Jackie Chan and Success
12-Pound Baby to Movie Star.
By Toan Vo | Graphic Design Major, Bethel University
Jackie Chan kicked and punched in his mother’s womb like a boxing bag for twelve months. Time had finally arrived and Lee-Lee Chan prepared to go into labor. Charles Chan biting his nails in the corner as he also prepares to support his wife. Clock ticked and palms sweated. In the delivery room, doctors and nurses put on some gloves and prepared for surgery. Doctors sweated trickled raindrops on the side of their tempos as they steadily removed the man-baby who weighed twelve and a half pounds in Lee-Lee’s womb. Chan’s mom, Lee-Lee nicknamed him “Pao-Pao”, meaning Cannonball (Medeiros). Their child was definitely one of a kind and it took the two of them to hold the baby. Lee-Lee and Charles Chan received the hospital bill a few weeks later in the mail. They opened up the mail in suspense. The amount shocked them and left them dumbfounded. The Chan were a poor small family that lived in the Victoria Peak district, a prestigious area in Hong Kong. But their lifestyle was far from privileged (Medeiros). Chan’s parents were so poor that they needed to beg their friends to help pay the doctors for Lee-Lee’s surgery. Charles and Lee-Lee’s inability to pay the medical bill soon motivated Chan from his youth-hood to adulthood in becoming a successful human being. Chan exemplifies Gladwell’s Outliers theories of concerted cultivation, desirable disadvantage, special opportunities, and 10,000 hours in finding success through the career of acting.
Chan jumps up and down in sheer happiness off his desk in Nah-Hwa Primary School. He can’t even sit still and always have the time in class to disrupt the class lesson as if he was named the class clown in the yearbook. This became a daily regimen and Chan teacher couldn’t stand him anymore. As an abundantly energetic kid, he considered himself bodily kinesthetic and enjoys to be loose and free just like any child would be. To put his energy to use, Chan’s father would wake him up bright and early so he could teach Chan the art of Kung Fu. Together father and son would bond harmoniously over accelerating and witty movements at 4am each morning before school. The hard work and practice required by this martial art taught Chan the value of strength, patience, and respect (Medeiros). Chan’s crisp Mortal Kombat fighting skills began to take shape and develop while his academic skills fell short.
With a desire disadvantage on his belt, he grew up with dyslexia. Academic learning created a difficult learning atmosphere for him in school, making him the lowest student of the class rank. Not to mention he was coming from a low status and poor family in China who can’t even pay off their medical bills. Chan definitely carried a heavy load of burden on his unstable shoulders. As a result, he failed miserably in his first year at Primary school and was left behind for the other kids to bully and step on him like an ant. But his potential in Kung Fu/acting led to his father and mother considering in enrolling him at the China Drama Academy, a Peking Opera School (Medeiros). Lee-Lee and Charles knew in a blink of an eye that giving their only son 100% support would make them feel they’re doing their jobs as parents.
The Chans lived in the outskirt servants quarters of China where in America that would be compared to like a hillbilly living in a rusty trailer on the isolated side of town. Charles would go to work everyday dishing up a decent meal for customers. Charles stood behind a heated kitchen with grease flying all over his white apron. He stood there frozen in time contemplating that being a chef won’t pay the whole entire bill. Charles snapped back in the present as his boss yelled at him louder than a blow horn to “GET BACK TO WORK”. Lee-Lee swept and scrubbed as a housekeeper for the French Ambassador also had a transparenting thought the same as Charles did. As Charles and Lee-Lee poured out blood, sweat, and tears everyday, they still had one job that they did as parents which is providing Chan with concerted cultivation.
In Outliers by Gladwell, he shares the background of Chris Langan who revealed and shows that his life may not be what you expected of a person with an IQ of 195 (Gladwell 95). Langan also grew up poor like Chan. He attended college but knew it wasn’t his thing so he dropped out. Langan is then compared to Robert Oppenheimer, who was intelligent, but came from a wealthy family. Oppenheimer also had a degree from Harvard and was on the route to a long going success journey. Gladwell expressed that it takes skills to get somewhere in life which Langan lacked compared to Oppenheimer (Gladwell 97).
A study by sociologist Annette Lareau analyzed the lifestyles of third graders, and the parenting styles used. She concluded that there were only two parenting styles. “Concerted cultivation” which mostly affects upper class families and is when the parents feel like they are needed to help aid their child’s talents, and embraces the independence and real-world situations. “Accomplishment of natural growth” happens in lower class families just like the Chan, when the child is left to grow and develop naturally. These two styles can be related to Chan’s background. Gladwell lastly brought up Lewis Terman’s study and concluded that there is one determining factor, which is the social upbringing. He believed that leaving out the background of a person wouldn’t show the full story if the parental support isn’t included (Gladwell 104).
