Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Li Lianjie a.k.a. Jet-Li ........... exceptional

This is why, Jet-Li is one of my favourite human's.

Young Li was among the performers who accompanied Chinese delegations around the world, and his extraordinary ascent through the sport has never been duplicated.
At the age of 11, he was part of a troupe sent on a goodwill tour of America and performed in front of U.S. President Richard Nixon, who jokingly asked the young fighter to become his bodyguard.
Li's precocious reply — "I don't want to protect an individual; I want to defend my 1 billion Chinese countrymen!" —
was regarded as a great propaganda coup by Chinese apparatchiks, whose darling he became.
Li also became, at the age of 12, China's national wushu champion — not junior champion, but champion, period.
He held that title for the next four years and performed in over 45 countries before his 18th birthday, trotted out like a national mascot.
 "I felt like I was carrying a lot of responsibility," he says.
"I felt like I was representing a billion people and needed to do good."

You can see those sorts of sentiments running through Li's film corpus.
In Bruce Lee's action movies, the Eurasian outsider fought for no greater cause than himself (the sole exception is 1972's Fist of Fury, in which he battled the cocksure Japanese).
 Jackie Chan made the action-comedy sub genre his own, reducing martial arts to a form of slapstick.
Li, however, has most often played the sober upholder of national pride.

source: http://www.alivenotdead.com/jetli