A Family Lost and Found

As an inspiring fable, the story of Jackie Chan's youth is up there with Abraham Lincoln's or Harry Potter's. Boy is born in Hong Kong to poor refugees from the mainland. Boy enters opera school, where he trembles and thrives under his master's whip hand. Boy puts these hard lessons to use in films, becoming a would-be successor to Bruce Lee and finally his own man: an international star and, quite possibly, the most famous living Asian.

The story is true, as far as it goes. But even stranger is the "prequel": the lives of Chan's parents, Charles...

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