Chan remembers strolling down into the musty halls of the drama school, tightly clinging onto his father’s hand. His fear and shyness disappeared as his eyes gazed into the horizon a classroom filled with mirrors and props. Chan felt like he was attending his first day of school. He stares without shutting his eyelids at kids somersaulting and fooling around with plastic swords and sticks. It was his idea of “Disneyland”. He quickly releases his father’s hand and grasped the robes of his new Master, Yu Jim-Yuen. The enthusiastic atmosphere jolted watts of excitement into his body that couldn’t restrain him from bursting out movements of his own. Chan knew without a doubt as a seven year old that the China Drama Academy will be his new home (Medeiros).
A few weeks there, the curtains wore off and true colors of the academy began to shed like a caterpillar inside a cocoon about to evolve into a horrific moth. The academy started to become ruthlessly competitive where training would last eighteen to nineteen hours a day. Chan wasn’t a particularly good pupil, and would often get into trouble by the master. Things started to correlate just like how Chan would get in trouble when he was at school and it’s no different at the academy. Between his intense training periods, Chan was bullied by the bigger dogs as if they didn’t know how to obey the master. Chan had fear possessing his mind. Chan was looking at himself in the mirror and practiced some moves when all of the sudden he heard some ruckus going on behind the dreading red curtains. He yanked the curtains dramatically in a swift of wind speed and spot a kid being bullied. Chan yelled “STOP” and finally stepped in to save another student from being bullied. His courageous act ended his own burdensome, teaching young Chan the importance of assisting others when they’re vulnerable and in need of help.
For the span of 10 years, Chan learned martial arts, acrobatics, singing and acting, but at a painful and cruel price. Chan’s uprising talent from the drama academy got him recognition by no other than the legendary Bruce Lee. He got offered an opportunity to be Lee’s stuntman by a film director that soon became the roots to Chan growing to a famous star (Medeiros). The film director persuaded Chan to execute some climatic stunts in Lee films like ‘Fist of Fury’ and ‘Enter the Dragon’, but soon he found it difficult to search for good movies to act in that suited his martial arts style (Yuan). On set one day, Bruce accidentally hit Chan in the head with a long daunting stick while filming. On the set of “Fist of Fury”, Chan snatched the opportunity to pretend to be in serious medical pain, in an effort to keep Lee’s focus on him for as long as possible as if he was on loop. This mishap opened a civil conversation between the two, and Lee favored Chan as his stuntman, teaching him a few moves of his own (Yuan).
Eight-year-old Chan got initiated into “Seven Little Fortunes”, a group of misfit children from the academy who would be used as extras in Chinese films. Enthralled with positive and cheerful vibes, Chan played his parts with assiduity. In one of these movies, a Taiwanese actress playing his mother took a liking to Chan and had him appear in her next film. Even though his academy master was selfish and took all his paychecks, Chan was ecstatic and began to dream of becoming a world-famous actor (Medeiros). His efforts began to show promise. Chan was quickly becoming known for his willingness and ability to perform outrageous stunts, his seemingly fearless jumps and falls turning heads in the industry.
“Everyday, we would train from dawn to midnight and anyone caught taking it easy, would be whipped and starved.” — Jackie Chan (Medeiros)
On set Chan with terror on his face, became trapped in fear before every dangerous stunt. But no one else was doing it at the time, so he saw it as his chance to stand out in the spotlight. Eventually, it worked out. Later he was signed on to work as a stunt double for films featuring none other than Lee himself. Chan was starstruck as he stood behind the camera, watching Lee deliver lighting-rapid blows. As in the beginning of Outliers, Gladwell stresses that everyone deserves equal opportunities and that people don’t rise from nothing. The story of hockey players having a birthday in January assures them to have a spot on the team but Chan is the opposite (Gladwell 24). Chan would seek and seek for opportunities but sometimes he lets special opportunities ram into him like a bullet train.
