Jet Li is a famous kung fu superstar in China, known as the "Emperor of Kung Fu". He became famous overnight in the 1980s starring in the movie "Shaolin Temple", which was called by many as a model of "debut is the peak".
However, Jet Li's debut was not as smooth as people imagined, but was full of bitterness and pain, and even once came to the brink of mental collapse.
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In Jet Li's childhood life, there was no trace of "God", but the difficult family situation left a strong mark of self-esteem and self-improvement on his young soul.
In the spring of 1963, Li Lian was born in Beijing to an ordinary worker family. There are four brothers and sisters on it, and he is the youngest child. Jet Li was less than two years old when his father unfortunately died of illness.
Jet Li's family portrait as a child
Her mother, a conductor at a tram company, supported the burden of life for a family of eight on a meager salary of 41 yuan a month – and grandparents at home.
How difficult was his family at that time? Jet Li and his two brothers slept in the same bed. When he was in the first grade of elementary school, he wore an old pair of pants worn by both his sister and brother.
Therefore, at that time, jet Li tightly covered his pockets with his hands every day when he went to school, afraid that people would see women's pants pockets.
Although his mother loved Jet Li the most, she was not used to him, and she often told him: "Your father died early, and you must study well and have ambition when you grow up." "So Jet Li has been a strong and sensible child since childhood.
As we all know, Jet Li began to practice martial arts at the age of eight. Speaking of xi wu, there is also a small story.
In 1971, at the age of eight, Li Lian entered Changqiao Primary School. One day, Jet Li was playing table tennis with his classmates, when suddenly, a classmate arbitrarily snatched the racket and occupied the table.
Jet Li said: "We came first, why don't you let us play?" "The other person doesn't listen. The stubborn Jet Li got angry, jumped on the shoulder-high table, and as soon as he lifted his foot, he kicked the classmate on his back and facing the sky.
The student was so angry that he scolded, "Little Cub, your father is dead, he deserves it!"
Jet Li was a filial child, and his father's early death had made him very depressed. Hearing this, Jet Li jumped off the table in anger and rushed to the classmate.
The student, who had seen this situation, cried in fright, and ran to the teacher's office. Jet Li chased after him and rushed into the teacher's office, and he jumped again, jumped on the desk, and finally caught the classmate.
In the end, the farce was quelled by a physical education teacher next to him. Jet Li's good bouncing power in the "fight" made the physical education teacher shine.
In the summer of the same year, Wu Bin, a martial arts instructor at Beijing Shichahai Amateur Sports School, went to Changqiao Primary School to select martial arts class students, and the physical education teacher thought of Jet Li and immediately made a recommendation to Wu Bin.
After a series of sports tests, Wu Bin found that Jet Li was indeed a good seedling and immediately said that he was admitted. Since then, Jet Li has begun to study martial arts.
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"Practice martial arts, not afraid of suffering", this is a line of the martial monks in the movie "Shaolin Temple", Jet Li, who plays the monk Jueyuan, takes this proverb as his training standard in real life.
Although he was only 8 years old when he entered the sports school, Jet Li had to practice for 8 hours a day, and when his foot hurt, the master said that the foot hurt to practice his hands; later, when his hand was also broken, the master said, one is not afraid of tiredness, the other is not afraid of death, you are not dead, and then practice.
Seeing the master's attitude, Jet Li also came to be stubborn.
When practicing the basic movements of martial arts, the coach stipulates that each person kicks two hundred times, jet Li will kick two hundred times in addition to the regulations; others practice squatting and jumping fifty times, and he will squat and jump a hundred times.
Once, Jet Li was strained in his left leg during training, and in order not to fall behind, he kicked one leg forty times on each leg twenty times.
Learn a move, others practice ten or eight times, Jet Li must practice at least a hundred times. Once practicing the "whirlwind foot", Jet Li had been sweating profusely and the action was in place, but the picky coach still said that his second foot was worse than the first foot, saying: "Your action is almost meaningless, you have to practice three hundred times a day." ”
Jet Li didn't speak, and then he practiced six hundred times a day, double the coach's request.
Every time Jet Li returned home after practicing, it was more than eight o'clock in the evening. Little Lianjie finished dinner, finished writing his cultural homework, and went to the courtyard to practice. Almost every day.
At night, when he was at home reviewing the routines he had learned during the day, he suddenly forgot an action and couldn't remember anything. Ignoring his mother's persuasion, he insisted on going to a classmate five hundred meters away and learning the action before returning.
Kung Fu does not live up to the hard work. After several years of hard training, Jet Li finally practiced a hard kung fu. His movement rate is fast, a routine of fifty or sixty movements, he can complete in one minute and twenty seconds, his face is not red, he is not breathless.
He can use all kinds of weapons like a sword, he can swing the sword 200 times in a row, and he is strong and powerful, unpredictable...
The next thing must be known to everyone, Jet Li won the national martial arts all-around championship for five consecutive years.
But these championships are not so easy to win. In the 1974 national martial arts competition held in Xi'an, 11-year-old Jet Li suddenly had a high fever of 40 degrees on the eve of the competition. The next day he took the sick to the court and won the national junior all-around championship with his strong will and perfect kung fu.
