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Pag. 01

PROLOGUE: TAKING FLIGHT

I’m standing in the sky on the roof of a glass and steel office tower in Rotterdam, Holland. There are twenty-one floors of air between me and the concrete pavement below. I am about to do what I do best.

My stuntmen tell me that the fall is safe—well, not safe, but maybe a little less than deadly. Of course, they’ve only tried the jump from the sixteenth floor…and, as I watched the test footage late last night, alone in our production offices, I realized that a sixteen-floor fall was too predictable.

Too... possible.

After all, my producer has been bragging to reporters that this will be the world’s most dangerous stunt. And who would I be if I didn’t live up to my press?

Not Jackie Chan.

So, against the advice of my director and my costars and the executives at the studio, I have decided to add five stories to the stunt.

That’s sixty more feet of very thin air through which my forty-five-year-old body will be sliding.

A few more seconds of excitement for the cameras.

A few more screams from an audience starving for adrenaline.

The formula is simple: the more terrified my friends and family are, the more satisfied my fans will be. And they mean everything to me. They come to the theaters hungry for a hero, for someone who can laugh at disaster, who can make funny faces at death. Someone who can show them for real that the only thing to fear is fear itself. 

But whoever said that never stood on a roof in Rotterdam. He never looked down over the edge of a skyscraper to see a foam target 250 feet below. From here, the mattress looks like a postage stamp. When I hold out both hands in front of my face, I can just about cover it entirely.

Sorry to contradict you, Mr. Whoever, but the only things to fear are fear itself, and hitting the ground at one hundred miles per hour with nothing between you and the emergency room but a few inches of foam rubber.

I’m tired.

Pag. 02

My heart feels like a rock in my chest.

My body screams at me about the abuse I’ve put it though over the last four decades. Parts of me I can’t even pronounce are complaining about how badly I’ve treated them. And despite the mob of extras milling around the base of the building—hundreds of Dutch marines and fire-fighters and police, looking nervously up at the sky—I think to myself: Is this jump really necessary?

But the answer is there as soon as I ask the question: Yes.

Because this jump is special.

It isn’t just for the fans and the critics and the box office charts.

This one is for the man who made it possible for me to stand here today, aching and shivering in the spotlight.

This is for my master, Yu Jim-yuen, who was buried a week ago in Los Angeles.

My trip from Holland to California for funeral brought production to a grinding stop, costing Golden Harvest nearly a quarter of a million dollars. They knew better than to tell me not to go, even if for them every wasted dollar is like a drop of spilled blood.

I remember a frightened seven-year-old walking into the dark and musty halls of the China Drama Academy, holding his father’s hand. Inside, he sees young boys and girls leaping and tumbling and screaming. Paradise—

“How long do you want to stay here, Jackie?”

“Forever!” answer the boy, his eyes bright and wide. And he lets go of his father to clutch at the hem of his master’s robe…

For the next ten years, I sweated and cried and bled under Master’s hands. I cursed his name when I went to sleep at night, and I swallowed my fear and hatred of him when I woke in the morning. He asked for everything we had, and we gave it to him, under pain of injury, or even death.

But when we came of age, we realized he’d given it all back. With interest.

It was Master Yu Jim-yuen who created Jackie Chan, and I do what do today—I am what I am today—because of him. And so this leap is in his memory, a final act of gratitude. A last gesture of defiance.

Someone slaps me on the back, asks me if I’m ready. I nod, barely understanding. Another voice calls for quiet on the set, and  suddenly the only sound is the wind and the blood rushing in my ears and my heart beginning to pound like a giant drum.

“Camera!”

“Rolling!”

“Action!”

And I suck in my churning stomach. Launch myself into the sky.

I fly.

I remember…

Pag. 03

THE YOUNG MASTER

I was born on April 7, 1954, the only son of Charles and Lee-lee Chan. They named me Chan Kong-sang, which means “Born in Hong Kong” Chan.

