMJACKIECHAN

a woman like that even if I did meet one. Yuen Tai and Yuen Kwai always played at being big men, groaning and making dirty remarks when they saw fast women in hot outfits. But when I closed my eyes, I envisioned girls like my little friend on the Peak, the ambassador's daughter: sweet, quiet women who liked talking and laughing and listening to my stories. Women who were soft and gentle, like my mother and our big sisters, always caring for me when I got hurt. Women whom I could protect from harm, like the brave swordsmen of my childhood storybooks.

Call me old-fashioned, or a closet romantic, or socially backward, but kids these days, all they think about is sex. I didn't think about that at all.

Well, not often. But what I mosdy dreamed about was finding someone who would understand me and care about me and stay with me, the way no one else in my life ever had.

It really didn't seem like that much to ask.

The next day, I was chosen by Master to represent the academy at a special exhibition, in which I would demonstrate our school's skills to visiting foreigners. Although all of Chinese opera has the same roots, the country is so big and is made up of so many different kinds of people that it has evolved into different forms—Beijing opera, which is the most traditional form, and which our Master taught; Cantonese opera, which is the form practiced in much of the South; and so on.

Even though it was a big responsibility, I didn't take it too seriously; after all, the foreigners were probably too stupid to know the difference between good and bad opera anyway. So the trip was like a little vacation for me—a chance to slack off, avoid practice, and maybe even spend some of my precious pocket money, if I saw something that looked appetizing.

The bus trip to the hall where the exhibition was being held was long and boring, and I spent the time dozing, and thinking—-just a littie bit— about girls. I'd just about decided that they weren't worth the trouble when the bus arrived at my destination, and I was forced to scramble to make it out the door before the driver pulled away from the curb.

"Stay awake on the bus, ya stupid kid," the driver shouted as I stumbled onto the pavement. Turning my head to retort, I felt my body thump into something solid and soft, something that let out a gentie squeal as it toppled over. Babbling apologies, I attempted to untangle myself from my unintended victim, and realized that she was a girl, and about my age, and very beautiful.

Not beautiful like the chicken woman. She had soft black hair, pulled back against her head in a simple ponytail; she was wearing a clean but plain cotton outfit, and her body—^what I could feel of it, accidentally— was slender and petite. Her eyes were huge and as clear as mirrors, and the expression I saw within them was not frightened, but shyly amused.

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 131

"I'm sorry!" I shouted too loudly, as I rolled instantly away. She pushed herself up on her arms and brushed at her clothes.

"That's all right, I'm fine," she said, smiling. "You must be in a hurry. ..."

I helped her to her feet, my face blushing red. "No, no hurry," I mumbled. "I mean, I'm not going anywhere special."

It was odd. I usually didn't have any trouble talking to anyone, but in front of this strange, wonderful girl, my tongue felt thick, like a lead weight in my mouth. "I'm sorry."

"You said that already," she said, looking at the ground. There were two spots of red on her pale cheeks. "I have to go now. You should walk more carefully, or you could hurt yourself. Or somebody else!"

And she waved, and walked quickly away.

I could only stand there with my mouth open, feeling like I'd never felt before. Like I'd swallowed a gallon of warm, syrupy stuff, as sweet as milk—a kind of pleasant pain that came up from my belly and into my throat. And I was frozen, even though I knew that she was walking away, and if I didn't see her again, I would die.

Somehow I got my muscles going again and threw all other thoughts out of my head—the foreigners and their ignorant curiosity about Chinese opera could go hang, if it meant that I'd be able to catch up with that girl. It would be worth any number of beatings by Master. Even a day without food. A week. A year!

So I chased her, running around the corner, and saw her meeting up with a small group of other girls dressed like her, entering—

Entering the very hall I was due to appear at myself.

I looked down at my wrinkled, dusty clothes, once clean and neatly pressed. If she was going to be in the audience, I would put on the performance of a lifetime, of all my lifetimes. My heart beat strongly in my chest. I walked proudly into the performance hall.

The man in charge of the exhibition was standing at the doorway, dressed in a traditional outfit, and looking anxious. Spotting me, a slightiy dirty-looking young boy, he made a move to shoo me away, but I quickly raised my hand.

"I'm here from Master Yu Jim-yuen's China Drama Academy. My name's Yuen Lo—I'm performing today."

He stared at me up and down. "What happened to you?"

I shrugged. "I had an accident."

He grabbed me by the shoulders and hustied me down a side corridor. The foreigners, he told me in a harsh whisper, were already seated and waiting. I was to go on second, and the entire show had been waiting on me to begin. How could I make Master Yu lose face this way, arriving late and in a mess?

132 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

I didn't care; my thoughts were focused on that girl, and meeting her again.

Backstage, I saw a number of small groups of young people, stretching out, talking quiedy, or arranging their costumes. My own exhibition was going to be mostly acrobatics and forms, so I had no makeup or special outfit to prepare; some of the other groups were going to perform short scenes in full dress, and they stood out in their finery. I stared intendy at the other boys and girls, searching to see if the girl was among them. Boys who noticed me staring looked back in challenge; girls looked away shyly, or blushed prettily, but not so prettily as the girl I'd run into outside. She wasn't there. Could I have made a mistake?

And then I heard applause coming from the stage area, and realized that the show had begun. Stepping softly to the edge of the heavy cloth backdrop, I pulled a fold of it aside and peered out at the stage and audience. A group of girls were posed, frozen in a silent pattern, as the orchestra offstage began to play. They turned in dme with the music, and began their scene. And from the side, I caught a flash of the lead performer's face.

It was her!

She was one of us—an opera actor—and from the way the Chinese in the audience responded to her, she was a star. Her every move was graceful as she gestured and swept across the stage, beginning a lildng song of love and challenge. I recognized her opera style as coming from the Chieu Chow province—but she could have been singing a pop song and made it sound elegant.

When her song ended and the troupe stood still and quiet on the stage again, I realized that I was barely breathing. I had seen my sisters perform before, but they had always seemed like little girls wearing the clothes and makeup of adults. This girl, who'd looked to be about my age when I'd knocked her down outside, seemed every inch a woman—a princess — even with nothing on her face but some powder and her perfect smile.

"Ayah!" someone whispered in my ear. "What are you looking at? It's your turn!"

I jumped back. I'd nearly forgotten! I wasn't here to enjoy, but to perform—and I hoped, I somehow knew, that the girl would be watching me as I'd watched her.

The organizer of the exhibition was finishing his introduction of my school, my master, and the style of opera that I was going to represent. As the audience began its polite applause, I felt a strange sense of power welling up inside me. I was invincible, untouchable. I was the prince of my school, the king of the stage. I would show all of them, especially that girl, what a student of Master Yu Jim-yuen could do.

And to the rolling sound of the drum, I somersaulted onto the stage,

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 133

flipping up into a perfect handstand, before dropping in mock clumsiness into a drunkard's pose. As an old man, an imaginary wine jug under one arm, I fought invisible enemies, then transformed with a backflip and a shift of my features into Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey King, my body as agile and wild as any ape. I was a general, a scholar, a warrior mad for vengeance. Without a word, without costume or weapon, I became every character I'd ever portrayed on that tiny stage at the Lai Yuen Amusement Park, all in perfect time with the music, with form so ideal that even Master might have nodded and smiled. The music hit its climax, the orchestra began to play its final bar, and with a last swagger of defiance against the world, I performed three quick somersaults in succession and disappeared into the wings.

The hall roared with applause. I pitied the performers who would have to follow me; it was their bad luck that I'd been put so early in the program. No one would remember anything but me that day, especially the foreigners, who had dared to look bored throughout my girl's wonderful singing.

I was already thinking of her as my girl! Even though I didn't even know her name. I caught my breath and walked around the corner and into the backstage area. A girl with a ponytail was standing at the edge of the backdrop, peeking through it at the stage.

"Hi," I said softly, tapping her on the shoulder. It was the girl—my girl—and she turned pink when she saw it was me. "Did you see me?"

She nodded. "You were very good," she said, smiling again and giving a little shake of her hair.

"Not as good as you," I said, and meant it.

The organizer, who was helping the next group adjust their costumes, threw a nasty glare in our direction. There was a performance going on out there; making noise backstage was rude and, worse, bad luck.

Holding one finger to my lips, I took the girl's wrist and pulled her after me toward the corridor that led to the front of the hall. Once we got there, I let her go, hoping she wouldn't run. She simply looked at me, with that half-amused, half-shy expression that had charmed me when we'd first met.

"I'm sorry I ran you over before," I said, losing my tongue again.

"I'm sorry I was in your way," she said, smiling. We were silent again, looking at each other.

"Where are you from?" I asked her, hoping for an address, or at least a general area where I could look for her again. She told me that her school was in Kowloon, not far from ours, but that she lived with her parents; her training hadn't been as harsh and isolated as ours. I told her that our academy was in Kowloon too, and was about to ask if I might possibly be able to see her again, when the door to the corridor swung open

134 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

and a group of laughing young women ran out. It was the girl's company, aiul thev stared and whispered at us as they emerged into the hallway.

"Come on, Madame told us to go back to the school right after the performance!" said one of the older girls in the group, tugging at my new friend's sleeve. "Don't waste your dme talking to that boy. We have to catch the bus!"

"He isn't much to look at anyway," whispered another, and I felt my face flushing red. The group, pulling my girl along, gossiped their way down the corridor.

And suddenly, I realized that I still didnt know her name!

"Hey!" I said, running after the group, down the hall and out the door. The girls were at the bus stop, and a double-decker was just opening its folding doors to let them in and take them away. "Wait! My name is Yuen Lo! What's yours?"

The other girls pushed my girl into the bus, making faces at me. I was crushed. I was losing her. Maybe forever.

Then I heard her clear voice over the sound of the bus motor. "My name is Oh Chang!" she said, poking her head out of an open window.

"Can I see you again?" I shouted.

She smiled and nodded, and was pulled back inside by her friends.

Oh Chang! Her name was as lovely as she was. I said it to myself again and again as the bus rolled off into the distance.

Then I slapped my forehead in disgust. That was my bus, too! And who knew when the next one would come along?

I cursed my own stupidity and set off on the long walk back to the academy, frustrated and alone.

HEART-STRUCK

hat was how it began—my first love.

I didn't tell any of the other guys what had happened, in part be-J cause it made for a lousy story, but mostly because I was scared that if I did I'd jinx it and she'd disappear like a ghost, never to be found again. And I didn't want to face a bunch of questions that I couldn't answer—like what her last name was, or when I'd see her again.

The next day. Master told me to report to the movie studio where most of the other older students were working, just in case they needed an extra body. I nearly ran out the door, knowing that this was my chance. I took the long bus ride back to the performance hall where I'd met her the day before, and found the organizer who'd brought us all together. Wearing my best innocent expression, I told him that my master wanted to express his compliments to Oh Chang's teacher, and asked him the address to her school. It was so simple! The organizer was glad to assist a man of my master's stature, and even gave me directions on how to get there. On the bus ride back to Kowloon, I planned out everything I'd say to her and thought about where I'd take my dream girl on our first date.

And that's when I started to get nervous. I'd never gone on a date before and had no idea what most people did on their evenings out. What would Oh Chang enjoy? Would she like to go drink tea? Or see a film?

I really didn't know anything about her!

Preoccupied, I nearly missed my stop and once again had to run out of the bus in a panic. I half hoped that somehow fate would intervene, and I'd bump into her on the sidewalk, just like the day before, but life is never that simple.

Her school was just a few blocks fi-om the bus stop, and it was very impressive compared to ours—newer and cleaner, at least from the outside, with a shiny metal gate that had been freshly painted. The girls who learned opera here probably had never slept on a wooden floor in their lives.

My stomach felt hollow. Her friends didn't think much of me. What if she saw me and told me to go away, or worse, laughed at me until I was forced to leave in shame? I turned away from the gate, telling myself that there was still time to go to the studio.

136 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

But as I began to walk back toward the bus, I heard a voice in my head tliat sounded as stern and disapproving as my father. Was that all I was good for—lying on the ground and playing dead? And then the voice became a chorus: my father, my master, all of Shandong, shouting together that I was a weiik excuse for a man, afraid to stand up to the laughter of small girls, too afraid even to reach out for the most important thing in my life.

I didn't care if she laughed at me! There was more shame in running away than in trying and failing. And, my heart beating as strongly as any of my brave ancestors', I walked back to the gate and swung it open, and stepped into the courtyard beyond.

The stones paving the courtyard were even and neatly kept, without any weeds or cracks in sight. The door was as bright as the gate had been, with the characters that made up the name of the school neatly carved into the sill above it and painted in gold. I straightened my clothes and knocked—once, twice—and waited, my mind a complete blank.

The door opened, revealing the face of an old woman with deep lines around her eyes. "Yes?" she asked. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm sorry, Madame, but I have a message for one of your students." I sdffened my back and tried to look official.

The woman blinked. "I'm not a teacher here; I'm the housekeeper," she said. "Madame is out on appointment; which student do you need to see?"

I swallowed. "The girl's name is Oh Chang."

The gray head looked at me with faint suspicion. "Miss Oh Chang is rehearsing right now."

"The message is a short one," I said, fighting back a wave of nausea.

"If you give it to me, I can pass it on," she said.

"Ma'am, I was told to give it to her in person," I said. My resolve was about to crumble; I wanted to run away. Let the voices in my head argue with this old bag if they thought it was so important.

The housekeeper sighed, and motioned with her hand. "Wait right here; I'll find her," she said. "But you really will have to be quick."

Success! I'd gotten past the first test—like Monkey from the old stories, tricking the guardian at the gate to heaven. After a few moments, the door opened again, and I faced her—Oh Chang—again, her mouth and eyes as round as Os in surprise at my unexpected appearance.

She had apparently been in the middle of a full dress rehearsal, because her delicate features were powdered white, with streaks of rose above her eyes. Her hair was pulled back with sparkling combs, and the plain outfit of yesterday's exhibidon had been replaced with a flowing gown with long sleeves, cut from a richly embroidered fabric.

"Hello," I managed to choke out. "You look different. . . ."

Even as I said the words, I cursed myself as a fool. All of the things I

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 137

imagined saying had sprung out of my head when I'd finally found myself facing her again. If I was lucky, maybe she wouldn't call the police.

