deliver Time Breaker, directed once more by Stanley Tong, a comedy fantasy where he’d join the trend for using Ming-era weapons. Then would come The Blade Of The Rose, a sequel to The Twins Effect that also featured the screen debut of his son, Jaycee Fong Cho-ming (also a musician, Jaycee had recently inked a deal with Sony). The inevitable Rush Hour 3 would follow soon after.

Jackie has been married to Feng-Jiao Lin since 1983, gaining his son the same year. There have also been affairs, for Jackie has always worked and played hard, one being with the former Miss Asia Elaine Ng, with whom he has a daughter. He actually has a much bigger family than he for a long time realised. After many years of secrecy, his father would inform him that his real name was not Chan but Fung (or Fong, depending on who’s saying it). He also, he was told, had two half-sisters in Australia and two half-brothers in China. Intrigued by this explanation of events, and also by his parents’ turbulent lives during China’s Cultural Revolution, he’d make a documentary entitled Traces Of Dragon: Jackie Chan And His Lost Family.

He famously works constantly, but puts in a lot for charity too. Helped himself by the Red Cross as a child, he was told not to repay the giver, but to spread the charity onwards. He remembers as a young star being asked to spend a day with sick kids in hospital. Arrogantly giving them a mere 15 minutes, he arrived to find himself handed a bunch of presents to give the children, the staff knowing how much it would mean. Seeing the delight of the children, Jackie was profoundly moved, returning the next year – with his own presents.

Having achieved worldwide fame, he decided to split his time pretty much evenly between film and charity work. 2004 alone saw him pull all his HK star mates into a charity car race before the Shanghai Grand Prix. He was named Philanthropist for Children in China after making a massive donation. He was named Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, visiting Cambodia to help clear up landmines, then Singapore and Korea. He’d help plant forests in China and promote care of the environment. Once more he’d gather the stars of Asia for a show at Las Vegas’s MGM Grand, proceeds going to the Self-Help For The Elderly project and Alzheimer’s Centre he’d earlier set up in San Francisco, meaning hundreds more people could be seen to every day. He set up the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation Scholarship, then bought a 50-acre plot in Chun Ping, China, hoping to open a school for stunt-people of all nationalities. Oh, and he found time to open a restaurant at Ala Moana in Hawaii. And this was just the first HALF of 2004.

It’s hard to conceive how popular Jackie Chan is today, now he has broken the West. Even years ago, he was so big in Japan that many teenage girls were pulled from railway lines and pumped empty of poison, having felt the need to die for him. One indicator is that in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood you’ll find the hand-prints of the legendary Bruce Lee. You’ll also see the marks of Jackie Chan’s hands, feet and, yes, that big nose. He can’t help but go too far, and people love him for it. 2004 would also see his hand-prints on Hong Kong’s new Avenue of Stars, alongside Lee’s and those of such co-stars as Sammo Hung, Tsui Hark, Maggie Cheung and Anita Mui, who tragically of cancer that same year at the painfully young age of 40.

And it could yet get bigger. There’s still a hoped-for martial arts blockbuster with fellow megastar Jet Li, and plans for The Art Of War, based on the 2000-year-old writings of philosopher Sun Tzu (who’s also inspired the all-conquering Australian cricket team) and set to be most expensive Hong Kong movie ever. And perhaps, just perhaps, there will be Rambo 4. Anyone who knows Jackie’s movies knows the debt he owes to Stallone’s Rocky (and the debt Rocky owed to Chan). Appearing in Rambo would complete a neat circle – though Jackie will NOT be appearing as a drug baron, as the original script apparently had it. As daddy said, No Triads, NO DRUGS.

Dominic Wills

Source: www.tiscali.co.uk