I guess my parents weren’t very original when it came to names. Or maybe they just wanted to celebrate their relief at making it to Hong Kong, as survivors of a breathless escape from the turmoil of the mainland. Hong Kong was the promised land, a place that offered safety and prosperity. A place where new lives could begin.

By the Chinese calendar, 1954 was the Year of the Horse.

According to superstition, the horse is a sign of energy, ambition, and success. It’s a good year to be born in if you’re a boy—not such a good one if you’re a girl, because tradition says that a female Horse will have trouble finding a proper husband—and my parents were happy that I came into the world under such a fortunate sign. Of course, my arrival in the Year of the Horse was hardly a coincidence; actually, it took an awful lot of stubbornness on my part to pull it off! Most babies are born nine months after being conceived. I, on the other hand, stuck around an extra three months, until my mother was forced to go to a surgeon to bring me into the world, kicking and screaming, by caesarean section.

Maybe it was my rebellious streak that made me refuse to join my parents on time, or maybe it was a premonition of what my future would hold. After all, while comfortably inside my mother, I had privacy, sleep, and all the food I could ever ask for, without having to fight or work or suffer. In fact, I can honestly say that those three extra months were the easiest time of my life.

Nothing like that waited for me in the world outside. Hong Kong in the ‘50s was a hard and restless place, and my family’s position there was at the very bottom of the social ladder, among the thousands of destitute migrants who’d fled to the British colony after the mainland’s Communist Revolution. Still, as poor as we were, we felt lucky to have survived China’s civil war, and especially grateful that my parents had good jobs in the strange new society of the island. Many of our fellow refugees had arrived in Hong Kong with nothing but the clothes on their back and the memories of what they’d left behind. They lived in shacks in the island’s

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crowded ghettos, making paper flowers and cheap trinkets to survive, or turning to less socially accepted—and more dangerous—pursuits.

It was a bad time to be poor. (But then again, when is it ever a good time to be poor?) As the crowds of new immigrants grew, the colony’s swelling population divided itself into two groups: the determined and the desperate. On the one hand, there were those who embraced the city’s unspoken philosophy: Work hard and you’ll survive, do well, maybe even get rich. But meanwhile, in the lower parts of the city, the lives of many of our fellow newcomers were filled with hunger, crime, and fear.

We belonged to the first group—the lucky ones. Soon after coming to the island, my father and mother had found employment with the French ambassador to Hong Kong, a kind gentleman with a warm and caring family. Dad became the ambassador’s cook and handyman; my mother was the housekeeper. And so, when I was born, I found myself not on the tough streets of lower Hong Kong, but in a mansion on the exclusive slopes of Victoria Peak—the home of the wealthy, the famous, the powerful. And me.

I don’t recall the house itself too well.

It was big, I remember, and very grand. In the front rooms, well-dressed Westerners (and sometimes Chinese) would chat and take tea or listen music; upstairs, the ambassador’s family had their quarters, huge rooms with high ceilings and windows that opened out onto the lights of the city below. But I didn’t see these parts of the house very often. This was a different world from the one in which my family lived.

Our place was the rear of the mansion, divided from the air and light of the front by a small door.

If you were to open that door and pass through, you’d find yourself in a long, narrow hall that ran along the length of the house—the highway of our world. It was usually dark in that corridor, except when meals were being served, so it might be easier to find your way around by smell and sound than by sight.

Here’s a quick tour of our world.

To your right, the first door off the corridor: the noise of chopping and sizzling, an occasional curse; the aroma of roasting meat and vegetables simmering in fragrant peanut oil. That would be the kitchen, where my father spent his mornings and afternoons preparing food for the ambassador’s family. Father down the corridor: the soft slush-slush of trickling water, and the sweet melody of a hummed folk song—the laundry room, where my mother washed mountains of fluffy white linens and the family’s fine, beautiful clothing. An then: the smell of incense and wool and dried-grass matting, the gentle noise of an infant’s breathing. This would be our family’s bedroom, where my mother and father and I all slept together.