"I'm sorry," she said, covering her cheeks with her hands. "I was rehearsing—^we have a tour coming up, a trip to Thailand, and we have a lot of new things to practice."

"Don't be sorry; you look wonderful," I said. What was I saying?!

She laughed in her shy way. "Did you really have a message for me?" she asked. "The housekeeper will be coming back soon. . . ."

"The message is," I said, and stopped. I summoned up all of the determination I could, hearing the distant encouragement of the voices. "The message is that you have an appointment later."

"And who is that appointment with?"

"With me," I said cockily.

She laughed again, in spite of herself. "What time is this appointment?"

"What time are you free?"

Oh Chang leaned against the door, furrowing her brow. "I go home at ten o'clock," she said. "But usually I just go straight to sleep."

"Sneak out," I said. "I'll wait for you."

"You don't even know where to wait!" she said.

"I will if you tell me," I responded, flashing my best smile.

And she did.

And then she closed the door, after giving me one last smile and wave.

Monkey had entered the gates of heaven, and the voices in my head were cheering victory.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Kowloon, just waiting until night. I managed to kill time walking in slow circles around the neighborhood, watching the crowd and eating snacks. I thought about going to the studio, but they wouldn't take me on for a half day, and besides, I wanted everything to be perfect for my big date that night—no dirt, no sweat, no bruises or sprains. And then, as I ate my third sweet bean bun, a stray thought began nagging at me. As far as Master knew, I was at the studio all day, doing the same boring stuff my brothers were doing. But tomorrow morning, he'd line us up after breakfast as usual and ask us for the pay we received the day before.

With horror, I imagined the scene in my head. "Where is your money, Yuen Lo?" he'd ask, as I stood there empty-handed. "Did you lose it? Or spend it foolishly?"

What excuses could I have? He'd give me seventy-five smacks with his cane, one for every dollar I was missing—and even though he'd gotten grayer and stiffer, he hadn't lost any of his strength.

There was no help for it. I walked to the bank where my father had opened an account for me, and asked the teller to withdraw HK$75.

138 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

I'd j^ivc Master the money, and he'd never know the difference. But, I thought to myself, girls were turning out to be an expensive habit.

At exacdy ten o'clock, I found myself standing outside of the gate to Oh C-hang's house, on a very nice block in one of the wealthier parts of Kowloon. The lights were out, and the windows shuttered closed. For a split second, I thought that I'd been tricked, that she was upstairs in her bed dreaming about what an idiot I was. And then the gate swung open, and her lovely face peeked out into the street.

"Hello," I said, putting one hand on the gate in what I hoped was an appropriately casual pose.

"You came," she said, smiling. "I wasn't sure you'd be here."

"Where else would I be?" I said, smiling back. "Come on."

She stepped out into the street, and I thought I'd never seen anything so prett)' in my life as Oh Chang at that moment, wearing a simple cotton dress, her hair down and falling around her shoulders, lit only by the pale glow of the moon.

We walked side by side down the street in silence. Then Oh Chang asked me about my school, and it was like a dam had broken open inside me. I told her about the aches and pains of practice, and knew she was listening, and that she understood. I told her about Master's hard discipline, the beatings and punishments, and she sighed in sympathy. I told her jokes and riddles and funny stories about my adventures with my brothers, and she laughed, and I felt like I could watch her laughing like that forever.

We walked and walked, until finally we found ourselves on the edge of Kowloon Park. Sitting there on a wooden bench, the moon high in the sky and a light breeze rustling the leaves of the trees around us, I somehow found the courage to take her hand, and she didn't pull away. I still remember how small and warm her hand was, how soft and graceful it was, so different from my rough, callused fists. It was like our hands were from two different worlds: hers were the hands of the wealthy, soft and delicate, and mine were practical, purposeful. They were tools—or weapons.

We sat there together for hours. Talking a little bit. Mostlyjust looking at the moon and each other. Then she said, "Yuen Lo, I have to go. It's almost midnight," and the spell was broken. I didn't argue; it was already much more than I could have hoped for, a poor, ragged guy like me and a rich, pretty girl like her. I pulled her up off the seat and we began the walk back to her home.

"It was nice to see you," she said, as we approached her block. I nodded, squeezing her hand.

We stood in front of her gate, the night at its darkest hour, and I wondered if I should kiss her. Somehow, it didn't seem right—like if I did, it would break some secret, unspoken rule, and she'd disappear forever—

IAMJACKIECHAN • 139

and so I just watched in silence as she waved good-bye and crossed into her courtyard.

And then she peeked her head out again, knowing I hadn't yet turned to leave. "Will you come visit me again, Yuen Lo?" she asked, her cheeks pink and her eyes looking modestly away.

She liked me! I broke out in a wide grin, my heart leaping. "How could you keep me away?" I said, and before she could answer, I blew her a kiss and ran into the night, hearing her giggles trail off behind me in the warm, humid air.

From that point on, I went to visit her nearly every day of the week, ditching work, inventing excuses, and drawing dollar after dollar from my dwindling bank account to give to Master. Every day I saw her cost me U.S.$10, which was a big amount—^you could eat for a week on that—but what did I care? That money was buying me love.

Of course, I had to tell my brothers that I had a girlfriend, so that they would cover for me if Master got suspicious. After all, they knew I wasn't going to the studio to work. But, if I wanted to waste my money that way, who were they to criticize? The only bad part was hearing the awful jokes they'd make about Oh Chang and what we were probably doing, out in the park alone every night. It wasn't like that, but they'd never understand. I let them have their fun . . . and resolved never to let them meet her, if I could possibly help it.

Then, about six months after I started seeing her. Master told me he was sending me on another exhibition. This one wouldn't take place in Hong Kong at all—it would be in Southeast Asia, in Singapore, thousands of miles away. I broke the news to Oh Chang, expecting her to be sad, but she just laughed.

"Don't be silly; it's only a few weeks," she said. "Besides, don't you remember? I'll be on tour in Thailand at the same time—^we'll be practically next door to each other."

So, after half a year of being together, we would be apart for the very first time. I made her promise not to forget me, and she made me promise the same. I knew in my heart that promises like that weren't necessary for me; it didn't matter how long or how far away she was, she would always be in my dreams.

HEARTSICK

(0)-

the trip to Singapore, I felt lonely for the first time in a long while. Living in the crowded school, I was hardly ever on my own, V— J so going on trips by myself was actually sort of a luxury. Now that I had Oh Chang, and now that we were apart, every moment felt empty. There was always something missing.

And so there I was, far away from my home, counting down the days. The hosts of the exhibition had put me up in a house, a much nicer place than the school, with a real bed and even an indoor bathroom. Other than at meals, they pretty much ignored me, and left me to wander the city on my own. I worked out during the daytime, hoping that good honest sweat would help me forget about Oh Chang, just for a litde while; at night I explored the City of Lions.

I thought I could make it through the two weeks away without going crazy, and I almost did. The night right before I left Singapore, I went walking by myself as usual, staring at buildings and people, listening to the shouts of street hawkers selling unusual treats in an unfamiliar tongue. It was my last chance to see the city, and so I walked farther than I'd gone in all the nights before, until I found myself in a deserted street, miles away from my host home. In my eagerness to get away from my own thoughts, I'd forgotten about the time. It would take me hours to get back, and I'd be lucky to make it before dawn.

That's when the rain began—not a gende spray, but a sudden, tearing downpour that quickly built into a full-scale monsoon. Sheets of water fell from the sky, and the wind whipped at cloth canopies and brightly painted signs. I ran through the storm, my head down, instandy soaked, knowing that I'd never make it back on foot. Then I saw an old, rusting bicycle, abandoned on a street corner by its owner, and straddled it in the half-shelter of a doorway. The wind would make riding difficult, but I'd get back faster than walking. I pushed it out into the street and began to pump with all my might, headfirst into the gale, standing on the pedals and leaning forward on downhill strokes.

I wanted to be with Oh Chang forever. I'd give away ten years of my life if I could spend what was left with her. I'd give up anything. In my frenzied brain, it seemed to me that somehow, if I rode out this storm, if I

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 141

made it home in one piece, my wish would come true. I pedaled harder, like I was racing against my own bad luck. And then in the white brightness of a lightning flash, I saw a figure in a balcony above my head, and somehow I knew it was her, that I'd won the race, that she was mine forever. I threw the old bicycle aside, splashed through the dirty water of the street, and leaped up to grab the side of the balcony, clambering up and over despite the slickness of the wet ironwork.

It was a woman's wet blouse, left twisting and forgotten on a drying pole, that I'd mistaken for her—for my Oh Chang. I laughed to myself; it was a sign of how stupid I was. How could she be here, in Singapore? Why would she be standing out in the rain? She was hundreds of miles away, being showered with praise and the attention of rich admirers.

Stupid me! She was sweet and beautiful, she lived in a nice house, and she was one of the most famous actresses in the Chieu Chow opera circle. And me, I was a poor dumb stuntman, a big-nosed, ugly kid with no future.

Huddling under the piuful shelter of the balcony canopy, I put my head down on my knees and dropped off to sleep. The wetness on my cheeks could have been rain, or something else.

I apologize: I didn't intend to go so far off course, but Oh Chang was probably the most wonderful thing to happen to me up to that point, and just thinking about her still makes me a little happy and a litde sad. Many years later, Oh Chang retired from singing in the Beijing Opera and opened a small boutique in Hong Kong. Every so often, I would send one of my assistants over to check on the store, to make sure things were going okay, and to buy expensive items of clothing, which we would later donate to charity. I didn't want her to know that I was keeping an eye on her—she would never have let me support her like that, even as a friend, so everything had to be done in complete secrecy.

Recently, she decided to move from Hong Kong, and announced to her customers that she was closing the store. I gave all of my female staff members money and told them to go over to the boutique, and they ended up bmdng everything that Oh Chang had! Oh Chang was happy that she had so many loyal customers—and my staff members were happy to get some nice things for free.

You know, she never got married, and didn't even have a boyfriend.

It makes me wonder sometimes.

But I've said it before: history is history, the past is the past, and that's where it belongs, in our happy memories. I'm sure she'd agree with me. That's the kind of person she is.

HEARTBROKEN

(01

nee I'd settled into my new apartment, my furniture built—it wasn't very pretty, but it suited my needs—my life in the real world could

V J really begin. Without Master on my back all day and my brothers

and sisters at my side all night, I had twenty-four hours each day to play with. After waking up in the morning at the luxurious hour of eight o'clock, I'd go buy some buns and eat them on the bus to the movie studio, where I'd stand around with the other junior stuntmen, waiting to be called out for work. Some of them were my brothers, and we'd sit around on the set in the shade, telling jokes, bragging, and watching the actors and senior stuntmen. Usually we weren't impressed with what we saw. Even today, making movies can be a pretty tedious job—if you're at the bottom of the food chain. Most of it is waiting around while other people argue and shout, trying to doze and look alert at the same time. It's a tough skill to master, but we had plenty of practice while we were at the school, and it served us well.

You never wanted to look like you were too bored, because then someone would grab you and make you carry things around, even if you weren't working that day. Then again, you didn't want to look like you were too interested, because we were young, and even back then, you had to act like you didn't give a damn about anything if you wanted to be cool.

Hong Kong's biggest studio at the time was owned by the Shaw Brothers, Run Run and Runme Shaw—two of Hong Kong's first tycoons. It was called Movie Town, and it was huge, over forty acres in size, with hundreds of buildings ranging in size from prop sheds to giant soundstages and dormitories for actors who were working on contract for Shaw Brothers. It even had a mock-up of an entire Ch'ing dynasty village, which served as the set for most of the Shaws' movies—since most of the films they were making at the time were period martial arts epics and swordsman films. That's why stuntmen (even "stunt boys" like us) were in such big demand: we were the unknown grunts who made all of the slashing, smashing, diving, jumping, punching, kicking, flying magic possible.

The studio wouldn't risk its big names doing things that might hurt them, not because they cared what happened to them (most contract actors got just a HK$200-a-month stipend and HK$700 per film), but be-

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 143

cause an injury might stop or slow down production—and Shaw Brothers churned out dozens and dozens of movies a year.

W^, on the other hand, worked cheap, and we did everything, no matter how dirty or dangerous, and if they didn't need us on a given day, they just ignored us. At least they gave us lunch, though the food was even worse than the meals at school, if you can imagine that—just rice and vegetables or soup dumped out of big pots.

I mentioned before that most of the dme, junior boys like me did the very worst jobs: we played corpses, or were extras in crowd scenes, wearing the oldest, smelliest costumes and standing in the back. But no matter how rotten the jobs were, they put us right in the middle of the action. We watched the seniors, and learned, and thought to ourselves how much better we'd be when we finallyjoined their ranks.

The day wouldn't be over until late at night. WTien a movie has to be finished in less than a month, you aren't stopped by a silly thing like the sun going down. Even though it didn't match the look of daylight, they'd bring out huge electric lamps and keep us shooting, knowing that we'd cost the same—one day's pay—^whether they wrapped at suppertime or at midnight.

Usually I managed to leave the studio in time to get back to Kowloon by ten o'clock (Mo\de Town was in Clear Water Bay, on the Hong Kong side). By that time I'd be starving, so I'd grab some noodles or rice from a roadside vendor and eat it on the way to Oh Chang's house. It's funny: my father's a cook, one of the best I've ever seen, but in all the time I lived on my own in Kowloon, I never made a real meal for myself. It was always the same street food, cheap, quick, and hot, day after day—but back then, that was what I loved. I'm still a simple eater today. I'll take a rice bowl with some roast pork over a fancy gourmet meal anytime.

And then, like clockwork. Oh Chang would peek her head out from the gateway to her house, and wave, and walk with me on the long, slow walk to Kowloon Park, to our bench, our moon, and our two hours together. Each day I'd carefully remember all of the strange things that happened on the set—a director got so angry at an actor that he fell out of his chair! One of the senior stuntmen fell off a roof the wrong way and landed in a horse cart, and the cart broke and wheels rolled everywhere!—just so I'd have something new and interesting to tell her. Hoping that I'd be funny enough that she'd want to see me the next night, because I didn't know what I'd do if I showed up and saw the gate closed and locked . . .

It was a few months after we'd returned from our trips to Southeast Asia when my worst fears finally came true.