In the martial arts competition of the third National Games, 12-year-old Jet Li participated in the adult group competition. During the pre-match practice of "single knife into three shots", a team member lost his hand, a shot stabbed jet Li's left temple, blood flowing, was sent to the hospital for three stitches.
Just when people thought that Jet Li would retire due to injury, they did not expect jet Li to tear off the bandage and tape on the fourth day and play again. He fought with injuries and ascended to the throne of the personal all-around champion.
Another time, when he was training in the dark, he accidentally fractured his left foot, but he did not rest, and insisted on performing for several days. When practicing knives, guns, swords, sticks and other equipment routines, in order to exercise wrist strength and arm strength, he wielded heavy steel knives, grinded the skin of the tiger's mouth layer by layer, made a gun to make a stick, and often broke the skin of the palm, he could endure the pain of drilling the heart and insist on training, without slacking off.
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It was found that Jet Li was a martial arts star Miaozi, a man named Fu Qi. He is the manager of the Great Wall Film Company in Hong Kong, and has starred in the movie "The Origin of the Jade Bow of the Cloud Sea", playing Kim Sai-yi.
In 1974, when 11-year-old Jet Li returned from a visit to the United States and passed through Hong Kong, Fu Qi said to him: "You are so good at kung fu, do you want to be a star when you grow up?"
This sentence was like a seed, sown in the heart of little Lian Jie. Jet Li thought that performing a martial art would have a maximum of tens of thousands of spectators, and if it was made into a movie to introduce Chinese martial arts, the impact would be great.
It was 1974, and the year before, 1973, kung fu superstar Bruce Lee died. On the issue of the successor of the kung fu superstar, it seems that there is an arrangement in the dark.
In 1976, Fu Qi wrote a script, which was an action version of "Sanmao Wandering". He wanted Jet Li to star, but the Beijing martial arts team wouldn't let anyone go.
In early 1979, the mainland and Hong Kong wanted to co-produce a movie "Treasure Hunting outside the Country", they came to the Beijing martial arts team to select people, but jet Li was brushed off. The reason is that he is not tall enough to be 1.7 meters, when Jet Li was 1.69 meters.
Wang Qun, who is also a martial arts team, and three others were selected, starring Zhang Fengyi, who does not know martial arts at the film school, completely out of appearance and height considerations.
For this brush off, Jet Li, who wants to be a star, has been hit quite hard and is a little indignant. He secretly thought: Since you said that I am not tall enough, then I will rely on something else to make up.
So, since then, Jet Li has found an excuse to go to Izumo and go to the folk to learn martial arts. He spent half a year going to various parks in Beijing, leaving early and returning late, and learning from those folk boxers. Tai Chi, Bagua, and Xingyi were learned in folklore at that time.
Therefore, many people say that Jet Li is a smart person and a person with a heart, which can be seen from the matter of secretly learning folk art.
Soon, director Zhang Xinyan came to Beijing and directly found Jet Li and asked him to shoot "Shaolin Temple". Obviously, this was what Fu Qi recommended to Zhang Xinyan. More importantly, after all, Jet Li was famous in Wulin at the time and was already 17 years old. Fu Qi felt that height was not an issue.
In this way, Jet Li finally started his film career. In August 1980, the crew of "Shaolin Temple" decided to play the protagonist Kyaw Yuan Monk played by Jet Li.
Jet Li first went with the crew to Zhongmu County, Henan Province to familiarize himself with the script. Just 10 days after arriving, I suddenly received an urgent task to visit the United States. He had to rush back to Beijing and fly to San Francisco, USA, with the Chinese martial arts delegation.
After more than a month of traveling to the United States, Jet Li had just returned to Beijing, and despite the fatigue of the journey, he rushed to Henan by train non-stop. Because he knew that the camera was waiting for him.
In the morning, when I arrived at the Henan film crew residence, Jet Li's hair was shaved in the afternoon, and "Shaolin Temple" officially began filming.
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Years later, Jet Li rarely mentioned the experience of filming "Shaolin Temple" and was unwilling to mention it. Because it was too hard to shoot at that time!
All the martial arts shots in "Shaolin Temple" do not use stand-ins, do not use bullet beds, do not use stunts, all are real knives, real guns, real kung fu.
At that time, mainland actors also had no experience in making action movies, and Jet Li and these martial arts athletes had no idea how to protect themselves. They took big sticks and literally threw themselves at each other; they threw themselves on the ground with their bare arms, completely without any protection. Although there are no major injuries, there are small injuries continuously.
It's normal to shoot a shot forty or fifty times, often only three or four shots a day. The most frequent shot was when Jet Li and Wang Ren were drunk with swords against drunken sticks, shooting 47 shots. Two shots were taken in one afternoon.
When filming the location, it was already the middle of winter, the ground was frozen hard, and Jet Li often fell off his horse. Falling blue and purple, he never flinched.
