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Pao-pao: The Action Star Who Almost Never Was

I never wanted to be Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be me. – Chan Kong-sang

It is a story that could only happen in America, except it did not happen here; it happened in Hong Kong. Chan Kong-sang, which literarily means “born in Hong Kong,” but his parents called him Pao-pao, which translated into English means “cannonball” because he came rolling out of the womb at twelve pounds and looked as wide as he was tall. His parents were so poor that they could not afford to pay the $26 (US) obstetrician bill and considered letting the surgeon adopt the baby because they could not afford to take him home. Pao-pao’s parents, who were the cook and housekeeper for the French ambassador, decided to borrow the funds to take the child home. While they lived in a mansion, the family was confined to an extremely small room in the back. Kong-sang remembered that the distance from one wall to the other was four long steps.

Pao-pao’s early childhood was marked by hunger, harshness and violence. When the youngster misbehaved his father would lock him in the cement room where the garbage cans were kept. The child remembered every once in awhile his mother would slip food into the darkened room for him to eat. When the six-year-old started school, he would take the money he was given for bus fare and purchase something to eat with it because of the limited amount of food in the house. During the long walks to school, Kong-sang often had to engage in fisticuffs with boys in the neighborhood who made fun of him for being poor.

At just seven-years-old, an age when most children need their mother the most, Pao-pao said good-bye to his parents. His dad got a job in Australia and decided to apprentice the child at the Academy of Chinese Opera. For the next decade the youngster rose at 5 a.m. every morning, seven days a week, month after month, year after year. The children practiced martial arts and gymnastics for the next five hours. Then they had lunch and worked on their flexibility until supper. Master Yu Jim-Yuen, who was in charge of the child, was a strict disciplinarian. It was not uncommon for young Pao-pao to be beaten and starved if he did not perfectly do the routines or exercises he was assigned. After supper, the child did further work until midnight at which time he would fall asleep on the floor with only a blanket to keep him warm. The youngster often found himself bullied by the older boys.

The whole purpose of the Academy was to train the children to be part of the Chinese opera. Pao-pao, who loved the stage, had all his hard work pay off for him when he was chosen as one of seven teenagers for a production. He was even rewarded with a lead role. The teenager thought he had found his path in life. Unfortunately, the opera was no longer popular and at seventeen, unable to read or write, he found himself on the streets. The only thing he was qualified for was unskilled labor and stunt work. Pao-pao became a stuntman and even got to work on several films with the great Bruce Lee. It was Kung-sang’s willingness to sacrifice his body for a small paycheck and fearlessness that put him in great demand. He had even worked his way up to being a stunt coordinator in some smaller films.

Again, life did not work out like Pao-pao planned. Bruce Lee died and the Hong Kong film industry crumbled in the aftermath. Martial arts movies, especially in the United States, had lost their popularity. An inability to find work led him to appear in an adult film and eventually caused him to move to Canberra, Australia to live with the parents who had abandoned him fourteen years earlier. At twenty-one, he was doing construction with fellow workers who could not even pronounce his name correctly. He was miserable.

Out of the blue, the young man received a telegram from Willie Chan, a producer and agent in the Hong Kong film industry. Willie was looking for the next Bruce Lee, someone to reignite the glory days of the industry and he felt the young man was the perfect candidate. He was given the stage name Lei Siu-lung, which literally means “little dragon.” (Bruce Lee’s last movie was Enter the Dragon and the great martial arts superstar had been nicknamed Lee Siu-lung, Lee Little Dragon.) Any doubt that Pao-pao was being groomed to be the next “Bruce Lee” was put to rest when Willie Chan got him cast to star in the New Fist of Fury, a sequel to Lee’s star making Fist of Fury. The problem was he was no Bruce Lee. No one was. After several attempts, Pao-pao’s cinematic tries met little box office success. Hammered by critics and fans, the only relief that Kong-sang had was the laughter found in the silent comedians like Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd on his television late at night.

It seemed like the brass ring had slipped out of Pao-pao’s fingers again. A failure, the young man’s future appeared to be that of a lowly paid actor, stunt coordinator, and sometime director. Loaned out to another studio for two pictures, he was given complete freedom to coordinate the action scenes for the film Snake In Eagle’s Shadow. Instead of continuing to mimic Bruce Lee’s fighting style, Kong-sang decided to mix a little of the slapstick humor that had had helped him get through his recent dark times. It was something no one had ever done before. Audiences loved it. Pao-pao was not trying to be Bruce Lee but was simply being himself and was having fun on the screen.

Still, it was the late 1970s. VCRs were fairly new and Hong Kong cinema was still on wobbly legs as it began to explore markets in other Asian countries. The only real money was to be found in Hollywood. Tinsel town was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In 1980, Pao-pao decided to conquer America. Warner Brothers signed him to a three-picture deal. The problem is they did not know what to do with him. Although Chinese, he was cast as an unnamed Japanese limo driver in a film in which he was given little screen time, and his other two projects bombed at the box office.

With his tail between his legs, Pao-pao returned to Hong Kong where he set box office records and became Asia’s top star. It would be another fifteen years until he would attempt to crack the North American box office. Yet, Americans were starting to discover him through VHS rental places, late night cable and word of mouth. Throughout the rest of the 1980s and 90s he turned out a slew of films that set box office records throughout the world. The little boy who traded his bus fare for food, who was beaten and often felt he had no future is today estimated to be worth $1,280,000,000 (US).

Never heard of Chan Kong-sang, or Pao-pao? You might know him better by the name he was given by his fellow construction workers in Canberra, Australia, one of the lowest moments of his life. A worker named Jack started calling him “Little Jack”. After awhile everyone started calling him “Jackie.” Most Americans know him as Jackie Chan, star of the Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon series.

Most of us are never going to be a major box office superstar, nor will we experience the lows that Jackie Chan went through. Yet, some of the battles you might go through are just as painful and lonely. Life is not a straight line. One day you could be a little boy with his parents, the next a lonely little kid without a bed to sleep in, star of the show, living on the street, the next a stunt man sacrificing your body for peanuts, a construction worker in a strange land, or a failure at the only thing you are good at, then a success and a failure again, then here comes the rainbow again. You just have to show up and hang on even when you feel yourself slipping. Never give up!