I was a little late getting to Oh Chang's, delayed because the director had gotten into a screaming match with the stunt coordinator over how a

144 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

certain scene should be choreographed. I was just window dressing in the shot—a bystander in the crowd watching the fight—but the stupid director wouldn't let any of us leave until he got his way, even though he knew that the coordinator should have say over all stunt sequences. That was stupid: you never wanted to alienate a good stunt coordinator, and the whole thing had made the coordinator lose face before his stuntmen. The director would be lucky if the rest of his film had a single batde worth watching. If I were the coordinator, I'd have walked off the set on the spot.

But as a junior nobody, I couldn't walk away—not if I wanted to come back the next day. So I ran, breathless and sweaty, all the way from the bus stop, not even pausing to eat.

She was still there! My heart jumped up, since I'd half expected her to have gone inside and back to sleep. And then I noticed that her expression wasn't the sweet and happy one I was used to, and that I loved so much. Her face was pale, and her eyes red. What had happened?

"Oh Chang, what's wrong?" I said, swallowing hard.

She shook her head.

"I'm sorry I'm late. Oh Chang; it was the director—" She turned away from me, and the story I was ready to tell her, about the stupid director and his fight with the stunt coordinator, faded away unspoken. I was crushed. I knew in my heart that something was wrong, and that it didn't have anything to do with my being late.

"Yuen Lo . . ." she said softly, a catch in her voice. "I can't see you anymore."

And then she walked inside and closed the gate behind her.

I stared at the gate, a metal wall cutting me off from my happiness, and then began to run.

I wanted to scream, and if I screamed, I wanted to be as far away as possible.

I spent that night slumped in a corner in my apartment, just staring at the walls, the lights out and the shutters closed. In the pitch black of my room, I could almost imagine that I was surrounded by people, by my brothers and sisters, sound asleep and as quiet as the grave. It was better than realizing that I was alone.

I called her the next day, begging the building manager to use his phone.

The phone rang for what seemed like hours, before a stern male voice answered.

"Hello?" it said, without an ounce of kindness.

"Hello, sir," I said, finding my tongue after a moment's hesitation. "I'm—I'm looking for Oh Chang."

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 145

The voice was silent. "Oh Chang is not home," it said, and the hne went dead.

I stood there with the receiver in my hand, horrified and shaken. Obviously, her father—the voice couldn't have been anyone else's—knew she was dating me. And just as clearly, he didn't approve.

I had to talk to her. I had to find out what she thought for herself— abotit me, about us, about any kind of future we might have together.

It was then that the building manager's granddaughter came calling to visit, a bright young girl who was very kind to her elderly grandfather. It didn't take much convincing to get her to make a phone call for me; she could tell I was hurting, and her romantic schoolgirl's heart had mercy on me.

She dialed the number and spoke in her soft girl's voice, and all of a sudden. Oh Chang was home and available to talk. With a wink, the girl handed me the phone.

"Good luck," she whispered, and ran to join her grandfather outside.

I put the receiver to my ear.

"Who's this?" I heard, and the voice was sad, sweet, and familiar.

"Oh Chang, it's me, Yuen Lo," I said.

She said nothing.

"You have to tell me what's going on," I pleaded. "How can you just walk away? How can you end things this way?"

The line stayed silent.

"Oh Chang ..." I said. "At least—see me one more time. Tonight. One last dme."

I could hear her holding back a sob. "Okay," she whispered. "Tonight."

And without saying good-bye, she hung up the phone.

The rest of the day passed in agony. I attempted to fix one of my handmade pieces of furniture, a chair whose legs were uneven, and ended up smashing it to pieces instead, releasing the anger that I'd bottled up inside. Not at Oh Chang, whom I could never hate even if she spat in my face. Not even at her father, who was just doing his duty as a Chinese dad, protecting his girl from bad decisions.

I was angry at the world, which made rich people and poor ones, and kept them apart. I was angry, maybe, at myself, for being who I was.

I had never really wanted to be rich before, or even famous; suddenly, I wanted to be both. I could imagine the conversation in my head. Oh Chang in tears, caught sneaking back into the house after midnight by her father. He accuses her of being a loose woman, of acdng like a "flower girl"; she denies it, telling him that it was just one boy she ran out to see, and that we did nothing but talk, sit together, and hold hands. He asks, his voice harsh and his face wooden, the name and background of

146 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

this boy, the boy who has stolen away his daughter. She tells him who I am, what I do, how hard I work, how promising I am. A junior stuntman! he shouts. Just a ragged boy trying to learn a dangerous trade. How could he proNide for a family? How could he compare to the wealthy young admirers who came to Oh Chang's performances, left bouquets of flowers and rich gifts at her doorstep, and constandy, always, asked for her hand?

The answers to these questions were obvious, but still I had to hear them from her lips. And so, at the usual dme, I waited in the usual place. The sky was gray and overcast, and the moon—our moon—^was hidden behind an ugly yellow haze. At ten o'clock, the gate opened, and she stepped out onto the street, looking at me with eyes reddened from crying. Without speaking, she stepped forward and put her thin arms around me, squeezing me tight, wetting my cheek and shoulder with her tears.

I held her a moment, then pulled away, taking her hand and walking with her to the park, to our bench and our view of the sky.

"Why?" I asked her, knowing what she would say.

"My father," she said, and my suspicions were confirmed. And then: "I have ... I have a letter for you." And she pulled a folded piece of delicate paper from under her coat, still warm from her body and smelling faintly of her sweet perfume.

I took it from her and opened it up. The characters, neatly drawn in her feminine hand, were like so much chicken scratch to me; my reading ability—reading was not seen as an important skill at our school— allowed me to understand street signs and restaurant menus, but not the words of an educated girl's good-bye letter. And I, I who hadn't cried since my first month at the opera academy, who had stood up to beatings and backbreaking workouts and the abuse of boys twice my size without shedding a tear, I began to howl, my body shaking with the force of my crying.

This is the last way I wanted her to see me, but there was nothing I could do. To be given this letter and know that it, like her, was closed to me, was the final blow.

"Yuen Lo . . ." she said, her voice breaking. "I'm sorry."

I swiped my face with my shirtsleeve, willing myself to stop crying. To breathe and relax. "I understand. Oh Chang," I said. I turned my face to stone. "We are from two different worlds, and I don't belong in yours any more than you could survive in mine."

I helped her up and began walking back toward her house. She trailed me, as if reluctant to leave, but I had to get away, as soon as possible, before my will broke down and I begged her to stay with me.

Pulling her close, I bit down on my lower lip, finding the strength to push her away. "Good-bye," I said.

lAMJACKIECHAN • 147

She nodded, tears streaming down her face. "Good-bye," she said. "Will I ever see you again?"

Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I turned away and began to walk. "No," I said, my voice flat. "Not like this."

Not the way I am today, I thought to myself, as I turned the corner and began to run. When you see me again—if you see me again—it will not be as Yuen Lo, the poor stunt boy.

I hated Yuen Lo. I had nothing but contempt for him—lazy, good-for-nothing, loser Yuen Lo. He would have to die, I realized. For me to be what I wanted to be, I would have to kill Yuen Lo.

And become someone else.

A DIRTY JOB

n my short career in the movies, I'd already met a lot of famous actors and directors. I was never very impressed; they were pretty, or handsome, or (in the case of the directors) loud and domineering. But none of them could do what I could do: fight, and fly, and fall, and get up and do it again—even if I was broken or hurt. I couldn't really understand what made them so great.

But the senior stuntmen were something else. They were a wild and rugged bunch, living one minute at a time because they knew that every day they spent in their profession could be their last. They smoked, drank, and gambled, spending every penny of each evening's pay by the time the sun rose the next day. Words didn't mean anything to them; if you wanted to make a statement, you did it with your body—jumping higher, tumbling faster, falling farther. With Oh Chang out of my life, I began to hang out with the senior guys after shooting wrapped. Every night, we'd brush off the dust of the day's work and find ways of laughing at the injuries that we or our brothers had suffered—"we get paid in scars and bruises," one older stuntman told me, only half joking. Of course, every small injury was just a reminder that the next one around the corner could be the big one that might cripple or kill; and so we drank, and we smoked, and we played, partly to celebrate surviving one more day, partly to forget that when the sun rose again we'd be facing the same giant risks for the same small rewards.

The senior stuntmen had a phrase that described their philosophy, as well as the men who were fearless and crazy enough to follow it: lung fa mo shi. It literally meant "dragon tiger"—power on top of power, strength on top of strength, bravery on top of bravery. If you were lungfu mo shi, you laughed at life, before swallowing it whole. One way of being lungfu mo shi was to do an amazing stunt, earning shouts and applause from the sidelines. An even better way was to try an amazing stunt, fail, and get up smiling, ready to try it again. "Wah! Lung fu mo shi!" they'd shout, and you'd know that your drinks would be paid for all night.

For us, especially us junior guys, to be lungfu mo shi y^as the highest compliment we could imagine. And so I threw myself into my work, putting every last bit of energy into proving that I had the spirit of drag-

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 149

ons and tigers—impressing stunt coordinators with my willingness to do anything, no matter how boring or how crazy. I'd get to the studio early, and leave with the very last group. I'd volunteer to test difficult stunts for free, to prove that they could be done—and sometimes they could, sometimes they couldn't. I never let anyone see me scream or cry, waidng until I got back home to release all of my pent-up pain. My neighbors would pound on the walls in annoyance as I howled in my apartment alone early in the morning; they never bothered me in person, because they probably thought I was a dangerous lunatic.

One day, we were working on a scene in which the hero of the film was to tumble over a balcony railing backward, spin in midair, and land on his feet, alert and ready to fight. The actor playing the hero was, of course, sitting in the shade, flirting with one of the supporting actresses and drinking tea. It was our job to take the fall.

Most falls of this type were done with the assistance of a thin steel wire, attached to a cloth harness that went underneath the stuntman's clothing. The wire would be run through a pulley tied to a solid anchor—in this case, the railing of the balcony—then fastened to a stout rope, which two or three stuntmen not in the scene would hold on to, their feet planted firmly. This would prevent disaster in case the fall went wrong, allowing them to yank on the wire and stop an out-of-control plummet to the ground.

Today, we were working with a director whom we stuntmen universally considered an idiot. He was a no-talent hack—^which didn't make him any worse than a lot of the directors working at the time; the problem was that he was a no-talent hack with pretensions toward art.

We'd learned pretty quickly that that was a combination that could get stuntmen killed.

"No wires," shouted the director, his puffy, bearded face turning red. The stunt coordinator, a lean, hollow-cheeked man in his mid-forties, crossed his arms in quiet defiance. My fellow juniors and I thought the coordinator was just about the coolest guy in the world, partly because he never treated us like kids, and partiy because he'd stood up time and time again to directors with unrealistic expectations. The night after one epic argument, he treated us to drinks all night at our usual bar.

"Even if I wanted to direct, they would never let me, because I have made too many enemies," he confided to us. "But I will give you a word of advice, in case any of you should find yourself in the big chair. If you want the respect of your stunt people, and that is the only way you will make good movies, never ask them to do a stunt that you can't or won't do yourself. If you learn nothing else from me, remember this rule." And then he shouted, "Kampai, "which means, "Empty cup," and so of course, we did.

150 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

I still tollow that rule today.

I know that some people call me a crazy director, saying I demand the impossible—but I know they're wrong, because every risk I ask my stunt-men to take is one that I've taken before. Somehow, it didn't kill me, and so they understand that—with the luck that stuntmen depend on to survive—it won't kill them.

The director we were working with that day was so fat he could barely walk, much less do stunts. He had no idea how dangerous a fifteen-foot fall could be, even for a trained professional.

"Do you realize that one of my men could be killed doing this stunt?" asked our coordinator, showing remarkable restraint.

"That's what they're paid for," retorted the director. "If you use wires in this scene, the fall will look like a puppet dropping to the ground. Unacceptable!"

The director even refused to lay out a padded mat or a stack of cardboard boxes to cushion the fall, wanting to shoot the scene from a wide angle in a single cut.

"Ridiculous." said our coordinator. "You want this stunt done that way, you do it yourself. None of my men will volunteer to take that kind of risk."

Throughout this dialogue, I was considering the setup for the stunt. The main problem with the fall was that it took place backward. You couldn't see where you would land, or figure out how far you were from the ground. But it was all a matter of timing—counting out the moments in your head before twisting your body to avoid a messy impact.

I could do this stunt, I decided. I could, and I would.

"Excuse me," I blurted. "I'd like to try the fall."

The stunt coordinator looked at me v^th a stony expression, then pulled me aside.

"Are you trying to make me look foolish?" he said angrily.

"No," I said, sticking out my chin. "You're right. The director is an idiot. You don't want to risk any of your experienced people on this stunt, because you need them. But I'm nobody, and if I don't do something like this, I'll always be nobody. If I fail, then the director knows you were right. If I succeed, I'll say that it was because you told me exacdy what to do—and he'll know better than to challenge you again."

The stunt coordinator looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Yuen Lo," he said, "you're a clever boy. Don't make the mistake of trying to be too clever for your own good."

Then he turned back to the director and threw up his hands. "All right," he said. "There's actually someone stupid enough to try this stunt your way. I've just done my best to tell him how to do it without killing himself. Maybe if he's lucky, he'll just be crippled for life."

And then he walked up to the director until his face was just inches

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 151

away, close enough to feel the heat of his breath. "And you," he said, his voice flat and dangerous. "You cross me up again, and all of us walk off this set. I don't give a damn about your reputation, your big ideas, or your ego. We risk our lives because we are stuntmen, and that is what we do. Not because you piss in our direction."

The director turned purple, and then pale. Not a single stuntman moved or made a noise. Finally, he nodded, and waved his flabby hand at the cameraman.

I felt the coordinator's touch on my shoulder. "Good luck," he said. "Keep your body loose, be ready to roll as soon as you hit the ground. And whatever you do, don't land on your head or back. I don't mind taking you to the hospital, but I don't want to take you to the cemetery."

And then I was pulling on my costume, while a makeup girl dabbed rouge on my cheeks and streaks of fake blood across my brow. I climbed the stairs to the balcony and looked down at the crowd below. Every eye was on me, and the camera was ready to roll. But at that moment, the only eyes I cared about were the eyes of my fellow stuntmen, watching me do something foolish and fantastic.

