The Peculiar Truth about Jackie Chan’s Parents

• 1947: The Japanese inflamed a Civil War in China. Communists were on the verge of victory over the Chinese Nationalists.

• Fang Daolong was a Nationalist and a former spy for an intelligence bureau. At the time of the outbreak, he had two sons and a dying wife. He procured opium to alleviate his wife’s pain and eventually lost his life’s savings trying to spare her. She died anyway.

• Fang’s life was in peril from Communists. He narrowly avoided assassination twice. So he abandoned his sons, Shide and Shisheng, to be raised by neighbors. Fang disappeared without even saying goodbye to them and made his way to Shanghai.

• He found work as a port inspector who searched incoming passengers for contraband.

• Elsewhere in Wuhan, Lee-Lee Chan was a mother of two daughters. Her husband died during a Japanese bombing raid. That left the 28-year-old mother to fend for herself, her own mother, and two girls. She, too, deserted her children and went off to Shanghai.

• Lee-Lee then made a living by illegally selling opium, and she also gained a reputation as a heavy bettor in the city’s criminal gambling dens.

• At the port, Fang Daolong stopped a woman for inspection - Lee-Lee Chan. He confiscated opium from her, a criminal offense.

• But Fang noticed a blue flower in Lee-Lee’s hair. In those turbulent times, that symbolized a war widow. As a widower himself he sympathized. So Fang let her go. No arrest.

• Their paths crossed again later. Fang had joined a street gang, and he learned about Lee-Lee’s gambling misadventures. She had pawned nearly all of her possessions to pay off debts. He came to her aid and bought back everything she had pawned. Lee-Lee quit gambling, and she saw Fang as her rescuer.

• With China still in turmoil, Fang was still in danger. To protect his identity from Communists who might still be out to kill him, he took on a new name - Chan Zhiping - and relocated to Hong Kong, then a British territory. He found a job as a chef at the French embassy.

• Later, Fang adopted the name Charles Chan… like Charlie Chan, the fictional movie detective.

• A few years later, Lee-Lee joined him in Hong Kong. They married. The French embassy hired her as a maid. She and Charles lived on the embassy grounds.

• Together, they had a son. They named him Kong-sang, which means born in Hong Kong.

• Decades later, he became famous as Jackie Chan.

• Jackie was a poor student who instead excelled at the drama school where he studied martial arts under a strict headmaster.

• 1962: Jackie began appearing in Chinese films as a child actor.

• By the mid-1960s, Charles Chan had been hiding out in the French embassy for years. Then he received an invitation to relocate with the French ambassador to Australia. He took it. A few years later, he sent for Lee-Lee to join him down under.

• However, they left Jackie in Hong Kong under the supervision and tutelage of his martial arts headmaster. He hated his parents for leaving him.

• After his graduation, however, Jackie learned that his father and mother had saved all the money they had to buy their son a Hong Kong apartment so he could live there on his own. He came to appreciate their sacrifice.

• 1972: Jackie was hired as a stuntman in 2 Bruce Lee kung fu movies. Throughout the 70s, he averaged five films annually. His mesmerizing stunt work made him a star.

• 1998: The blockbuster Rush Hour made Jackie Chan a household name around the world.

• At that time, Charles found Shide and Shisheng who had been raised in poverty. But he didn’t inform Jackie of their identities until years later.

• Jackie’s family secrets remained hidden to him until the making of a 2003 documentary about his parents’ lives.

• Lee-Lee was remembered as a mild-mannered housewife, so it came as a shock to many that she had once been a drug-dealing gambler. She died in Australia before the documentary’s release.

• Charles Chan finally revealed his true identity to his son at that time. He lived until 2008 and died at age 93.

• In mid-Twentieth Century China, parental abandonment was not terribly uncommon. Many Chinese families had similar stories. But few abandoned children achieved international fame and success like Jackie Chan.