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Our room was tiny, and it was not what you would probably consider comfortable. There were no windows, and the walls and floor were clean, but bare. The furniture had all been made by my father’s hands, and there wasn’t much of it; a bunk bed, some benches, and a storage trunk. My parents slept together in the top bunk of the bed, and I slept in the bottom one. From the top bunk, you could reach up and touch the ceiling; four long steps would take you from wall to wall.

This was all the home I knew for the first six years of my life, and I was happy there, despite the cramped quarters and the simple furnishings. Actually, I didn’t know at the time just how good I had it.

The next place I’d call home would make our small room seem like a palace.

But I haven’t finished the four. Follow the corridor to its end, and you’d hear the buzz of flies, and your nose would wrinkle at the pungent odors of mold and aging food. This alcove at the end of the hall would be the rubbish room, where the household garbage was stored during the day, to be disposed of at night.

By the time I was a small child, I’d get to know this room very well. More on why later.

I mentioned that I’d started giving trouble to my parents even before I was born. Of all the crazy stunts I’ve done, in my opinion, nothing compares to my mom’s achievement—surviving nearly an entire year of pregnancy, then giving birth to a healthy baby who weighed twelve pounds at delivery. Both my parents were shocked when I finally arrived. My father said he’d never seen such a big baby in his life—he and Mom nicknamed me Pao-pao, which is Chinese for “cannonball.” And I’m sure my mother was glad that she didn’t have to give birth to me naturally….

There was a price to pay for my safe and sound arrival, of course. The bill for my mother’s surgery came to HK$500 (about U.S.$26), and my parents’ savings didn’t come  close to covering that cost. But the lady doctor who performed the surgery must have been impressed by me too, because afterward she approached my nervous father with a deal. She had no kid of her own, she explained to him, and she knew he and my mother had no money. If my father would allow her to “adopt” me, she would be willing to pay for the costs of the surgery and my mother’s hospital stay, and even give my parents and additional adoption fee of HK$1,500.

I’m not angry about the fact that my father thought long and hard about the offer, Two thousand Hong Kong dollars was a lot of money back then, and poor children were regularly given to wealthier friends and relatives to bring up in those days. Maybe it would have even been for the best, because the lady doctor would have brought me up in style.

But I was my parents’ only son. I was a symbol of their new start in

Pag. 06

Hong Kong. I was born under a lucky sign, and I was big and healthy. My father went home and talked about the doctor’s offer with some of his friends, who all said the same thing; there was something special about me, the twelve-month, twelve-pound baby, and if I grew up to be a great man, my father would always regret giving me up. Dad’s friends lent him the money to pay the hospital debt, and (after thanking the doctor for her skillful surgery and generous offer), he took my mother and me home, to the big house on the Peak.  

Pag. 07

FAMILY STORIES

That’s the story of how I was born.

Or at least that’s the one my dad told me all my life, anyway.

But inside every story hides another one, and over the years, I found out a little more about our secret history—about what my parents left behind in China when they came to Hong Kong, and the real reason I was too special to give away.

If you were to look at pictures of my father as a young man, your first impression would be that is a man of great strength and enormous pride. And of course, you’d be right. Dad was born in China’s Shandong province, the land of the famous North Clan and the birthplace of many legendary warriors and martial artist. His family was a very respected one, and even as a small child, he was expected to go on to great things.

Now, back then, shanghai was the style capital of Asia. All of the finest things and people in China could be found in this one city, where art, fashion, philosophy, and society reached their height of sophistication. The Chans brought their promising son there at the age of three, grooming him to become one of society’s leaders. When he came into adulthood, he was married to the daughter of another respectable family.

I don’t know if was happy then, but I have to assume he was. My father and his wife lived together, with the approval of their clans. They shared a roof and a household. And they had children.

I found this out just a few years ago. I knew my father always sent money back home to relatives in China—sometimes he’d say it was for his brother, other times, his sister. I’d never met any other member of his family, so I didn’t have any reason to ask him any further questions. And really, I don’t have that much curiosity in my personality.