Lungfu mo shi, I thought. It was time to prove myself. The actor playing the villain who would knock me over the railing joined me, staring at me and shaking his head in disbelief. I shrugged and smiled at him, then raised my hand to show I was ready.

"Action!" shouted the director.

"Rolling!" answered the cameraman.

And then, as the fake kick from the villain nearly brushed my nose, I vaulted backward over the railing, counted quickly in my head, and arched my back, twisting my body smoothly through the air. I saw a flash of ground as my head came up and I got my legs underneath me, just in time to catch the ground with my feet. I stumbled a bit, giving a small stutter step as I pulled myself upright.

Success! The director cut the camera and actually pulled himself up and out of his chair. The stunt coordinator trotted over to where I was standing, as my brothers shouted my name. He slapped me on the back, grinning broadly. "You'll be a stuntman yet," he said.

Maybe it was cocky, but cocky was what being a stuntman was all about. "I almost lost my footing on the landing," I said. "Let me try it again—I'll get it perfect this time."

He laughed, squeezing my arms until they ached. "Try it again?" he bellowed. "Did you hear that, men? Once is not enough for the boy. Lung fu mo shi!"

And my stunt brothers echoed the phrase: "Lungfu mo shi!"

That night, the stuntmen gave me a new nickname: Double Boy. "Once ain't enough for Double! Better try again!" they laughed.

152 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

"He wants to work twice as hard, he has to drink twice as much, right?" said the stunt coordinator. "One more round. Double. Kampai!"

That night, for the first time since I left the school, and the first time since I'd lost Oh Chang, I felt like I'd found a place where I belonged. I was with family.

I was home.

THE STUNTMAN

f'T^ nee I'd proven myself, I started getting real jobs and making real money, and I was accepted as a full stuntman by my stunt brothers. V_^ Not that there was anything official about my new high-class status. Even though we acted like a team, there was no real organization, not the way there was at school. We weren't permanendy hired at any studio. As long as work was available somewhere, that's where we'd plant our feet. There was no system of ranking—except that if you were good, everyone knew it, and treated you with the respect you deserved, whatever your age or background.

We were brothers, but we were brothers of convenience—close as blood so long as we were all working on a shoot, ready to fight until we dropped for one another's honor when the occasional bar brawl happened. If you were a stuntman, only another stuntman could really understand you, and so we were companions on the set and off.

But the names and faces changed from week to week and month to month. As production slowed at Shaw's, the stuntmen who weren't getting work drifted off to try their luck at Cathay. When nothing was happening at Cathay, we'd see a tide of fresh faces in the crowd that squatted and leaned in the shade of the set at Movie Town, hoping to be picked up for a day's work at a day's pay. But stranger or friend, if you were a stuntman, you were family ... so long as shooting ran.

It was an exciting, ever-changing life, our stuntman's world. It made us old, or maybe even dead, before our time . . . but it also kept us from growing up, because if you weren't a kid at heart, you couldn't deal with that kind of pace and pressure. And so if we were kind of wild, it was understandable.

After all, we had to bite off as much of the world as possible, as long as we were still in it.

HIGH RISK

&]

lit of the many bad habits—like drinking, smoking, fighting, and I cursing—that I picked up while I was a young stuntman, one thing V / stood out as the worst.

Every day, I risked my life for a fistful of dollars.

And almost every night, I risked my pay—all the money my dangerous job had earned me, and more—on games of chance. One evening, it might be mah-jongg. Another night, it might be betting on billiards. HK$100 a ball, HK$1000 a game. And still other nights, my stunt-man friends and I might find our ways to the smoky, back-alley rooms where the craziest game of all was played: pai gow —the game of "heavenly dominoes."

WTien my father had left me at the airport that day so many years ago, he'd given me three words of caution: Don't do drugs. Don't join a Triad gang. And don't gamble.

I guess two out of three isn't so bad.

Now, when my dad told me not to gamble, I know he didn't mean it; that is to say, he knew that I'd make bets or play cards, just for fun, just to be with the guys. Everyone did that.

Pai gow was different.

In pai gow, there are no limits.

When you play mah-jongg, okay, even if you lose all night, you might lose HK$20,000. Play—and lose—for three straight days, you might lose HK$2 milhon.

A losing night in pai gow could mean you owed HK$10 million. Even HK$100 million. And the people you'd owe the money to usually wouldn't be the type who'd let you pay them by installment. Pai gow destroys families, breaks marriages, and ruins lives. My father knew this and avoided the game like the plague.

But in our world, if you showed fear, you showed weakness. To be lung fu mo shi, we couldn't afford not to take risks.

It's easy to get into a pai gow game. It's very, very hard to get out.

Let me explain the rules. The game uses a set of thirty-two dominoes, made of ivory or plastic. The dealer gives you and your fellow players four dominoes each. These have to be arranged into two hands of two

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 155

dominoes—a front hand and a back hand. One of the players acts as banker, putting a certain amount of money that he's wilUng to risk on the table, and taking "action" (accepting bets) from the other players up to that amount. The banker compares his hands to those of the other players; to win the game, you have to beat your opponent both front and back. (Winning on only one or the other is considered a draw, although the banker wins exact ties.)

WTiat makes the game really scary is that even people who aren't actually playing can put "action" on the table. And if you recklessly shout out, "Cover all!" meaning you'll take as much action as people can give, you can end up facing a table worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

WTien I was banker, I took action from everyone. Sometimes I won. Sometimes I lost. But every game I played, I put more money on the table than I earned in a month. And when I came out ahead, I'd put it down again. And again. And again.

Soon I had another nickname, to go along with Double: Yeh Fu Pai. Which was short for Yao liyehfupai, shei geng shei lai —meaning "You gamble with everyone you meet."

There were nights when I had to be dragged away from the tables by my friends, kicking and screaming. There were days when I woke up in the morning, broke, hungry, and hungover, vowing that I would never gamble again. Nothing mattered, and nothing helped. As soon as someone flashed a wad of cash or suggested a "friendly" round of mah-jongg, I'd be counting my change and wondering if I could borrow enough to get back in the game.

At that time, when the stunt business was at its peak, I was making around HK$3,000 a month—plenty for a young, single guy to live on. Determined to stay away from gambling and save some money (not to mention my soul), one night I left my friends early and headed home alone. I'd gone to the bank that day to take out money to pay back my building manager, who'd helped me through a period of bad losses with a no-questions-asked loan.

But as soon as I stepped off of the Star Ferry and set foot in Kowloon, I felt the same old sizzle in the air: fast games. High risk. Big money. As hard as I tried to walk toward my apartment, I felt myself being drawn in the direction of an old familiar alley, where I knew I'd find the hottest action in town.

It's still early, I said to myself. / might as well stand around and watch. I don't have to bet.

Two hours later, my sleeves were rolled up, and the HK$3000 I had in my pocket was stacked in front of me, telling the packed room that I had the action, and that I was willing to take them on.

"Just three thousand dollars?" shouted one drunk player, tossing his

156 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

bankroll on the table. His stake was nearly HK$ 10,000. Soon other players and bystanders threw their money down too, as if to tell me that a young kid like me had no business in a room full of real players. Twenty thousand dollars. Thirty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars.

Soon 1 faced a table heavy with cash—almost $120,000 in Hong Kong money. More money than I'd ever seen in my life. More money than I thought I could ever earn in my career.

But I've never been able to turn down a challenge. Even though a voice inside my head was screaming at me, telling me to walk away—or run—I found myself saying the two words no one expected to hear.

"Cover all."

One hundred twenty thousand dollars! Three times what my entire apartment was worth! And I was telling the crowd that I'd take them on, all of them, and that I could afford to lose.

The dealer looked at me with a hard glare, and then passed out the dominoes. I guess God, or my ancestors, or luck—whatever you happen to believe in—^was on my side that night. I kept my face straight as I looked at my four pieces, and realized that I had a perfect front hand, gee joon, the "supreme combination," and an almost perfect back hand.

/ was unbeatable. Which meant I would soon be rich beyond my wildest dreams.

The dealer turned over my tiles and sucked in his breath. The other players howled. But as I started to rake in the stack of cash, I felt a thick hand on my shoulder. I turned to see the ugly face of the club's "enforcer," probably the biggest Chinese guy I'd ever seen in my life.

"Show me the money," he grunted, his voice low and dangerous.

I shrugged, and pointed to my winnings.

"Not that," he said. "You said, 'Cover all,' right? So you'd better have enough money in your pockets to make the bet, kid."

My eyes nearly popped out of my head. "But I won!"

The enforcer leaned into me, squeezing my shoulder in his fist. "You don't want to be telling me that you made a bet without being able to cover, do you?"

A few minutes later, I found myself being thrown out into the alley, rubbing my sore shoulder and picking up stray bills that had come loose from my $3000 wad.

If I were a better person, after that night, I would have learned my lesson and stopped gambling forever. I can't say that's true—but at least I never did anything that stupid again.

In my movies I beat up people twice my size, and fight entire crowds at once.

I don't think I'd enjoy seeing if I could do the same in real life.

HELLO, BIG BROTHER

' n a lot of ways, these were the good times for me, maybe even the best times. I worked hard, but I got to keep (and spend) what I earned.

I I tried not to think about Oh Chang.

Somehow I got by.

Once in a while, I'd see my brothers, people I knew from school, but despite the bond we'd had, once we were on the outside, we had different lives to lead. A lot of them were stuntmen, too. None of them were doing better than I was, although we heard stories now and then about our older brothers—Yuen Wah, who'd become one of the most sought-after stunt doubles, simply because he could see a fighting style once and copy it almost perfecdy; Biggest Brother Yuen Lung, who'd fulfilled his vow to become a big man, succeeding as a stuntman despite his bulk.

As for Yuen Biao, after the school finally shut its doors, he'd decided to try his luck abroad, moving to Los Angeles with Master and his family.

I didn't know it then, but I should have taken his decision as an omen and a warning.

The good times weren't going to last forever. In fact, they were just about over.

The closing of the opera schools meant that a flood of raw, young, death-defying talent was coming onto the scene, and even though the mo\ie business was doing as well as ever, a deadly struggle for jobs was just about to begin.

The real world was showing its teeth. Work became scarce, and for us freelance stuntmen, money got tight.

I began to get worried when I started showing up for one of the dozens of stunt jobs available at the usual studios, and saw hundreds of guys as young—or younger—than me, all squatting in the shade, all waiting for the call. I was a hard worker; I'd do double shifts if they were available. But more and more, they weren't.

Often, after half a day of useless waiting, I'd leave the studio and head back home, knowing that even the most senior guys were just hoping for the chance to play a corpse or fill out a crowd scene. How could I compete?

158 • IAMJACKIECHAN

time. I didn't have the money to gamble anymore, and no one else did, either, so borrowing money was out of the question. Sometimes I even thought about making the call I'd never intended to make, admitting to Mom and Dad across an international line that I had no future in this business, and that I would join them down under, if they'd only send me a ticket.

Once in a while, I hung around outside of Oh Chang's school, half hoping I'd bump into her accidentally. I never did.

Since I couldn't make them anymore, when I had nothing else to do, I watched movies—scraping together the cash to see anything that landed at the local theaters, from Hollywood films to the latest Hong Kong releases. Do you know what my favorite film was? The Sound of Music, with Julie Andrews. As the slow months passed, I saw it seven times.

Then, one evening, I went down to the old bar where my stuntmen used to hang out—most of them were working late, if they were working at all, so the place was almost empty.

I bought a beer and grabbed a cue from the warped and dusty rack, setting up the balls for a solo game of billiards.

Click. Clack. My luck at pool was no better than my luck at find-ingjobs.

And then I heard the sound of a familiar voice.

"Well, if it isn't the prince," the voice said with a sly and hearty laugh. The sudden recognition broke my concentration again, and I blew my shot.

I turned around, to see none other than Yuen Lung. My Biggest Brother. I nearly dropped the cue.

Yuen Lung tweaked the stick out of my hand, bent his heavy frame over the table, and coolly sank a ball.

"How've you been, Little Brother?" he asked.

I shrugged, trying to make it seem like meeting him was nothing. "Not bad. Busy."

He looked at me pointedly. "You don't look too busy." He sank another ball and called for a beer.

What could I say?

"Listen, don't you remember what I told you when I left the school?" he said. "If you needed work, you should have let me know. After all, what's a Big Brother for?"

I gulped. I hadn't known what to expect from Yuen Lung—gloating, maybe, or sarcasm—but certainly not a genuine offer of help. I wanted to believe that the nemesis who'd helped make a decade of my life a living hell had suddenly turned into a nice guy. I couldn't help but be suspicious.

"Why would you help me out?"

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 159

Yuen Lung scowled and shot another ball. "Hey, I'm trying to do you a favor, okay?" Clack-clunk. "Don't give me any shit. It's hengdai."

Heng dai is a Cantonese phrase that describes the relationship that is traditionally supposed to exist between older students and younger ones. As my senior, Yuen Lung deserved my respect and obedience. As his junior, I could expect his support and assistance—when he wasn't running roughshod over me, anyway.

Begrudgingly, I apologized for being ungrateful.

"That's okay," he said, smirking. "You got plenty of time to learn how to behave toward your betters. Here's the deal: I'm in good with this stunt coordinator—I've saved his ass plenty of times; he owes me. So I get work whenever I want. And anyone I send to him gets work, see? You just mention my name, and you're in."

Even though I knew that Biggest Brother relished being the big man, handing out favors to nobodies like me, I was grateful. I was at the end of my rope, almost out of cash, and just about ready to abandon my Hong Kong dreams.

"Thanks, Yuen Lung," I said, properly humble.

Biggest Brother rolled his eyes. "Don't call me that," he said. "I'm a real stuntman now, not some schoolkid. The guys gave me a nickname; Samo, that's my name now."

I laughed into my beer, and even Biggest Brother—Samo—looked a little sheepish. See, Samo is the name of a fat little cartoon character who was really popular back then. ("Samo" comes from the fact that this character had just three hairs, sticking out of the top of his head— sam mo, "three hairs.") So Mr. Big Man's stunt nickname was as if a U.S. actor were to call himself, say, Snoopy. Or Garfield.

