It really all started some weeks ago when I went with my brother to a party at his friend's apartment. The "party" turned out to be more of a social gathering that involved us all moving into a small theater in his building and watching this Kung Fu flick called Ip Man. It turned out to be a great movie loosely based on a true martial arts master from China. At the end of the movie it was revealed that this guy Ip Man (叶问) became Bruce Lee's first Sifu or teacher. Pretty cool.
Fast forward to last week when I was reading around on Wikipedia during one of the many moments of downtime that I now have. I learned that they were making an Ip Man 2 and were going to feature a 10 year old and 18 year old Bruce Lee. This caught my attention. I did some research and found this:
The two selected actors will appear in "Ip Man 2", the new biopic about Bruce Lee's master. An 8-to-12 year-old is expected to play a young Bruce Lee when he first met Ip Man, and an 18-to-22 year-old will play the kung fu star as a young adult when he started studying under his master.
"Resemblance in appearance will be considered first and foremost, and then the resemblance of manners, and last martial arts and acting skills," said Wilson Yip, the film's director.
At this point I got freaking excited. I'm not sure if we all are like this, but I definitely have a primordial urge to break through the ordinaryness that I feel can constantly define us. I want to do something special and while I don't have any real desire for the fake glitz and glamor of Hollywood, I really did admire Bruce Lee and had seriously stated that I wanted to portray him in a movie. I truly have looked up to him as an influence, a respected monument to what is physically possible for a Chinese-American like me.
I don't have any acting experience, or really any performance ability, and my martial arts skills derive from a semester's worth of scattered classes in Dublin, of all places. But if those requirements are secondary...well I have 
heard that I do look like Bruce Lee. After all, I am related to him, as this family tree actually shows. Bruce is on the bottom, I'm on the top right in red; in short, his grandfather is my great-great-grandfather. So I tried to find out how to apply, because a website did state that they were announcing a worldwide casting call. These sites directed me to the Chinese TV stations Henan-TV and BTV-8. However I couldn't navigate through their Chinese-language sites and so I asked my dad, who was currently in Shanghai, if he could help me out.
My dad has a propensity to get carried away with things but I didn't expect him to with this. Well after an initial, "are you kidding me?" bewilderment, my dad got all into it. He found out the email contacts for the TV stations, the whole contest and texted me from across the globe to IMMEDIATELY email them my "resume, pictures and a brief mention of my relation to Bruce Lee." Apparently there was this contest that had ended on July 13, but he was going to see if he could get me entered. Well he called up and eventually talked to some of the head people at the station and they actually got really interested and forwarded my information along to Beijing. This whole though, I heard no word from anyone. I just took my dad's word for it the whole time.
I wake up Friday morning and go to check my email. Suddenly my dad Gchats me on says, " Chris, CAN YOU LEAVE FOR BEIJING TOMORROW???? I just spoke to Beijing, they said if you show up on Monday, 8/3, they will put you on the contestant list...."
This is a joke right? I tell him so and he's like, no I'm serious. He tentatively booked me a flight out of JFK for Saturday morning at 6 FREAKING AM, and a return trip that gets back Tuesday night. I calculated it out to be 36 hours of travel with about 52 hours on the ground. Well that's pretty brutal but ok, for a chance to star as Bruce Lee I'm willing to make concessions. But that's not even the half of it.
So I ask my dad questions. Why has no one contacted me? I had literally no word whatsoever that I was a finalist for this show, and it really felt to me like it would be insanely rash to take a flight to the far side of the planet without proof that there was a reason for it. In addition to not knowing for sure whether I'd be on the show, I didn't know what this show was all about! After all, I hadn't signed up for a show, I just wanted to go to a casting call or something. Well the show, called Wu Lin Feng, doesn't seem to appear on English-language internet searches, but from what I could ascertain it is a martial arts reality show. Oh and its all in Mandarin, which brings me to an interesting point.
Ip Man is a Hong Kong based film and in Cantonese. However, there is a major villain from Northern China who speaks thick, rough Mandarin. We watched the film in its undubbed language and were surprised that the characters were communicating in both languages and acting like everything was normal. Now, Bruce Lee was from Hong Kong and he was fluent in English and Cantonese but I guarantee his Mandarin wasn't even as good as mine, if he could even speak it at all. I would imagine that they would specifically want a Cantonese speaker so I couldn't understand why there was this reality show in Beijing to pick the next Bruce Lee. In a conference call between my dad, me and a representative from Henan-TV on Thursday night (before I knew they'd seriously take me) I asked this question, and in the long-winded response I got the gist that everything in China gets dubbed. It doesn't matter if you're speaking Swahili because it's all going to get dubbed. So it seems like its common for actors to speak in their native language, even if they aren't mutually intelligible.
So I make a Facebook status out of this and head to work, my head swimming with possibilities and uncertainties. At work I tell my story, and I'm met with laughter, amazement, derision and encouragement. "DO IT" seems to be a common response.