But then something happened that made me curious in spite of myself. The mail had just arrived, and I was going through it. Nothing interesting: bills, invitations to events… And an unsigned letter from the mainland, addressed to my dad. He wasn’t at home, and suddenly, I realized that I wanted to know more about this mystery—all those unasked, unanswered questions about my family. So I opened the envelope.

“Dearest father…” Dearest father!? I knew I hadn’t sent the letter. I looked at the envelope again; it was sent to my house, in my dad’s name.

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And inside the envelope, something else. A photograph of three old men. “We miss you…” continued the letter.

My brothers. My dad’s sons. And I’d never seen them before in my life. When my father came home, I waved the letter in this face. “What’s this?” I shouted. “Who are these guys?”

His face went stiff. Like stone. “You don’t need to know, Jackie,” he said quietly. “You don’t need to know.” And he took the letter and photograph away.

We never talked about it again.

That’s how I found out about my half-brothers.

The rest of his story isn’t very clear. I know that it involved the Japanese. When the armies invaded China, they turned the nation upside down. Chinese were fighting Chinese, and Shanghai—the city they called the Jewel of the East—became a place of fear. My father’s family had to abandon everything it owned. And even more: my father was forced to leave behind him his sons and his wife. I don’t think she survived the war.

At this time, my mother was also in Shanghai. She was from a very poor background, so she had none of the advantages of my father’s upbringing. Like my father, she was married. And, like my father, in the turmoil of the war, she had to leave her husband and family behind.

She escaped the terror by hiding from Japanese troops, scavenging food, and making a dangerous journey on foot to the coast. It was in Shandong—my ancestral home—that she met my dad. Despite the difference in their backgrounds, the war had turned them into equals: two refugees, still mourning the loss of their loved ones. Somehow, Dad managed to bring her with him on the boat that smuggled him out of the mainland. They got married soon after safely reaching Hong Kong. And not long after that, I was on my way.

All through my childhood, they always told me that I was an only child, their special son. This is part of the reason why I was so shocked to find out about my brothers. But that shock was just the beginning.

My mother is very old now, and even though my wife has always helped to take care of her, some years ago it became clear that she needed someone to be with her all the time, to live with her in my parents’ house in Australia.

One day, when I went visit them, the person who answered the door was a strange older woman. She didn’t introduce herself as she brought me in to see my mother, but somehow, she seemed familiar. “Hey, Mom, who’s the new housekeeper?” I asked. My mother looked at me in silence for a few moments. “She isn’t a housekeeper,” she said finally. “Son, meet your sister.”

Even today, I don’t know everything. I don’t think I want to know. My mother told my manager Willie the whole story once, and he came running

Pag. 09

over to tell me that it would make a fantastic movie. I told him that even if it would, I didn’t want to make it. I don’t want to find out that I have more brothers or sisters, or that my father isn’t my real father, or that my mother isn’t my real mother.

Our secret history belongs where it is now: in the past.

Still, I guess you can see why my parents were reluctant give me up. There might have been other children lost in the branches of the family tree, but who knew at the time if they’d survived the war? And besides, I was the only child they shared: the only son of Charles and Lee-lee Chan.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have known my half brothers and sisters growing up. But being an only child had its advantages, too—most of which had to do with my mother. Without any competition from siblings, I had all of my mom’s attention—winch of course is exactly what I demanded.

As a toddler, I remember watching my mother do the chores that filled her waking hours. A large part of her day was spent in the laundry room, washing, ironing, and folding, and I would crawl around her feet, pulling down sheets, putting soap chips in my mouth, and nearly tripping her as she carried hot water from the running tap to the scrub basin. Eventually, Mom did what she always did when she needed a little bit of peace: she filled a big tub with warm water and put me inside, letting me splash and play. I wasn’t any easier to take care of when evening arrived, either; restless in my lower bunk, I would scream and cry throughout the night. The noise would not only keep up my hardworking parents, it would sometimes filter upstairs to the ambassador’s bedroom, waking his patient—but light-sleeping—wife. I can only imagine my parents’ embarrassment—when the life of their employer came down in her nightgown and robe to the servants’ quarters, asking them (very politely) to quiet their obnoxious child!