But it made sense, in a way. Biggest Brother had left the school because of his weight; it was something that embarrassed him, something he hated. The only way he could survive, with his ego, was to lose the fat, or turn it around—make it something he was proud of, something he joked about.

I guess it was easier to change his name than to diet.

Somehow, hearing his new name broke the ice between us. We didn't talk about the past or share any old memories. We were starting over. And the two of us drank, and laughed, and played pool late into the night. Sometime after midnight, we fell asleep at the bar—a tradition we'd keep up many loud, late nights in the future, At dawn, we were woken up by the owner—just in time to head out to Movie Town, to make the day's casting call.

Samo and I spent many evenings together this way in the months that followed. I grew to understand things about him that I'd never seen when we were together at the school. He was brash, and rude, and a

160 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

rough customer—his temper would go from jolly to mean in the blink of an eye, and he wasn't afraid to use his fighting skills to back up his mouth. "You want to take me on, bring an army," he'd brag, pointing to the half-moon scar on his upper lip. He'd gotten that in a brawl over a girl at a nightclub. The beating he received from the girl's boyfriend— who slashed Samo with a broken botde, the coward—disfigured him for life. But in return, Samo had knocked the boyfriend unconscious, and left two of the guy's friends bleeding in the gutter.

"And I woulda gone back for the girl, too, if it wasn't for this litde cut," he boasted.

With his tough-guy example to follow, the other stuntmen and I who himg out in his circle often found ourselves in bad scrapes. One time, drunk and rowdy, we stole a motorcycle and took turns taking joyrides until we were nodced by cops; the luckless kid who was on the bike at the time ended up getting taken down to the lockup, but we raised the bail for him between us, and managed to "convince" the owner of the motorcycle not to press charges. After all, we'd only borrowed the bike.

We even gave him money for gas.

But what I hadn't realized before, when we were younger, was that under all of Samo's gruffness and bluster was a surprisingly sensitive heart. Usually the sensitivity was directed inward; no one was more aware of Samo's flaws than he was. Sometimes, though, his feelings showed through his big body. He was good to his friends and generous. But he expected in return a total gratitude and loyalty that most of the young people in his circle were willing to give.

It was harder for me. I don't like kissing anyone's ass, and Samo's was a particularly big one to have to kiss. To him, he'd always be Biggest Brother, and I'd be "the kid."

Sooner or later, I had to be my own man.

I had to stand alone.

About a month after our reunion, we had another surprise member of our family join us—Yuen Biao, who had returned from America having failed miserably at breaking into Hollywood.

"No luck with the foreign devils, huh, Yuen Biao?" I said, as we celebrated his return the usual way, drinking and shooting pool.

"You don't get it, Yuen Lo," he said, pushing up the thick black spectacles he'd had to wear ever since he hit adolescence. "When we go over there, we're the foreign devils. I can do this," and he hopped off his stool and flipped backward onto his hands, walking upside down with easy grace, before softly dropping back to his feet. "But my hair is like this, and my eyes are like this, and my tongue is like this. There's no place for a Chinese man in the American movies."

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 161

"Ah, stupid, they just haven't seen me yet," yelled Samo, beating on his chest. "Just you wait, America, I'll be your big hero!"

"Big is right," I snorted. "I don't know if America has screens big enough to fit you and your ego, Brother."

More than ten years after we first met, and Samo still wasn't fast enough to catch me when I had a running start.

After Yuen Biao returned, we had many evenings like that one. We'd drink and joke through the night, fall asleep on one another's shoulders in the small hours of the morning, and then slap ourselves awake at sunrise, ready for another day of risking life and limb.

Sometimes, on days when work was slow, the three of us would even ditch the studio and go to the park, where we'd eat, nap, and kick around a soccer ball, enjoying as teenagers the childhood we'd missed while we were at the school. As we lay on the grass in the sun, someone would usually bring up the subject of movies, setting off talk about the actors we knew (talendess), the directors we'd worked for (stupid and overbearing), and the things we'd do if we were in charge (turn the Hong Kong film industry upside down—and get rich in the process, of course).

"Okay, you wanna know the problem with the movies?" asked Samo one afternoon, as we lay on our backs looking up at a blue sky flecked with litde white clouds.

Yuen Biao snorted and rolled over on his side. "If we said no, would it stop you from telling us?"

Samo ignored him. "The movies sdnk because the action ain't real," he said. "You got actors pretending to be mardal artists who couldn't punch their way through a loaf of bread. You got people flying around on wires, jumping twenty feet into the air, and knocking people over houses with one punch. Who wants to see that crap? A fight oughta be a fight, is what I say."

I pushed myself up onto my elbows. "Heroes are supposed to be like that. Better than regular people."

"I said it's crap. A hero should be a real guy, not some fake pretty boy," retorted Samo.

"Yeah, a hero should be ugly, like you," mocked Yuen Biao. "That'd be something to see. The Amazing Adventures of Fat Guy."

"Ah, look who's talking, four-eyes." Samo leaned over and thumped Yuen Biao in the stomach, and the two began wresding, half seriously.

Watching the clouds drift across the sky, I decided that Samo had a point. After a while, all the mardal arts movies were the same—the heroes were invincible and handsome, the bad guys evil and hideous, and the fights weren't like real fights at all. They were more like dancing: staged and gimmicky.

162 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

"I bet any of us could do a better job than the guys making movies now," I said, "/could, anyway."

"That's even better: Fat Guy Meets Super Nose" piped Yuen Biao, gasping as Samo sat on his chest.

Soon all three of us were rolling around, punching and kicking. But when we finished our play-brawl, we made a promise that if any of us ever got the chance to make a movie, we'd find our brothers—and make it together.

Back dien, we thought we were joking. After all, we were just stuntmen— the bottom of the movie barrel.

We didn't know what the future would bring. And the idea that someday we could be stars—well, that was crazy.

FIRST STRIKE

Ihe months continued to pass, and we somehow managed to survive and thrive. With the help of Samo, Yuen Biao got his foot in the J door as a junior stuntman and began developing a good reputation. Samo himself moved up from senior stuntman to stunt coordinator, signing on with an upstart studio called Golden Harvest.

As for me, I'd risen to the top of the stunt profession, becoming the highest of high-class stuntmen—someone the coordinators asked for by name when a hard or dangerous scene needed to be shot.

Then, one day, I got a call that I thought would change my life.

"Is this Yuen Lo?" said the voice on the phone. It was a voice I knew well—sweet, feminine, and kind, a voice out of my youth.

"Biggest Sister!" I shouted, drawing a stare from the building manager, who had let me use his telephone. I hadn't talked to her since she'd left the school, years before. It turned out that she, too, had gone into the film business, working as an assistant for a big-time producer.

"I've heard so many good things about you, Yuen Lo," she said. "You've made a real name for yourself."

I guess I couldn't help bragging about myself after a comment like that, so I told Biggest Sister about how I'd risen like a rocket through the ranks of stuntmen. "I can jump higher, kick faster, and hit harder than anyone," I told her. "And I'm not afraid of anything. I just wish I had a chance to show what I can really do."

There was a chuckle from the other end of the line. "Maybe I can help you get that chance, Litde Brother," she said. "A producer just contacted our office looking for a good fighter for a new picture he's doing; I don't think it'll pay much, but it's better than taking punches while someone else gets the glory. ..."

I almost dropped the phone. Me, a martial arts star? All of us had talked about it, even dreamed about it secretly—but we also dreamed about growing wings and learning how to fly, and that wasn't likely to happen either.

"I'll do it," I said.

"Like I said, I'm not sure how much they'll pay you—"

"I don't care if I have to pay them," I said.

164 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

She laughed at that, and promised to recommend me for the film.

And I got the role!

I'd like to think it was because of my skill or reputation, but the truth is. Biggest Sister got me the part; even after all these years, she was still looking out for me.

As I said before, sometimes I think I've been pretty lucky in my life.

Then again, sometimes I think life stinks. As soon as I got on the set, I knew something was wrong. The film was a cheap kung fu story called The Little Tiger of Canton. I was supposed to be the Little Tiger, I guess, but with the budget they were using, I'm not sure if they could have afforded a kitten, much less a tiger. The whole thing was even less professional than the cheap "seven-day" movies we used to act in while we were still kids at the school. (We called them "seven-day" films because that's how long they took to shoot!)

The whole experience was so embarrassing that, when they asked me what name I wanted to put on the credits, I told them to call me Chan Yuen Lung—Biggest Brother's school name. I figured he wasn't using it anymore, so what did it matter?

WTiile I was working on Little Tiger, my respect for directors sank to a new low. There wasn't much of a script, and even less direction. Usually, I was just told to stand in front of the camera and do whatever seemed to make sense—which was nothing, as far as I was concerned. The other actors talked constandy about quitdng; the crew complained about the rotten condidons, the long hours, and the outdated and broken equipment. Of course, no one was getting paid.

It shouldn't be a surprise that the whole thing ended up falling apart. One night, the director and producer quietly disappeared, taking with them any hope that the film would be finished. Or that we'd get our wages. So weeks of work were just wasted, and my hopes of becoming a big-screen idol were smashed for the first dme.

I was depressed and angry after that failure, but I knew there was always stunt work to be done. And even if that wouldn't make me famous, it would keep me well fed.

If there was one thing that growing up in the school drummed into me, it's that nothing is quite as important as a full belly.

ENTER THE DRAGON

didn't know it at the time, but while I was going through my first disastrous experience as a martial arts actor, something important was

happening in the world of Hong Kong cinema.

It really started back in 1970, when Raymond Chow, a top executive with Shaw Brothers, got tired of the studio's penny-pinching ways and decided to go off on his own. The company he founded. Golden Harvest, got off the ground by distributing works by independent producers, but Chow knew that it would take something really big to make the film world take notice.

Then, in 1971, something really big arrived. That October, the stunt community buzzed with the news about a new guy Chow had hired—and for the biggest money anyone had ever heard of, despite the fact that he'd never starred in a movie, here or in the West.

He was a U.S.-born Chinese whose supporting role in a popular American TV series had made him a cult figure, both there and in Hong Kong. The word was that he talked big. The word was also that he could back up everything he said.

His name was Bruce Lee—Lee Siu Lung, or "Litde Dragon" Lee, in Cantonese.

In the few years he lived, he hit Hong Kong's film industry like an earthquake.

Just a few months after his being signed to Golden Harvest, the studio released his first movie—a picture called The Big Boss. The film showed a different kind of hero and a harder, faster, and more exciting kind of martial arts fighting—as quick and lethal as a cobra strike, pared down to the bare essentials.

Unlike the stiff, stilted combat of the swordsman movies that had made the Shaw Brothers rich, it looked rough, nasty—and painfully believable. And Lee's hero wasn't a stoic, noble soul, living his life in search of honorable revenge. He was a street brawler, a juvenile delinquent, sent away from home because of his love of fighting.

In short, he was a real guy.

When my brothers and I went to see the film, we found ourselves in a huge crowd of people who'd waited hours to get tickets. We wouldn't

166 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

have gotten in at all, if it wasn't for our sneakiness and acrobatic abilities (the former led us to an open back window to the theater; the latter enabled us to vault up and into the packed house without causing a disruption, though no one would have noticed anyway).

Despite the fact that we hadn't paid to get in, we were prepared to hate the film. We really wanted to. After all, this overseas Chinese guy had come in out of nowhere, was making hundreds of times our salaries, and had Hong Kong eating out of the palm of his hand.

We wanted to, but we couldn't.

The film was everything the movies we were making weren't. And even though The Big Boss may not seem very impressive today, for us then, it was a revelation.

"Just what I said," shouted Samo on the way out of the theater, pumping his fist in the air. "Real fighting. Real hero. I Hke it."

"Ah, he ain't nothing," I said. "If you think it's so real, how come when he fights a whole crowd of people, they only attack him one at a time?"

"Yeah, that doesn't happen in real life," chimed in Yuen Biao. We all had bruises to prove it.

Samo shook his head and waved us away. "You guys don't know what you're talking about. I bet this is the beginning of something big, and if I'm wrong, I'll eat my shoes."

"Probably do it anyway when you get hungry enough," I muttered.

And then, as usual, the chase was on.

As it turns out, however, Samo was right. The Big Boss was a big hit—a blockbuster not just in Hong Kong, but throughout Asia. Its success turned the man called Dragon into Hong Kong's hottest star, and Golden Harvest from an upstart into a contender.

In the process, it turned the Hong Kong movie industry upside down. You see, the Shaw Brothers had always been the undisputed kings of Hong Kong cinema. They were almost like a monopoly. They had the biggest actors, the top directors, and the most money to throw around— not that they ever spent more than they had to.

But by losing Bruce Lee to Golden Harvest, the giant had stumbled, and now the industry realized that Shaw could be beaten. Everyone knew that Lee had gone to Shaw Brothers first and been offered a standard minimum contract—barely enough to live on, and certainly not worth moving to Hong Kong.

Lee would pay Shaw back for that insult millions of times—once for every box office dollar he put in Golden Harvest's bank account.

And meanwhile, every independent producer, studio executive, and wannabe movie mogul in Hong Kong was scouring the sidewalks for mar-

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 167

tial artists who looked, talked, acted, or fought like the Dragon—hunting for the next Bruce Lee.

It made for very exciting times for us stuntmen. Exciting, and just a little bit frustrating. WTien we gathered in the evenings to drink and talk, the conversation always ended up turning the same way: what did Lee have that we didn't? What was the secret of his success?

Is it any wonder that all of us wanted to see this man, this phenomenon, for ourselves?

It wasn't long before I got my chance.

As usual, it all started \Ndth a call from Big Brother.

"Hey, Big Nose," said Samo, "have I got an offer for you!"

Samo was calling from the offices of Golden Harvest, where he was now a resident stunt coordinator.

I listened with growing excitement as Samo told me about a new film project being developed at Golden Harvest. Set during the Japanese occupation of China, Fist of Fury was a story of rivalry and revenge between two competing martial arts schools, one Chinese, one Japanese. There were dozens of stunt parts available.

"And you can have one," said Samo, "if you want one."

Before I could even say yes, Samo added, almost as an afterthought: "Oh, yeah—the star of the mo\de is Bruce Lee."

I shouted a curse over the phone, and Samo laughed in response.

