Biography
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Born in Canton, he is one of the genre's finest talents and a real professional in every since of the word. He has made a number of excellent films and is a personal favorite of mine. He also won the (1969) Light-Heavyweight Championship at the "Southeast Asian Martial Arts Tournament" held in Singapore. Master of the "Monkey King Split & Deflecting Arm" (he was a student of renown Master Chan Sau-Chung), he also worked as a Fireman before being discovered. He became famous with the release of the movie Boxer From Shantung, playing folk hero - Ma Yung-Chan.
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An absolutely superb technician who does everything with such fluid ease that he literally flows through his routines. He literally brought such films as Boxer From Shantung, Disciples Of Death, and Heroes 2 to life with his charismatic presence and intense acting abilities. A major turning point for him was with the release of The Flying Guillotine as he was beginning to move into his own. When director Liu Chia-Liang cast him in the film Challenge Of The Masters, playing the teacher of Wong Fei-Hung (Gordon Liu), he started gaining even more notice. Yet, when he starred in Liu’s next film Executioners From Shaolin, his status as a star was secured.
The film gained tremendous exposure and introduce fans to Shaolin Priest - "Pai Mei" (excellently played by character-actor Lo Lieh). After the success of this film, he was a hot property, no longer standing in the shadows of David Chiang, Ti Lung, and Fu Sheng, while director Chang Cheh gave them the better roles. He began to take a stand, as far as his career was concerned. After a major falling out with director Liu and no major raise from Run Run Shaw, he accepted the opportunity to make his own film - Iron Monkey. The film became a success, but [unfortunately] he didn’t have the studios blessing.
He did what fellow actor (and ex-Shaw alumni) Jimmy Wang-Yu did when he was told he couldn't accept offers from other studios to make films (usually at better wages) - he did it anyway. After a court battle, he would return to Shaw Bros', but with the stipulation that he could also do a few Independent films. This is where he began to make some much more intriguing films than he did at Shaw studios such as - Shaolin King Boxer, Hero Of Shanghai, and Duel In Tiger Village (the latter two being shot by director Pao Hsueh-Li with whom his worked with on a number of films) gave him a variety of roles to test his range as a fighter/actor.
Still, it would be another slight career change that would help him to reinvent himself. He was quite known for playing heroic parts, and that of a Teacher, but when he accepted the role of lead villain in the film Cripple Avengers, fans saw him in a new light. Playing opposite Chang's 3rd unit of fighters The Venoms, he held his ground with this group of young acrobatic performers. He would go on to star in such excellent films as Killer Constable and would show his evil-side again in the Opium And The Kung Fu Master, battling Ti Lung in an awesome display of skill.
Outside of kung-fu films, he could found making numerous films about Gambling and the seedy side of Hong Kong in Triad films. Shaw's The Teahouse and its sequel, Big Brother Cheng helped to establish his abilities as an actor outside of martial-arts films, something that nearly all of Chang's actors could not say. He would continue acting in films and eventually go on to directing and producing films. As of the studios top names, he has come a long way and given us many wonderful films and now he's poised to be discovered by a new generation of fan (rediscovering what we fans already know); he's in an elite class of fighters, and rightly so.