When this happened, my mother would pick me up and bring me outside to the mansion’s back garden, cradling me in her arms and gently shooing the mosquitoes away a straw fan. While she held me, she would hum a soft melody without words, until finally I went to sleep.

Every child thinks his mother is the best in the world, but my mom really is the greatest. She had no education, no opportunities in her life; she’s a very traditional Chinese woman who devoted her entire life to her husband and her son. I never remember her going out, and never saw her in makeup or fancy clothing. I don’t even remember her spending money on herself: everything was for the family. Even now, when I can afford to buy her anything, the things she chooses to wear are things she bought forty years ago. I remember one day, When I was in Australia visiting her, all of a sudden she turned to me and said, “Son, can you give me one hundred twenty dollars?”

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It was strange request. “Why such a weird amount?”

“If you give me one hundred twenty dollars,” she said, “I’ll turn it into one thousand.”

That made me blink. “How?” I asked. My mother is a wonderful woman, but she’s no magician—or financial wizard.

She smiled. “I’ll show you”.

I followed her as she left living room and walked down the corridor to her bedroom. “Reach up and get that bag, Jackie,” she said. I stood on my toes and grunted as I pulled down the suitcase. It was almost brand-new, one of the ones I’d bought her; she never used them when she traveled, preferring the old, battered bags she’d had since my parents lived in Hong Kong. Inside the suitcase were clothes she no longer wore, but couldn’t bear to throw away. Lifting out and setting aside some old sweaters, she pulled out a huge bundle of wrinkled, faded bills. I looked at it in shock. Not a single one of the bills was in a denomination greater than twenty dollars. There were hundreds of ones and fives and tens. And it all added up to $880.

This was the money she’d saved from over twenty years of keeping house: tips from ambassadors and presidents and members of parliament, all of the people she’d cleaned up for and straightened up after.

Mom, give me the money, and I’ll give you ten thousand dollars in Australian cash.”

So we traded. And you know what? We had dinner with friends that night, and we spent her whole stack. Twenty years of my mother’s life, and boom—we ate it in one meal.

 I said before that there are advantages to being an only child. Well, there are also disadvantages—most of which had to do with my father. How much easier would my childhood have been, if only I’d had siblings to share the burden of my father’s expectations?

You see, Dad, like his Shandong ancestors was a warrior at heart—a man of great courage and determination. He was proud that he had managed to overcome everything fate had thrown his way, all the tragedy and suffering and years of backbreaking labor. “The Japanese army conquered China,” he would often boast, “but they could never conquer the Chinese! That is why our civilization has survived for thousands of years. To a Chinese man, suffering is like rice: it only makes us stronger.”

From this followed a scary kind of logic: pain gives you discipline. Discipline is at the root of manhood. And so, to be a real man, one must suffer as much as possible.

Because bringing me into the world was so expensive, Dad was especially adamant about raising me up as a properly disciplined man, even if he had to knock me sideways to do it. Each morning, he’d rise when dawn was just a hair-thin line of light on the horizon, leaving my mother

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still dozing. Leaping to the ground from his bunk as softly as possible, he’d shake me roughly awake. “ Ah Pao, it’s morning. Up, up, up.”

If I complained too much or rolled away, he’d just grab me by the waist and pull me out of bed in a tangle of sheets and arms. When I was lucky, I’d get my feet under me before the rest of me hit the floor. When I wasn’t, well, at least I learned how to take a fall. A good lesson for the future. 

