‘Searching for Jackie Chan’ premieres

Jackie Chan is making a brief appearance in a new mainland Chinese production which bears his name. SEARCHING FOR JACKIE CHAN, a feature film starring TV actor Zhang Yishan recently held its premiere for a select audience ahead of a wider release in China, set for July 3rd.

Zhang plays a Chinese teenager, living in Indonesia with his parents. He enjoys kung fu and attends a local training school but is often mocked there because of his poor Chinese language skills.

The boy travels to Beijing in hopes of studying with his idol Jackie Chan. After enduring hardships he finally meets Chan who tells him the importance of learning Chinese before kung fu.

Although described as a “teen flick,” SEARCHING FOR JACKIE CHAN features more than 40 popular TV actors from the mainland.

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I’m not sure what to make of this feature or its message. On the surface, it looks like a propaganda film where Jackie Chan is used to encourage Chinese youth to put their cultural identity and/or education ahead of their interests. There is nothing wrong with putting education first but is Chan the right man to promote this message? After all, he owes much of his success primarily to his physically demanding opera school training and not to any formal education or linguistics training.

Chan recently attracted criticism, particularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, for espousing propaganda of another sort when he suggested at a business forum that freedom may not be a good thing for China. Solon So, Chan’s spokesman, stated that the star’s words were taken out of context and were meant to apply to the entertainment industry and not society in general.

On a less controversial note, Chan was recently in Korea on a “Gift of Hope” mission to benefit local orphans and children from broken homes. He hung out with over 100 children and donated new bicycles and scholarships to the youths. At the beginning of the year, the action star reportedly vowed to donate his entire fortune to charity within his lifetime and this appears to be part of that ongoing mission.

Source: CCTV

Tags: Jackie Chan