"I guess that means yes, huh? Well, show up at Golden Harvest at the crack of dawn tomorrow. If you're late, you're out of luck, so don't screw up. And don't forget you owe me a big one."

I knew that Samo would lord it over me the whole time I was on the set—he never missed an opportunity to make me kiss his butt when we worked together—but if there was ever a time when it was worth it, it was now.

I'd watch, and listen, and learn.

And if I got the chance, I'd show the Littie Dragon what a Shandong boy can do.

When I walked onto the set the next morning, I realized that just about every stuntman with any kind of reputation had been hired onto the project. A shout of hello got my attention, and I saw Yuen Biao, standing off to one side with his hands in his pockets. Next to him was a lanky young man whom I soon recognized as my Big Brother Yuen Wah. It turned out that Yuen Wah had been cast as Bruce's own stunt double— partly due to his impressive skills, and partly due to the fact that his body type matched Lee's lean, whip-quick physique.

The resemblance in their build was even more obvious when Lee

168 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

burst onto the set, shaking his head in barely disguised fury. What Yuen Wah couldn't match was Bruce's intense personal magnetism: even when he was just walking, the Dragon seemed to crackle with electricity.

The reason for his anger was soon apparent. Hot on Bruce's heels was the heavy, bespectacled figure of the film's director, the famous filmmaker Lo Wei.

Lo had made a number of successful movies, including Bruce's debut, The Big Boss, and often bragged of being Hong Kong's first millionaire director. Stuntmen who'd worked with him had a slighdy different opinion of his skills; for all of his boasting, he was best known for falling asleep in his chair on the set. Even worse, Lo was a hard-core gambler who favored horse racing; while scenes were being shot, he'd turn on the radio to listen to the post-to-post coverage from the Happy Valley Racetrack, utterly unconcerned about the action going on around him. In fact, if someone dared to interrupt the post-to-post coverage, he'd unleash his famous temper, shouting the wretched individual off the set so he could follow his ponies in peace.

It was clear that Bruce had nothing but contempt for the man who called himself "the Dragon's mentor."

"The quote was out of context," harrumphed Lo at Lee's back.

"It's in the paper, isn't it?" said Bruce, a lethal edge in his voice.

"I never said I taught you how to fight," said Lo, waving his hands in an attempt to reassure his star. "I only said I showed you how to fight for the cameras. The skill, the talent, that's yours, Bruce. At most I, ah, gave you a littie polish—"

The rest of us were watching this scene with discomfort, unsure of whether to get involved. It seemed pretty likely that something nasty was about to happen, but after all, we were just stunt players. What right did we have to get involved in a confrontation between the movie's director and its star?

If there was even going to be a movie, that is. The black, enraged look on Lee's face suggested that Lo's days might be numbered.

Just as it seemed like the situation was about to explode, a petite hand reached out to touch Bruce's shoulder. It was Liu Lianghua, the director's wife. "Please, Siu Lung," she said. "Don't take what my husband says so seriously. There is no insult in his words. Everyone knows that you are the master, and we are all just students!"

Bruce put down his fists and allowed his shoulders to untense. Lo casually took a sideways step that put his bulk behind the slim body of his wife.

"All right, Madame Lo," Lee said finally. "Out of respect for you, I'll forget that this happened. But if your husband ever talks to reporters about me again, I'll give him a lesson on how to fight." And Lee walked off to the side of the set, shaking his head.

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 169

Lo blanched. "Was that a threat?" he shouted, waving anxiously at the rest of us. "Did he threaten me? All of you are witnesses!"

We stuntmen had watched with distaste as Lo hid behind his wife's skirts, and we had nothing to say to him now. As Lo stared at us, his face betraying a mix of fear and annoyance, we turned away and went back to our idle conversation.

"Okay, people, we have a movie to make!" bawled Samo as he walked onto the set, the cameraman a few steps behind him. "Quit jawing and look lively!"

When Samo and the cameraman arrived, we suddenly jumped to our feet and fell into a loose line, our faces alert and our bodies at attention.

I think our attitude toward our new director was pretty clear, don't you?

People always ask me about Bruce Lee. And why not? He was the biggest star Hong Kong cinema ever had at the time, an icon when he was alive and a legend after he died. He brought the martial arts movie to the attention of the world—and without him, I don't think that anyone would ever have heard of Jackie Chan.

I learned a lot from watching him, both in Fist of Fury and later, in Enter the Dragon. People have said enough about him to fill a thousand very thick books, and it still doesn't do him justice. He had enormous charisma—a physical presence you couldn't ignore. If he was in the room with you, it was impossible to ignore him, and difficult to pay attention to anyone else. He was an amazing martial artist, every bit as good as people have said. I don't think I could have beaten him in a fight, and I wouldn't have been dumb enough to try. (Believe it or not, Samo did! One day, he ran into Bruce in a hallway at Golden Harvest, and tiiey got to talking about kung fu, and right then and there, they had a littie match. Samo says it was even, but there were no witnesses, so who can confirm or deny?)

But the thing that was most obvious about Bruce when you met him was that he was a driven man, obsessed with perfecting himself, determined to achieve his goals. On the set, he worked like he was ten men, choreographing fights, instructing us individually in what he expected of us, and even looking through the camera to make sure that what ended up on screen was exactly what he imagined in his brain. Lo Wei might have been the director of the movie, but Bruce Lee was in charge, and everyone on the set knew it. Lo was perfectiy content to let him take over. It meant less work for him. And besides, after the ugly incident at the beginning of the production, Lo wasn't about to get into a fight with his very dangerous, very temperamental star.

Still, if you ask me what I learned from the time I spent with Bruce, I would say I learned two things—both of which have been very important to me.

170 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

The first is that great success comes only with great ambition. As a child, I never had any interest in going into the movies. As a teen, more than anything else, I wanted the freedom to play and eat and sleep and live as I chose. I would have been very happy to be a stuntman for the rest of my life—or, if I ever thought about the future at all, maybe a stunt coordinator.

But in Bruce, I met someone who wanted to change the world, someone whose idea of success was to be admired and loved and remembered by millions. And in a career of less than a decade, in the space of just five films, he achieved his goals.

I guess maybe that's when I first realized that the horizon of what was possible was bigger and grander than I'd imagined. After all, if Bruce could do it, why couldn't I?

Because—and this was the second lesson I learned from being with Bruce—the Dragon was not a fairy tale, not a god. He was a man. He was someone you had to admire, but not someone you needed to worship. When we were on the set, he was always surrounded by people trying to get close to him, all of whom were telling him, "Bruce Lee, you're the best, you're the greatest."

I was in awe of him as much as anyone else, but I could never bring myself to join that crowd. I'd stand a hundred feet behind his followers, watching at a distance and feeling a little sick that even stuntmen with decades of experience were kissing his feet. After all, we'd all felt his punches and kicks by that time, and they were strong and skillful—but I knew people who were just as strong, or stronger, and just as skillful, or even more so.

It didn't matter. Bruce was Bruce, and for that reason alone, he was the best.

Bruce didn't demand that kind of treatment. He was smart enough to know how empty all of the praise was, how dependent it was on his staying at the top, and making money for the studio and all of its flunkies.

Later, after I had risen to success myself, I grew to understand the position Bruce was in. When you're a "superstar," whatever that means, there will always be people who treat you like you're no longer a human being. In remembering him, I don't make that mistake. To me, he is not and was not Bruce Lee, the mighty Dragon. He was and will always be Bruce Lee, a great teacher, a kind person, and a good man.

And you know what?

I hope that's how I'll be remembered myself.

THE DRAGON'S FIST

y role in Fist of Fury was almost in\isible. I was one of many stunt-men on the film, and I barely got on camera. But if you look very J carefully, you'll see me in one early scene in which I'm sparring with another student. The film's story is about how a Japanese martial arts school puts Bruce's kung fu school to a challenge—one that ends up killing Bruce's master. Treated with contempt by the Japanese school (they tell him that the Chinese are the "sick men of Asia"), Bruce takes his revenge, first on the rival school's students, then on its master, the evil Mr. Suzuki.

Even if my role wasn't one that might be obvious to people in the audience, I still had the chance to make my mark. We were filming the big final fight, and Bruce was patiently walking through the scene for us stuntmen.

"I give a punch here, and Suzuki moves here," he said, in his firm but reedy voice. "And then pow! another punch, and then pya! a big kick—" He gestured through the air, tracing an arc that sent the villainous Suzuki through a paper shoji door, then ran around to the other side of the door. "And bang!" he finished, pointing at a spot some twenty feet away.

We looked at each other. Obviously, no one could shoot a person twenty feet through the air with a single kick—a blow of that force would crush someone's chest anyway—so the stunt would be done with the help of wires. This meant that the lucky stuntman would strap a harness around his body, which would be attached to a steel wire that would yank him suddenly backward, just as the kick was landing. The problem was, the wire couldn't be used to hold the stuntman up in the air; the stunt had to look like a real fall, not like flying!

So the stuntman would have to push back with his legs, precisely upon impact, and then allow himself to go limp as the wire jerked him through the air. He would then have to hit the ground and absorb all the momentum from the twenty-foot drop.

No one had ever taken a fall of that height before. And the concrete where the stuntman would have to land didn't look very soft.

"Okay, who will do the stunt?" Lee said, his hands on his hips.

The set was silent, as the stuntmen around me calculated the

172 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

likelihood ihat they would come through the stunt alive and reladvely undamaged. I'm not that patient, or maybe I'm just more foolhardy than the rest of my stunt brothers. Pushing forward to the front of the group, I nodded at Bruce, letting him know that I'd do the fall—if only to get the cameras rolling. Standing around was getting boring.

As I was strapped into the harness, I considered my options. This stunt wasn't like the backward tumble I'd done earlier. The wire would pull me back very suddenly, and I'd have no control at all over how fast or in what direction I'd be moving. By the time I was falling free, I wouldn't have dme to shift my body—and besides, the idea wasn't to land safely on my feet, but to hit the ground hard.

Preferably without getting killed.

As we took our marks and the cameraman signaled that we were ready to shoot, Bruce checked to make sure my harness wasn't showing, and took the opportunity to whisper in my ear: "Good luck, boy."

Then he shouted for the camera to roll—this would ordinarily be the director's call, but Lo was listening to the radio, content to be a bystander. And I braced myself, as the thud of Bruce's foot against my lighdy padded chest triggered the stuntmen behind me to pull with all of their might. The harness dghtened against my torso, and all the air came out of my lungs as I launched myself backward. There was the ripping of paper and the splintering of wooden slats as I went through the door. And then—

Falling, falling, falling.

Something, maybe radar, told me that I was about to hit the ground. I let my muscles loosen and rolled slightly, making sure I didn't land on my spine, my neck, or any of my limbs.

It was like being hit by a car! The pain slammed through my body, and I almost screamed. But screaming would mean that I'd have to do the take again, and I had no intendon of doing that. So I clenched my jaw and ignored the red fog that was filling my head.

I guess I must have gone unconscious for just a litde while, because when I opened my eyes again, there was a rolled-up piece of cloth under my head, and Bruce and Samo and Lo Wei were standing around me, with expressions of varying concern on their faces.

"Very good," said Bruce, letdng loose one of his grins. "That's a print."

Samo just snorted, but I knew he was impressed.

And Lo, who'd actually moved from his usual position, slumped back in his director's chair, reached out his hand to help me sit up. "Not bad, kid," he said. "Not bad."

It was nice to get encouragement from three people who loomed so large in my life back then—my Biggest Brother, the millionaire director, and the greatest Chinese star in the world.

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 173

WTiat I didn't know then was that someone else was watching, too— standing on the sidelines, not bothering to introduce himself. He was an executive with the Cathay Organization—the other film-industry giant of the Shaw Brothers era. With the rise of Golden Harvest and other independent companies, Cathay had chosen to shut down its film production arm and concentrate on distribution. As a result, Cathay executives often \isited Golden Harvest to see what goods might be available.

This particular executive was well known as a shrewd operator and a kindhearted man. Born in Malaysia, he came to Hong Kong to find his fortune—and found it in the movies, quickly becoming a member of the colony's "fast crowd," the toast of cinema society.

He had an eye for films and rising talent, and I guess something about me—the ugly, big-nosed boy with a reckless disregard for his own safety— intrigued him. Later, he'd remember me at just the right time, and we'd begin a friendship that would rock the foundations of the Hong Kong film industry—and shape the rest of both of our lives.

His name was Willie Chan. And if I'm a superstar today, you can give the thanks to him.

I feel like I should add a little bit more about Bruce Lee, the man.

I can't say I was close to him; not too many people were, because he was such a big star, and after all, we were nobodies. But that was the best thing about him. Even though we didn't know him, he was very good to us. The little people. He didn't care about impressing the big bosses, but he took care of us.

I remember a few years later, when I worked as a stuntman on Enter the Dragon —the film that brought him back to the United States in glory. (Someone told me that Bruce specifically asked for me to work on the strmt team, although I guess I'll never know for sure whether that was true.)

Anyway, there's a scene at the end of the movie where he's infiltrating the underground compound of Mr. Han, the traitorous evil son of the Shaolin Temple. The compound is a maze of dark hallways, filled with Han's henchmen, and Bruce must fight his way through every one to get to Han's hideout.

It's a scene that anyone who's seen the movie will remember: Bruce, surrounded by over twenty attackers, pulls out his nunchakus, the deadly, whirling stick-and-chain weapons that he made famous around the world.

Each of the thugs tries to knock Bruce down. Each of them falls, one by one. Once again, Bruce is victorious against incredible odds.

I came in to take my punishment at the very end. In rehearsal, I was told that he would hit me lightly, I'd fall down like I was unconscious, and then he'd pose briefly for the cameras before running away.

Well, that's how it was supposed to happen!

174 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

Once the cameras were rolling, the adrenaline of the moment must have taken over: I ran in to attack him, he spun around, and powr! POW! Bruce's stick hit me right in the face!

As he was posing, I was lying on the ground, trying not to make any sounds and trying not to reach for my aching head. You wouldn't believe how much it hurt.

I can feel it even as I'm thinking about it now, decades later.

But Bruce knew the mistake he'd made. As soon as the cameras were off, he threw away his weapon, ran over to me, and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" and picked me up. And the whole rest of the day, between scenes, he would just look over at me and say, "I'm sorry," because my face was all swollen, like a chipmunk's. . . .