Once we were both more or less awake, we went to be laundry area and splashed water on our faces and chests. The water always freezing cold, and in the chill of the early morning it raised goose bumps on my skin. But the chill wouldn’t last long. Like any survivor, my father was a jack-of-all-trades, an accomplished amateur carpenter and handyman. Out of stray pieces of wood and recycled rubbish—rice sacks, rope, and large cans that still smelled faintly of cooking oil—he’d made a makeshift gym, and we would greet sunrise with a workout that left me breathless and soaked with perspiration. We would run, lift bags filled with sand, do military-style push-ups—and spend hours practicing martial arts. Though I was just four or five years old, already my father was teaching me the basics of Northern-style kung fu.

It may seem strange that such a young child would be learning how to fight. You have to remember, though, that to us Chinese, kung fu isn’t just a means of self-defense. In some ways, the history of kung fu is the history of China.

Legend says that kung fu was invented by Bodhidharma, the monk who traveled from India to China to spread Buddha’s teachings. When he arrived at the great temple of Shaolin, Bodhidharma was turned away by the skeptical Shaolin brothers. He then took up residence in a small cave near the temple, and meditated there for nearly a decade. Over the years, the Shaolin monks watched in awe as Bodhidharma stared intently, without sleeping or even blinking, at the wall of his cave. After nine years, the power of the stare bore a hole through the e wall into the daylight.

This display of discipline led the monks to embrace Bodhidharma as a great teacher. “How can we learn how to be like?” they asked. And so Bodhidharma taught them about the greater wisdom of Buddhism and the power of meditation, but found that, no matter how the monks tried, they were not strong enough to resist sleep and other temptations. As a result, he wrote a manual called The Classic of Muscle Change, blueprinting a series of exercises to toughen the body and mind.

Over time, the Shaolin monks adapted these exercises into Chinese kung fu.

Kung fu translates loosely into English as “skill,” but by the time of the Tang dynasty, which they call China’s heroic age, kung fu had diverged

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into many different skills: the Southern styles, which emphasize strong defensive postures and powerful fist techniques, and the Northern, which are flowing, acrobatic, and focused on dynamic, spinning kicks. When the Tang emperor Wang Shih-ch’ung faced a revolt in the countryside, it was warrior monks from the Shaolin Temple who defeated the rebels—spreading the legend of their boxing abilities, and turning kung fu into something every gentleman of quality should know.

Although skills with the sword, the spear, and the staff were always an important part of Chinese martial arts, it was the unarmed techniques that were most admired. A master of Chinese boxing was deadly even when alone and armed only with his iron fists and lightning legs. When the Manchu invaders conquered China in the seventeenth century, study of martial arts was outlawed. But the spirit of kung fu could not die. Rebels loyal to the true emperor gathered in underground societies called “Triads,” developing the art of kung fu in secret. 

By the turn of the century, the Triads had turned into an extensive network of revolutions committed to driving out the Manchus and their Western allies, and restoring Chinese rule. The arrival of the year 1900 triggered the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising by Triads convinced that their mysterious skills would protect them from the bullets of the hated foreigners.

Unfortunately, they were wrong.

Thousands of Triad members were killed, and the rest were driven into hiding in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, and even in the West.

In China, kung fu was suppressed for generations, its masters dead or in exile, while the disgraced and broken Triads degenerated into brutal criminal gangs. But the crackdown on kung fu in China only led to its spread throughout the world. Now, the techniques of kung fu are practiced everywhere by those who realize that it builds the character traits that lead to greatness: strength, patience, courage, and subtlety.

My father believe this more than anyone. To him, learning kung fu was the same as learning how to be a man.

And frankly, I was a big disappointment. Lazy and impatient by nature, at first I practiced under his watchful eye only out of the fear that if I didn’t, he’d demonstrate his techniques on me, his useless son. Worse yet, when I finally realized that his training was making me strong, tough, and a fearsome opponent for any kid stupid enough to get in my way, I bought my dad’s worst nightmare to life: I went from being a brat, to being a brawler.

