As one of the most prolific action-movie stars, Hong Kong native Jackie Chan has become globally
famous for his martial-arts and comedy skills. Equally cinematic is the story of his parents
and how they met, with his mother having actually peddled opium. Here are the details.
Mother widowed during WWII
Lee-Lee Chan, Jackie Chan's mother, was born in 1916 to a family of humble means in China.
The saga that saw his mom endure war and eventually meet his dad is recounted in
filmmaker Mabel Cheung’s documentary Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family,
and it’s dramatized in her feature film A Tale of Three Cities. Though there isn’t
much information about her life before she met Chan's father, The Guardian has reported
that she married at a young age, and her first husband died during a Japanese bombing raid.
That made her a young widow with two small daughters, Chan Guilan and Chan Yulan.
Without money, Lee-Lee tried to sell her daughters and would eventually leave them behind,
as revealed by Variety. Later, after his mom had met his dad and was pregnant with Jackie,
it was a consideration with him too, even before he was born.
“He want to sell to the British doctor for two-hundred fifty.”
“They were gonna sell you, the baby?” “Yeah.”
Although the practice of selling children sounds shocking,
it wasn’t rare in China. Reported in The Guardian, filmmaker Cheung said of this time,
"It was so commonplace in China. Life was cheap. It has always been cheap. It's a very
common thing to do, abandon your children. In every family, there were abandoned children.”
Opium-dealing mom
Lee-Lee Chan had an ordinary life in Hong Kong, and her son Jackie grew up believing
his mother had nothing to hide, but he later found out she had quite a few secrets from
her past. When she had earlier moved to Shanghai as a widow, she was penniless
and had to find a way to survive. Variety reports that she turned to opium smuggling.
In Shanghai's underworld, Lee-Lee was nicknamed "Third Sister," becoming a legendary gambler.
Sadly, Lee-Lee passed away in 2001, and Chan never had the chance to talk to her about her past.
While in Shanghai, life would change again when she met her future husband, Charles Chan,
a Chinese Nationalist agent. However, there was nothing romantic about how they met.
Arrested by future husband
At the time, Charles Chan himself was a widower, having left behind two children after the war,
before moving to Shanghai. Appropriately, the circumstances of how he met Lee-Lee could be a
scene straight out of a film, and they eventually formed the basis for more than one scene,
when A Tale of Three Cities was released. Lee-Lee was arrested by Chan when she was
smuggling opium. According to Variety, he felt compassion for the woman and let her go.
They got married, and the Communists took over China. Chan moved to Hong Kong, and later his
wife joined him. In Hong Kong, Chan worked at the French Embassy as a handyman and cook.
When Jackie Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1954,
his parents had established a completely different life, and he grew up unaware of their past.
Father a spy
In the late 1990s, Jackie decided to travel to Australia to meet his father,
and, while filming for Traces of a Dragon, began to find out about his family's past.
He had grown up hearing rumors that his name was false and that he was adopted. In Australia,
he found out those stories were partially true. His father's real name was actually Fang Daolang.
As he discussed in a TV interview, his father telling him his family name wasn’t really Chan
came as a surprise: “Then he turned around,
‘Son, I have something to talk to you: your name is not Chan; it’s Fang.’ I go, ‘What?’
But those weren’t the only revelations. While in Australia, Chan also discovered
that his father was a Nationalist spy and had two other children living in China.
In the documentary, Fang flies to China to meet those two other sons – but it’s not a complete
family reunion. According to The Guardian, Fang preferred they not meet Jackie Chan,
because being related to a movie star would significantly impact their lives.
Jackie’s estranged daughter
During the 1990s while married, Chan had an affair with Elaine
Ng Yi Lei, Miss Asia 1990. In 1999, Lei revealed that they had a daughter,
Etta Ng Chok, and claimed that Chan never helped them financially. In his memoir Never Grow Up,
published in 2015, Chan admitted cheating on his wife Joan Lin. According to Yahoo, he wrote,
"In 1999, I made a serious mistake. When the news broke about an affair I'd had
that resulted in a child, the media frenzy was like a bomb going off."
Lei raised her daughter alone, but it was a fraught relationship.
Chan reportedly doesn't have contact with Etta, and in 2018, the girl said,
via Newsweek, that she was homeless due to her, quote, "homophobic parents.” That same year, Chok
used her social media to announce her marriage to her older Canadian girlfriend, Andi Autumn.
Children locked out of fortune
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Jackie Chan has a $370-million fortune,
but his children will likely not inherit it. Chan never mentions his daughter Etta,
so her potentially being cut out of the will likely won't shock anyone. However, it came as
more of a surprise when Chan said his son, Jaycee Chan, would not receive a dime after his death.
The actor plans to leave much (if not all) of his fortune to charity, as reported by Metro.
Indeed, some pretty dramatic irony has arisen over Jackie’s relationship with Jaycee.
Jackie was named "Narcotics Control Ambassador" in China in 2009 – ironic
in its own right for a man whose mother used to sell opium. But then in 2014,
Jaycee was arrested in Beijing after the police found marijuana in his house.
Expressing shame over his son's mistake, Jackie was reported by the BBC as saying,
"As a public figure, I am ashamed. As a father,
I am very sad, and his mother is heartbroken. I told Jaycee: if you have done something wrong,
you must bear the consequences. As your father, I am willing to face the road ahead with you."
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
That's 1-800-662-4357.