One day on set the ruthless director told Chan he was “useless” as a way to motivate him (Medeiros). Chan was determined to fuel up all his might and he trained harder than everyone else at the academy. While everyone slept in bed like babies, he was up practicing his moves in the mirror at four in the morning. Chan got injured, miserable, and forced to rethink his plan of action. “Everyday, we would train from dawn to midnight and anyone caught taking it easy, would be whipped and starved.” — Jackie Chan (Medeiros). He decided he didn’t want to become the “next Bruce Lee”. He wanted to be the first Chan to start something new and fresh. With this in mind, Chan searched for a way to be different. He recalled his childhood role models, comedians such as Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton. He sat on the unclean pavement floor and started thinking. Then a light bulb spark into his cognitive mind. He thought about taking comedy and mixing it to the usually serious realm of martial arts, hopefully the audience could appreciate the new genre he created. He drew from his experience of fighting in his early years, where punching someone hurt and being scared was expected. Chan wanted to display realistic behaviors into action-packed scenes and made them hilarious for us to have two emotions at once while watching. Comedic Kung Fu was born. With 10,000 hours as an attribute in his life, he continued to get more hours in as if he was asking for an overnight shift. In Gladwell’s, Outliers, Bill Joy programmed for 10,000 hours in his second year at Berkeley. The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney started playing music with each other for seven years (Gladwell 32). Gladwell shows that we don’t become expert right on the dot. Through dedication and persistence practice on our passion, we will achieve it after 10,000 hours.
Chan briefly enrolled at Dickson College to learn English (a language he struggled with for his whole entire life) and got a “tedious and difficult” job in construction. When asked for his ‘”English name”, the Hong Kong actor replied with “Jack”, as that was the name of the gentleman standing next to him. Years later he changed it to “Jackie”, hatching the name we all love and recognize today (Medeiros). Regardless of his injuries at the time, Chan was grateful to have been given creative freedom over his craft and passion. He worked consistently with the director to find a balance between slapstick comedy and fierce martial arts. This new perspective resulted in a refreshing take on Kung Fu movies which soon shot Chan into the spotlight. Although Chan never fully learned to read or write, use a computer, or fully lose his fear of public speaking, he never stopped pushing his limits. He now speaks seven languages, contributes millions of dollars to charity, and is a creative entrepreneur with a desire to “do one good thing every day”. Chan sat with legs crossed on the Conan late night show when his eyes glares over at Conan, say “I want to act in a different genre because I’m getting old.” The audience gasped with muted faces all staring at Chan.
Work Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963-. Outliers : The Story of Success. New York :Little, Brown and Co., 2008. Print.
Medeiros, Jenny. “Jackie Chan’s Life Story: From ‘Useless’ Stuntman to Pioneering Movie Star.” Goalcast, 5 Jan. 2018, www.goalcast.com/2018/01/05/jackie-chans-life-story/.
N/A. “Rags to Riches Story of Jackie Chan.” Inspire Minds, 2 Oct. 2012, changeminds.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/rags-to-riches-story-of-jackie-chan/.
Shu, Yuan. “From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan.” Journal of Popular Film & Television, vol. 31, no. 2, Summer2003, pp. 50–59. EBSCOhost, ezproxy.bethel.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=10853 569&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Wirtz, Bernd W., et al. “Competencies and Success of Motion Picture Actors: A Resource-Based and Competence-Based Empirical Analysis.” Journal of Media Practice, vol. 17, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 98–116. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14682753.2016.1159452.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Toan Vo
Toan Vo, a freshman from St. Paul, Minn., seeks an internship at a graphic design company to gain more creative juice. Vo likes watching Netflix, playing volleyball with his Vietnamese youth group on Sundays, and capturing strangers on his Canon T3i.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED
- In Gladwell’s Outliers, innate talent won’t take you far in life if you don’t put in work or dedication towards your passion.
- Barry Schwartz in his TED Talk said “We don’t inherit an identity, we get to invent it.”
- Excellent writers drops readers in the moment to make them feel as if they were living in that specific moment.
- In Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, research shows that people can predict how you are as a person 97% correct through a method called thin-slicing
- Be confident when you give speeches because no one will judge because we’re all Christians.
- In Outliers, The magic number will always be 10,000 hours if you want to be an expert at what you do.
- Scott Winter and Annalise Beeson should be nominated as the best Dynamic Duo because they were a BIG help in Inquiry Seminar.
- Even though Sarah Clarke was “spherical” in size, she was an underdog and so all of us can be, too.
- Being in the right place at the right time can give you your biggest break, just like Jared Nelson.
- Standing awkwardly in front of class behind a podium, Courtney yells “GO” in the softest voice and so I began my speech. All of the sudden I hit the podium and kick a chair which catches everyone’s attention. I learned that taking risks in life will result in surprising outcomes.