I found out quickly that fighting was gun—when you won, anyway—and it soon became one of my favorite hobbies, next to eating. (Well, nothing really compared to eating. Even now, I guess I’d have to say that nothing comes close to the pleasure of a good, hearty meal.)

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But, in my own defense, I never got fights without good reason. Or at least a reason that seemed good at the time. I mentioned that the ambassador’s family was always very nice to us, but you couldn’t say the same for some of our neighbors. We were poor Chinese, living as servants in the home of a rich and important Westerner. The other Western kids thought it a shame that the ambassador’s wife encouraged her children to play with me. These bullies made it their hobby to pick on me, which was okay, and on my friend…which was not.

Don’t mess with my friends. Ever. That’s a lesson I’m always willing to teach with my fists. My closet companion in the world at the time was the ambassador’s youngest daughter, a beautiful little girl who called me her boyfriend. I accepted the role with pride, and anyone who dared to make her cry would soon find himself on the ground, with me and all my chubby weight on top.

Unfortunately, my dad didn’t care about my chivalrous efforts to defend my young friend’s honor. The first time he found me seated on the screaming body of one of the neighboring boys, bruised but crowing victory, he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and pulled me into the house.

“Dad, I won!” I shouted, causing my mother to peek her head out of the laundry room in alarm. “Daaaaaad, ow!”

I was more scared of my father when he was silent than when he was shouting. When he yelled at me, I knew I’d get a spanking at the very worst. Pain never bothered me much. After all, it went away eventually, and at least after a spanking I’d be free to do whatever I wanted. But when my dad was quiet, I had no idea what he would do next.

Except that I wouldn’t enjoy it.

My mother watched as my father pulled me down the corridor, past our room, where spanking usually took place, and into the alcove where trash was stored.

“What’s wrong, Dad? I won!” I said, my voice trembling. His eyes flashed, and I flinched away from him.

“I did not teach you kung fu so you could beat up your friends,” he said, ice dripping from his words. “I am teaching you how to fight so that you will never have to fight at all.”

“Well, he wasn’t my friend,” I countered.

My dad turned bright red. Without another word, he pushed me into the alcove, which was full and stinking with the day’s garbage. I stumbled to my knees, and heard the door being slammed and locked behind me. In the corridor, my mother said something to my father, who barked back a response, before both voices disappeared into the distance.

I looked around at my surroundings. The alcove was tiny and crowded. I could reach out with both of my arms and touch both walls, or

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At least I could have if walls hadn’t been lined with bins and bags of trash. There was no roof to the alcove, allowing the dimming light of the sun to trickle into the space. I suspected that I would be there long after the moon took over. Gingerly sitting down on the floor and resting my back against the locked door, I made myself as comfortable as possible, and tried to take a nap.

I didn’t care what my dad said. When I jumped on that bully, my little friend had looked at me like I was a hero. If a hero’s place was out with the trash, well, I’d take it as an honor. Too bad I was going to miss dinner.

A faint tapping roused me from my dozing. I realized that my stomach was rumbling with hunger—even as boy, my body always demanded food on a regular and sizable basis.

“Pao-pao?” said my mother in a whisper from behind the door. “Look up.”

The doorway to the alcove had a narrow space above for ventilation. My mom is a small woman, but by reaching up with both arms and standing on her tiptoes she could just place her fingertips into the crack. As I raised my head, a crisp white paper package fell from the ventilation space into my lap, pushed through by my loving mother’s hands. Inside the wrapping was a sandwich, made of warm, soft bread and roast meat.

Without even thanking my mom, I began gobbling the food, only half listening to the padding sound of my mother’s feet walking back down the corridor to our family’s bedroom.

As I said, my mom is the best mom in the whole wide world.

The next morning, I was rudely awakened by the opening of the door against which I was leaning. I fell backward into the corridor, blinking up at the expressionless face of my father.

“ Ah Pao, it’s morning.” Time to get up,” he said, and instructed me to help him move the heavy bins of trash out for collection. By the time that was done, dawn had arrived, and it was time to greet the sun with our morning workout.