Of all the things Bruce did, and all the things he represented, I admire him most for his kindness that day.

But what about Bruce's movies, you might ask? What about his legacy?

Well, when I look at his movies now, I say to myself, they were masterpieces. They set the standard that everyone else wanted to follow. They're just evidence of what he could have done someday—if he hadn't died so young.

He had the talent and personality to make movies that would have been classics for all of history.

His life ended before he had the chance.

I look at films by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and I say wow. These are classics, and they are great even today. Bruce's movies are like seeds that never had the chance to sprout.

I've had a much longer career, and I've made movies that I think I can be really proud of. I don't know whether they will be seen as classics after I'm gone; I guess history will answer that question.

Even today, however, people try to compare us, me and Bruce, and make it seem as if we were competitors.

Nothing could be more ridiculous. There were things he could do that I couldn't do; there are things I can do that he couldn't do.

But you know, I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee.

TO BE NUMBER ONE

/'TTN ne thing that came out of my experience on Fist of Fury was a realization that I was sick of kissing people's asses.

V J I'm sorry to say it so harshly, but it was true. As a stuntman, even

as a high-class stuntman, I was at the mercy of everyone: the director, the producer, and especially the stunt coordinators.

WTien it came to action sequences, the stunt coordinators were completely in control. Even the directors bowed down to them, although as more and more stunt coordinators have turned into directors, this is less true today.

That's why we stuntmen had a special nickname for stunt coordinators: she tao, or "the head of the snake." On a dangerous and complicated action shoot, the coordinators might super\dse over two hundred people. This gave the she tao a lot of power on the set—because he choreographed and directed action sequences—and off, because he was responsible for choosing and hiring all of the people under him.

Unfortunately, this meant that stunt coordinators were surrounded by people who flattered them, bought them drinks, and treated them like big men. Successful ass-kissers got lots of regular work—if you can call that working: favored suck-ups were given soft, easy stunts that any baby could do.

The rest of us did the high jumps and hard falls.

No matter how good you were, though, you still faced a lot of competition. And if you weren't willing to grovel in front of the coordinators, there was only one other way to insure you'd be called out.

You see, we were paid a set rate for each day of work, about US$15. The producer usually gave the she tao a budget for the film, broken dowTi by stunts, with each stunt taking a day to shoot. But after we'd finished a scene, instead of wrapping production and paying us, the coordinator would usually bark out orders to set up for a second scene—knowing that, if he finished two stunts in a day, he could put one day's fees for all of the stuntmen in his own pocket.

It meant we were doing double the amount of work for the same pay. There were no rules or unions protecting us, so we had no one to complain to about this treatment. But even if there had been, we wouldn't

176 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

have argued. It was like a tradition. They took away your money one day, but they'd call you back the next.

It kept you on the list.

All of us were angry about this injusdce. We were sweating, hurdng, and risking our lives for half of what we were due. Of course, there was nothing that I or any of the other stuntmen could do about it, any more than I could find it in myself to hit my elder brothers when they tyrannized me and my fellow younger brothers. This was just the way the system worked. Instead, I decided that I'd find a way to become a she tao myself—the youngest one in the history of Hong Kong cinema. And when I put my mind to it, I feel like I can do just about anything.

I was in a somewhat embarrassing position when I finally faced my opportunity—leaning over and rubbing my back like an old man. I'd just taken a hard, painful fall on a film Samo was coordinating for Golden Harvest, and he was yelling at me to do the stunt again, saying I'd shown my face to the cameras.

"Stop wasting time. Big Nose; the sun's going down," he shouted.

It didn't matter how many years we were out of the school. Samo still treated me like a litde brother, and I think he always will. I considered telling him to screw off, but decided it wasn't worth the effort or the trouble. Straightening up with a wince, I shook the dust off my body and checked my neck to make sure it was still doing its job, keeping my head attached to my shoulders.

That's when I noticed the stranger standing off on the sidelines of the set. I knew most of the people who hung around the Golden Harvest studio, as well as the freelance stuntmen who went from set to set looking for work, and I couldn't place his face among them. What would a stranger be doing hanging around the set so late in the day?

Thinking about it was another thing that wasn't worth the trouble or effort. I shrugged and headed back toward Samo, who was huffing at me with his arms crossed and his face crunched up like he was about to explode.

One more time up the wall.

One more time down to the ground.

"Okay, good enough, it's a wrap," shouted Samo, heaving himself up out of his chair and motioning to his flunkies.

It hadn't hurt as much the second time around, but I was so exhausted that I just lay on the ground for a while, my eyes closed. Eventually someone would tell me to get up, I figured. Until then, I'd just rest for a littie while.

"Excuse me?" said a voice.

Go away, I thought to myself. Let me die in peace. But I opened my eyes anyway.

lAMJACKIECHAN • 177

It was the stranger, looking skittishly around at the laborers who were breaking down the set.

"What do you want?" I said, boosting myself up to my elbows.

"I really shouldn't be here," he said.

"Who are you?"

The stranger squatted down next to me. "I'm Bao Hok-lai," he said. "Director."

I shook his hand. "I've never heard of you."

"Nobody has," he said, with a wry grin. "I'm with a small production company called Da Di; we're about to start a picture, and we're looking for a stunt coordinator."

"Oh," I said. I got up and began brushing the dust from my pants. "Well, he's over that way."

Bao got up, looking puzzled. "Not that guy," he said. "I was thinking of you."

I looked at him, my eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Heard around that you're pretty good," he said by way of explanation. "We'd like to give you a shot at stunt coordinating, if you're interested in a contract."

A contract! For a freelance stunt guy like me, getting a contract—as a stunt coordinator, yet—^was the big time. I probably should have spent more time thinking about it, but at the time I wasn't about to question my luck. "Where do I sign?" I blurted. And Samo could just go to hell.

Bao was a bit surprised that I was so quick to say yes, I guess, so he told me just to show up at their office the next morning to work out the details. "Welcome aboard," he said, as he ducked off the set.

"Well, it'll be nice working for you," I called after him, "considering you went out of your way to pick me over guys with more experience."

He turned and shrugged sheepishly. "To tell you the truth, we couldn't afford them anyway," he said, and then left.

Like I said, I probably should have thought about it longer.

The offices of Da Di (which translates as "Big Earth") weren't particularly big, but they were . . . dirty. My hopes were still high, though—even if the biggest studios controlled the top stars, there were still some good films being made by small independent companies. Bao introduced me to the head of production, who complimented my work, even though he hadn't personally seen any of the films I'd done. Then we took our turns signing the contract, and shook hands.

"The first picture we want you to work on is She Wang Yao ["Four Kings, One Queen," but it was called The Heroine in English]," said Bao. "The budget—"

"The budget is not a problem," said the production head. "Money

178 • IAMJACKIECHAN

isn't what makes good movies; talent is. And we know you have the talent."

"We can't afford—" said Bao.

"We can't afford not to do our best!" the production head interrupted. "We have a lot of faith in you, lad! The old saying is, 'Youth will rule the world,' correct? The shoot starts tomorrow! Good luck!"

And then he folded the contract, got his coat, and walked out of the office.

I looked at Bao, and Bao looked back at me.

"Can I at least hire some assistants, or do I have to do everything myself?" I said glumly.

Bao winced, and then nodded. "Hire whomever you need," he said. "We'll work it out somehow."

My expression brightened, and I shook his hand again before leaving.

Tomorrow was the beginning of my new career. I would be in charge, a real she tao, and I knew exactiy whom I wanted at my side.

"I don't know about this," Yuen Kwai said to me, watching as the cameraman argued with the producer about the state of his equipment.

Yuen Biao, leaning against a nearby wall, shrugged and nodded in our direcdon. "Hey, it's better than fighting for jobs with that herd of stunt-men over at Golden Harvest," he said. "Seems like every day there are more people wanting work. Money is money, I guess."

I gave a halfhearted smile at my brothers. "Let's not talk about money right now," I said. "Think of this as the beginning of an adventure."

Yuen Kwai spat at the ground. "If I want an adventure, I'll go to Africa," he said. "I thought you said this was a high-class operation."

I punched him in the shoulder. "High-class is about people, not about budgets. You think you're high-class enough to be an assistant stunt coordinator? You prove it, brother."

He rolled his eyes and sighed.

We watched as the cameraman kicked the shoddy wooden skeleton of the set and almost knocked the flimsy facade to the ground.

"High-class all the way," he said. "I always wanted to live the glamorous life."

"You want me to punch you again?" I said, gritting my teeth.

To be perfectly honest, the movie was terrible. I'm not trying to insult Bao by saying so; most of the movies we made back then were bad, and some of them were very bad. But all that mattered to me was the action, and for that, Yuen Biao and Yuen Kwai and I did our best.

And I loved it.

I found myself enjoying the chance to make decisions and give orders,

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 179

not because I liked to be the boss, but because I finally had the chance to shape the world around me. I even got a chance to act in the film, playing the second male lead—not that I'm proud of my performance. I guess I had a lot to learn about acting. Still, I'd always thought that being free meant no one telling me what to do; now I realized that it meant having the ability to control, to create, to make things happen.

Unfortunately, one thing I couldn't do was force people to watch the film, which made just HK$70,000 at the box office—a disaster.

Bao was crushed. Da Di's head of production tried to put a more positive spin on the situation. "Don't worry, boy. It's not the end of the world. Or of Big Earth!" he chuckled. "We'll get 'em on the next one."

The next one was a movie called Police Woman, and it was better than The Heroine. Not much better, but we'd all learned a few lessons, and I think we put them to good use. We waited for the box office results with anticipation, hoping that it would at least break even, maybe make enough money to pay our back salaries, which were beginning to pile up.

It didn't. Police Woman was another flop.

The movie wasn't good, but that wasn't the only reason why it failed so badly.

Something awful had occurred in the meantime.

Bruce Lee, the man who had transformed the Hong Kong film industry, who'd brought martial arts films to the world, had died. And somehow, the industry had died with him. People weren't watching action films anymore; they were turning to melodramas, to romances, to comedies—anything that didn't have the ghost of Bruce hovering over them. Desperate producers were trying to resurrect him in absurd and insulting ways, releasing cheap knockoff films starring fake stand-ins— actors calling themselves Bruce Lai, Bruce Leung, Bruce Lam. No one was fooled. And very few people wanted to watch.

The day the bookkeeper announced the numbers, the head of production looked pale, and Bao looked like he was ready to cry. I didn't know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. It looked like something terrible was about to happen.

Sometimes I hate being right. At the end of that miserable day, the production head and some of the other principals of Da Di called me in to a meeting they were having. Bao had already left, without saying anything to anyone.

"Hello, come in, Yuen Lung," said the production head (I was still using Biggest Brother's name at the time). "I have something to tell you, and I know it will make you upset. I'm devastated, myself."

He looked uncomfortably at the other principals, who made a point of looking elsewhere around the room.

"What is it?" I said, having a funny feeling I knew what was coming. I'd

180 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

been through this before, on that stupid movie Little Tiger of Canton, and I suspected the tiger was about to bite me in the ass again.

"We've decided to shut down the company," he said. "We don't have any more money, and we can't even pay back wages. I'm sorry."

He put his head into his hands. "I'm sorry."

I stared at the men, who all suddenly looked very old and tired. I nodded, turned on my heel, and left the building.

"WTiat's up. Big Brother?" It was Yuen Biao, catching up to me as I walked out onto the street. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing's going on anymore. It's over. They can't pay us, they're not making any more movies, and we're out on the street."

Yuen Biao looked shocked, and his shoulders bent down. He hadn't been in the business as long as I had; at the age of just nineteen, I was a veteran. I had a little money in the bank. I could afford not to be paid for a while. But Yuen Biao was struggling, and I could see that this loss was hitting him hard.

I patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry!" I said. "It's not all terrible. You just call Samo tomorrow; I'm sure he can get you work. And besides—they gave us some going-away money. Tonight, let's not feel sad over the end of this job. Let's celebrate the beginning of our new lives, whatever they may bring!"

He brightened, and was soon laughing again. Together, we went back to my apartment. I retrieved my stash of savings—about HK$800 total— while Yuen Biao went to call Yuen Kwai about the bad (and good) news.

After he joined us, we headed for the seamier side of Tsim Sha Tsui, spending our "bonus" on a wild night drinking and gambling. By the time the two of them left for their apartments, I had just ten Hong Kong dollars remaining, and an incredible headache.

I slept all of the next day and woke up in the evening, just in time to spend my last ten dollars on dinner at a nearby restaurant.

I'd finally hit bottom. I had no job, no money, no girlfriend, nothing but the clothes on my back and the furniture I'd made with my own hands.

There was just one thing I could do.

"Dad?" I said, to the voice on the other side of the transcontinental connection. "I'm coming home."

DOWN AND OUT

lived on money I borrowed from the building manager for die next few days, undl my parents could send me my ticket to Australia. I didn't tell my friends and brothers I was going; I didn't want them to worry or to try to convince me to stay. It was a hard enough decision as it was.

The entire time I was in the air, I reminded myself that the movies weren't everything, and that there were plenty of careers for a young boy with ambition. I could be a policeman. I could be a chef. Maybe I could build furniture, I thought with a bitter laugh. I didn't need Hong Kong, and Hong Kong certainly didn't need me.

But when the plane touched down in Australia, reality struck me a painful blow. I wandered with my bag through the airport, looking for my parents, completely puzzled by the instructions they'd given me. None of the landmarks that they'd told me about were visible. There were too many people, and none of them spoke Chinese. When I approached people with my scrap of paper, which I'd gotten the building manager's granddaughter to inscribe carefully with the embassy address and phone number, people looked at my shoulder-length black hair, my Asian features, and my poor clothing, and they ran away.

I was alone, without even my parents, in a country full of foreigners. Or, I corrected myself, in a country where I was a foreigner, and always would be.

Finally, I found an airline attendant who could speak a little Chinese, and was told that I wasn'tjust lost—I was in the wrong city! The plane had landed in Sydney, the main city of Australia; my parents lived in Canberra, a short plane hop away, but far enough so that my handwritten address was incomprehensible and useless.

With her help, I got on the right plane and arrived in my parents' city hours later than I was expected.

