Peking Opera School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Peking Opera School was located in Hong Kong. The school is famous for being the childhood home of such famous actors as Jackie Chan (Yuen Lo), Sammo Hung (Yuen Lung), Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu and Corey Yuen (Yuen Kwai). The Peking Opera school was run by Master Yu Jim Yuen (于占元), a northern kung fu practitioner and a very stern teacher. He taught the children enrolled there (who were usually enrolled for 10 years at a time) the acrobatic and acting skills that would later introduce most of them into the world of Chinese Theatre and movies.
The Seven Little Fortunes were the school's best actors. Jackie Chan was one of these Seven Little Fortunes (there were actually more than seven) and when asked, Master Yu Jim Yuen said that Jackie was "not one of the best, but the naughtiest, yes."
[edit] Life in the Opera School
Practice at the Peking Opera School was very strict. The students had been signed into contracts that would allow the instructors to punish them up until death. Training would take place 18 hours a day and included stretching, weapons training, acrobatics, martial arts and acting. The students were forced to endure harsh training similar to what you see in movies like Drunken Master. In fact Jackie Chan often puts torturous training segments in his movies in order to show how much effort Martial Artists put into their work. They had to stay in the horse stance, and other balancing poses, for long periods of time. If anyone fell, they would be beaten and everyone would be made to start again. Jackie Chan earned a nickname from the other students, "Double Boy." This was partly because the Master would train him twice as hard, because he saw him as one of the best students, and because Jackie had twice the spirit of his peers.