Once in Zhongmu shooting in the swamp to chase Wang Renze, the trail is only more than a foot wide, flanked by water without horse knees, and muddy underwater. Jet Li's horse suddenly stepped on the front leg and fell into the mud, unable to extricate himself. He tried hard to pull the reins, but suddenly got off his horse because of the excessive force. He was about to struggle to get up when the whole horse fell down again.
Fortunately, Jet Li's kung fu was good, his upper body flashed in a hurry, the horse pressed on his leg, he screamed in pain, and his face was sweating. Someone else pulled the horse up, and he struggled.
Director Zhang Xinyan said, Lian Jie, you will rest. But Jet Li washed the mud on his body with water, gritted his teeth, got on his horse on his legs, and continued to participate in the shooting. Zhang Xinyan put a big finger: "It's really a desperate sanlang, a rare talent!"
Jet Li recalled: "In order to make the movie "Shaolin Temple" well, everyone was open-minded! ”
The last scene where Jet Li and Yu Chenghui dueled in the Yellow River was filmed particularly bitterly.
Since it was winter, there was already a big ice break on the Yellow River, Jet Li and Yu Chenghui jumped into the water to fight, and the river was cold and bone-chilling. After the shooting, the body did not feel anymore, and finally played for seven days.
For those seven days, in order to maintain the coherence between the shots, Jet Li had to pour a bucket of cold water on his body every day to make the audience feel wet. Water every day, beat when finished.
It was December 1980, the banks of the Yellow River were empty, the north wind was blowing down the river, and everyone was trembling, let alone a wet actor? After each bucket of water, it starts again, and after the clothes are blown dry and dried, it is watered again...
A week later, Jet Li was holding a knife in one hand, and the other hand could no longer be straightened, and he froze. He applied Chinese medicine every day, and his hands came back after a few days.
The filming experience of that week is something Jet Li will never forget. Later, he smiled and said to the director: "In fact, when watching the movie, although I wet my clothes, I couldn't see it." White poured. “
It wasn't until filming the third play, "North and South Shaolin", that Jet Li discovered that many of the Hong Kong action actors he worked with had a bag with a lot of protective gear, sponges, baffles and so on, and then he knew that the original actors could protect themselves.
Jet Li's kung fu is vividly reflected in the film "Shaolin Temple". In addition, his clever mind also impressed everyone.
Wang Guangquan, played by Li Shimin, once recalled that Jet Li was a very thoughtful person, "He often thinks of something early, and when we know, he has finished." “
Jet Li can be said to be the actor with the most ideas in the crew of "Shaolin Temple". For example, after twelve o'clock in the evening, Jet Li proposed to the crew that there should be a supper, and if there is no supper, you have to give some money. His shrewd mind made everyone very impressed.
Because of his family's poverty, Jet Li was precocious and filial piety than children of the same age. His salary when he made "Shaolin Temple" did not move the seal, and it was handed over to his mother.
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After the release of "Shaolin Temple", it was indeed a sensation, and Jet Li became a kung fu superstar known to everyone in Asia almost overnight.
However, when the first poster of "Shaolin Temple" was sent to Beijing and given to Jet Li's home, Jet Li looked at the poster and cried bitterly. That was perhaps the worst time Jet Li cried.
He was crying not with excitement or joy, but by something seriously wrong with his body.
After the filming of "Shaolin Temple", Jet Li returned to Beijing for training. Not long after, an accident occurred during training, the medial ligaments of the right leg, the two cruciate ligaments, and the meniscus on the outside of the legs were all broken, and the operation was done for seven and a half hours. It takes eight weeks to be admitted to the hospital, and it will be recovered after the end.
The doctor said to Jet Li, whether you can move in the future is not certain. Hearing the news, the blow to Jet Li, who was only 19 years old, was too big, and he was worried about the future. He didn't know if he could practice again, to what extent he had practiced, everything was unknown.
When the poster was delivered to his home in Beijing, Jet Li had just been discharged from the hospital for three months. Looking at the words "Jet Li, a kung fu superstar" written on the propaganda poster, Jet Li has mixed feelings. He had a feeling that he was about to go to heaven and suddenly he was going to hell again.
Later, when he came to Hong Kong to publicize, Jet Li could not perform, and could only sit under the stage and watch Yu Chenghui perform on stage. He sat stupidly under the stage, straightening his legs because he couldn't bend.
At that time, all over Asia and even the whole world were talking about Chinese mainland a new action superstar, his name was Jet Li; reports about him were overwhelming...
However, Jet Li's heart is very sad, he does not know whether he will be able to do tomorrow, and he is full of confusion about the future.
Therefore, that serious injury has always been a shadow in Jet Li's heart, so he does not like to recall the story of "Shaolin Temple". He felt that if he still lived there, it would be painful.
The serious injury at the age of 19 allowed Jet Li to get a national third-level disability certificate. Is the kung fu superstar actually a disabled person? This may surprise many people.
It is precisely because of this injury that Jet Li in the next 20 years of film career, every time he shoots a movie, he has to wrap a bandage on his feet and grit his teeth to complete.
Despite this, Jet Li was injured several times in his later film career.
Therefore, many people think that Li Lian's outstanding Tao is the peak, which is too smooth. And the poignant story behind the success, how many people know?