The Canberra airfield I stepped out onto was dusty and brown, and the sky and landscape were completely alien. I walked around the airport looking for my parents. There weren't as many people there as at the Sydney terminal, and I couldn't imagine that I'd have any problems finding them—if they'd waited for me.

But after half an hour of walking, I saw no one I recognized. I sat

182 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

down on a bench, dropped my bag next to me, and put my head into my hands. As bad as it had been to fail in Hong Kong, this was worse by far. Who could understand me here? How would I find transportation to the embassy?

And then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I looked up into the face of my mother, into her teary eyes and smile.

"Mom!" I shouted. And embraced her with all of my strength.

Just behind her was my father, still tall, but a little stooped in his shoulders. The biggest difference: his hair was completely white.

The years had passed, and I hadn't seen either of them for so long, and they'd changed—gotten older, tanned by the hot Aussie sun. And I'd changed: I'd grown so much, and my hair was long and unkempt. We'd probably walked by each other in the hallways, not recognizing one another, until my mother took the chance that this thin, miserable-looking young man was her son.

"Welcome home, Kong-sang," said my father, squeezing my shoulder. And my mother kept on holding me.

But the words sounded strange.

Was this my home, a place I'd never been?

Or had I left my home—the only home I'd ever really known?

Part of the reason my father was so happy I'd decided to come back was that, at age nineteen, I was almost too old to become a legal resident of Australia through my family connections. Always a practical man, my dad knew that Hong Kong, the place that had sheltered him from the Japanese army, would not be safe forever—that uncertainty would be coming, a few decades later, when the island was returned to China. He was Chinese in his heart and soul, but he had seen how the Communists treated his countrymen, and he wanted me to have a safe place to run to if things went bad in the year 1997.

But when I finally got my Australian passport, signifying that I had a right to enter and stay in this strange new land, I felt more foreign than ever. I lay on my bed, looking at my picture, at the sullen, ugly face that stared back at me. My face in the photo was unhappy, and it reflected how I felt. The booklet gave me the freedom to come here whenever I wanted, but it also gave me the freedom to leave. And after months of living like a parasite on my parents, struggling with the language, the culture, and the food, that's what I wanted to do, more than anything else.

I found my dad resting in our common space—there was more room for us here in the embassy than there ever had been in our house on Victoria Peak. His eyes were closed, but I knew that he was awake and that he had heard me enter.

"Dad," I said, softly.

IAMJACKIECHAN • 183

"Hello, Kong-sang," he said. Now that I was grown—taller than him, and as skinny as a rail—he never called me Ah Pao anymore. The name wasn't completely gone, however; the English-speaking embassy staff had taken to calling me Paul, after hearing from my mother that her nickname for me was Pao-pao. "Did you want to talk to me?"

I nodded. My passport was clenched in my right hand. "I spoke to someone in Hong Kong," I told him. "They want me back. There's—I have a new contract waiting for me."

My dad looked at me in silence. He knew I was lying. I don't think I've ever been able to fool him in my entire life. But he also knew I was miserable here, and I was old enough to make mistakes of my own, while still being young enough to survive them.

"I suppose there is no help for it," he sighed. "A contract is a contract."

I held out my hand to him, and he squeezed it. He looked at my hand, which still showed scars from my many years of falling on cue.

"But son—never forget," he said sofdy. "You will always have a place here with us."

ANEW BEGINNING

't almost killed me, but I bit my tongue and made the call anyway. Back in Hong Kong, after six months of inaction, whatever reputa-

ition I'd been able to build had crumbled away. Just like my apartment, which the building manager was kind enough to check in on every so often, to make sure nothing had been stolen; as nice as he was, he was too old and busy to clean it for me, so when I returned, the place was a terrible mess, full of spiders and dust. I started out my second life in Hong Kong with a day of sweeping and fixing things that had mysteriously broken.

And then, like I said, I made the call.

My life is full of uncomfortable phone calls.

"Yeah, who is it?" said the rough, familiar voice.

"It's me," I said. "Yuen Lo."

Samo barked out a laugh. "Yuen Lo. The exiled prince. What brings you back to our litde island? Or are you sdll down under with all the other beasts?"

I swallowed hard, trying to keep my pride from bursting out of my chest. This was even more difficult than I'd thought. "Big Brother, I'm back, and I need a job." And I'm willing to kiss your ass for one, I said to myself silendy. That's how desperate I am.

"Well, well, well, you need Biggest Brother to bail you out again, huh," he said. "As usual, you're a lucky bastard, and I'm a nice guy. In about a month, I'll need an assistant. Guess you'll do as well as anyone—that Yuen Kwai has a mouth on him, and Yuen Biao was always useless."

Assistant! After I'd gone all the way to the top, a she tao myself. And to have to bow down to Big Brother day in and day out, just like my school days. Plus, the job was a month away; what would I do until then? My pockets were as empty as my belly, and I still had to pay back the building manager.

"Samo, I need work now," I said. "I'm out of cash."

He grunted. "Yeah, and don't ask me for any loans; I'm strapped too. Okay, there's a film starting up here now that could probably use someone. I'll put in a good word for you."

"Thanks, Big Brother," I said, genuinely grateful. "I'll take it."

The most impoilant people in mv liie suiroundina; me. ((■.!()( kuise Iroiii lelt: Willie, Dad. me, Mom.)

■^lOUE'NIUuEi INTE9DITS

.1

I louicd Kiirope to rec iipei.ile Irom the head injiiiA I

sustained duiiny; the filming (A Antioiiro/ Cod. Here 1 am posing; in

France alongside Willie (far left) and my lather.

Yes, that's me, dressed

as a Cliinese ofjera heroine,

staiifliiii' with \\ illie.

At a social function in the excellent company of (far left) Samo Hung, actress Sibelle Hti, and Golden Hanest head Raymond ClhoAV.

Here's one of the

great loves of niv

lile — liii lallvini;

about auto nu iiii;,

not luv Iric IK

(.111(1 ruciiuiit

cosiar) Maggie

Clieuiigl This was

shot .11 ilii' M.u.iii

R.ilh, win re m\

lacing leani was

competing.

Leonard Ho and me on location, shooting Wlio Am I? ill South Africa. It was our last movie together before he passed away.

The lovely and talented Michelle Veoh,

liie onlv woman who's ever tried to top

me, kick for kit k and stunt for stunt. She

almost did it, too—take a look at Supnroj),

where Michelle does a motorc\cle jump

up a ramp and onlo .i ni()\ing train!

r^vc

^

*^

\'eteran director Laii K.ii-Kiiiig .111(1 1 h.id some (icative differ-eiKcs on the set of Drunken Master 11, but don't worn — we're just kidding around here.

^ ,-J^.^

Evenda\ life—snoozing on the set, and

preparing breakfast for the cast and crew on the

Sotith .\frican location of Wlio Am I? . . .

. . . and ven' special days. I received the MBE (Member of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth II . . . and immortalized my handprints (and nose!) in cement in front of the famotis Mann's Chinese Theater in Holl^•^vood.

HITTING THE HOLLYWOOD SCENE!

l.ookiiiy; t()Ui;ii willi Slv Slalloiu .md \\'h()(>])i (ioldberg, mv costars loi a ( aiiu scene in Burn Hollywood Burn: An Alan Smilhee Film. I onlv did the movie to work willi Sh', one ofniv best Hollnvood pals.

Michael Keaton

With ()iientiu laiantino (who ])resented me with the MTV' Lifetime Achievement A\vai"d), Mil a Soi'xino, and NH( helle.

Stanley, Michelle, Samuel L. Jackson, and me.

Steven Seagal

"■*» -:s^\

c:fim

4^

Ciiving Oliver Stone some (lirc( tiiisj; lips.

A/7/ndirector (and

old pal) John Woo, Willie,

and Stanley Ton<j.

i

Sh and Bruce Willis—good friends and business colleagues (we're all partners in the restaurant chain Planet Holh-vvood).

*" f

i

()ii llu- set ol Hii\h Hdur —hangiiii; on lo aiiollu'i cliancc at 1 loUvvvood success . . .

"Rush Hour" Copyright 1998. New I.iiK- I'lodiu lions, Inc. All rights reserved. I'hoto by Bob Marshak. Photo appeals i oiirii s\ of New Line Productions, Inc.

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 185

"That's another you owe me."

"I know. I know," I said, my gratitude straining. "Who's the director?"

"Never heard of him," said Big Brother. "He's some new guy—name's Woo."

I'd never heard of him, either.

I bet most of you have, though. Because today, John Woo is one of the most famous filmmakers ever to come out of Hong Kong—and now, one of the top directors in Hollywood. It's funny how paths cross, and lives turn. John and I still talk once in a while, when we're in Hollywood together. Both of us started at the bottom. Neither of us can believe where we are now.

Like I said, it's funny.

But back then, on Hand of Death, well, we were still young and starting out. I enjoyed the film, and I enjoyed working with John. Though I'd originally expected just to do stunts, I ended up playing a supporting role in the film, and John even taught me a few things about what directing was all about. I'd never wanted to direct before, pardy because most of the directors I'd worked with were incompetent.

John was different: he knew what he was doing, even as a first-time filmmaker, and he had a vision. He didn't fall asleep when action sequences were being filmed. He cared about every move, every stunt, every fight, as if he were performing them himself. He was kind and treated us well. If I ever did get the chance to direct, I realized, this was the kind of director I wanted to be.

But that would come later. Much later.

At that time, all I had to look forward to after the movie wrapped was months of hard work under Samo's thumb.

Welcome back, I said to myself. / hope you 're happy.

Actually, as it turns out, I was happy. Stunt work was still what I was best at, after all, and once I'd spent some time with Samo, I even got used to his shouting and his put-downs again. I'd lived with him most of my life, and we knew each other better than anybody. Working with him was like being a part of a machine, because he knew exactly what I was capable of, and I knew exactly what he was looking for. I probably could have been content that way if nothing changed for the rest of my life. But the world isn't like that.

Change is the only thing we can rely on in life.

And so I should have probably expected that, just when I was getting settled back into a pattern, just when I was feeling secure again, everything would turn upside down.

"What do you mean, there's no work?" I said, as Samo flinched. It was rare that he reacted that way, so I knew he wasn't just blowing smoke.

186 • I AM JACKIE CHAN

"The studio isn't doing so well right now," he said. "Ever since Bruce died, well, it hurt Golden Harvest more than anyone else. They just canceled a lot of projects, you know. The trend is moving away from action— it's all comedies now."

I groaned. He was right. The slate had gotten thinner lately; more and more of the films Golden Harvest was releasing were coming from outside, cheap pickups of independent productions. Even though I'd been working pretty regularly, assisting Samo and doing the odd stunt job, the opportunities had gotten fewer and fewer. I was finding it hard to stay afloat. My confidence had been shaken after the disaster with Little Tiger, and it went down even further when Da Di went out of business. I'd always thought of myself as lucky, but maybe the truth was that I was bad luck—for everyone else.

"What are you trying to tell me, Samo?" I said, hoping he wouldn't say what I knew he'd have to say.

"I'm telling you we got problems," he said. "Look, you gotta believe me, I'm giving you every gig I can find, and I know it isn't enough. There ain't much more I can do. Tell you the truth, I'm worried about my own job now. . . ."

I leaned back in my chair. We were sitting in an office at Golden Harvest, looking up at a wall of pictures and memorabilia of past movies. Past glories.

"What am I going to do?" I said.

"What are any of us going to do?" he retorted. "If this keeps up, we'll all be sleeping in the gutter. Hell, it's probably getting crowded down there already; it ain't as if we haven't kicked out half the stuntmen who hang around here already. Listen, Litde Brother—"

He looked at me, and his expression was serious. This wasn't Samo and Yuen Lo stuff, our usual rivalry and bickering. This was Big Brother and Litde Brother— heng dai. "You want to hear my advice? I think you should go back to your parents. You've got your nice little Australian passport; you can go anytime you want. You get out now, and you'll save yourself a lot of heartache. The rest of us don't have that option. If the industry goes down, we're going down with it."

I slumped down farther in my seat. He stood up and patted me on the shoulder, which was about as affectionate as he'd ever gotten with me. "Things have got to change sometime," he said. "When they change, you can always come back. And with any luck, I'll still be here. I'll always be your Big Brother."

And he turned away and walked out of the room, a cloud of gloom following him as he went.

Samo had given me good advice, but it was a painful mouthful to swallow. I'd told my dad I was here on a contract. I'd been here less than a year—I couldn't tell him the contract was complete. And I couldn't face

I AM JACKIE CHAN • 187

him \\ith an admission of my failure. After all I'd been through, I would rather have gone to work sweeping garbage than return to Australia with my head down.

But I didn't have any other skills, and I barely had enough money to eat for a week. I regretted ever coming back—if I'd stayed, I might have died of boredom, but at least I wouldn't have died of shame. Or starvation.

The walk back to my apartment was like torture; it seemed like the city was mocking me, with its signs of life and busde, the money changing hands and businesses growing before my eyes. Hong Kong was expanding very fast at that time, turning into one of the world's economic capitals. The irony left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Once back at my flat, I collapsed onto my bedroll. Desperation had drained the energy from my body. I didn't move even when I heard a gentie tapping sound.

Someone was knocking at my door.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd had visitors; it didn't sound like the building manager, or his granddaughter, and certainly not one of my stuntman friends. I considered whether there was anyone to whom I still owed money, and decided to take the chance of answering the knock anyway.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I'd see.

Or rather, whom.

"Oh Chang ..." I said, choking.

She was older, a little taller, more beautiful than ever, if that was possible. Dressed nicely, and wearing her hair and her makeup in the style of a young woman, not a girl.

"Yuen Lo," she said.

I wanted to tell her I'd missed her, that I'd never thought I'd see her again, and that I'd still do anything to be with her.

Instead I just stepped aside so she could enter the apartment.

"You have a nice place," she said.

I looked at the rough, handmade furniture. The cracked pane in the window. My old bedroll on the floor. "It's not much," I said.

"But it's yours. That's nice," she said.

Pulling my only chair out, I motioned for her to sit down. All the things I wanted to say were jumbled in my head. The only thing that I could get out was the word "How . . . ?"

Somehow, she understood. "I—I went to your studio looking for you. I met a friend of yours. . . . He said you went home."

I slumped down cross-legged on my bed. "I got out early today," I said.