Jackie Chan discovers his father’s secret double life as a wartime spy only in his forties, shaking the foundations of everything he thought he knew about his heritage. This revelation, unfolding years into his own global fame, reveals a story of espionage, danger, heartbreak, and concealment that stood hidden for decades.
The Martial Roots and Early Military Days of Charles Chan
Long before Jackie Chan was a film icon, his father, Charles Chan, lived a life nearly as dramatic as any script. In his early twenties, Charles returned to Nanjing where his own father urged him to straighten out his life. Yet, Charles wasn’t an ordinary young man; his martial arts talent made a quick impression, especially on General Ku Chu-tung of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army, a friend of the family. This connection set Charles on a different course: he became the general’s bodyguard, armed with a rifle and welcomed into a powerful security detail, at a time when General Gu was rising to become Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek.
But opportunity quickly slipped through Charles’s hands after a comical turn misfired into tragedy: in a mishap during training, he fired his automatic rifle and lost control, resulting in an incident so embarrassing and dangerous that it ended his military role abruptly.
From Cargo Ship to Illicit Trade and Imprisonment
Moving on from his failed military path, Charles found work as crew leader on a Mitsubishi cargo ship operating in Wuhan. The environment afforded him both responsibility and temptation. Along with six others, he devised a plan to profit from wartime scarcity: they bought linen inexpensively in Wuhu, shipped it to Nanjing, and bartered it for salt—a risky but lucrative black market trade. The operation fell apart when Japanese workers, seeking their share, reported the scheme to the occupying authorities. Charles and his associates were arrested, and their venture quickly turned into a nightmare, with imprisonment and terrifying uncertainty as their new reality.
Enduring Torture and Grief Under Occupation
During their imprisonment, Charles and his companions were subjected to psychological torture by the Japanese authorities, forced to witness graphic executions designed to break their spirits. The traumatic spectacle left Charles and his crew deeply scarred, unable to sleep or eat, as they faced the growing violence and hostility sweeping through China in the lead-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War. These horrors shaped Charles, turning him inward and wary—traits that would affect his relationships and choices for decades.
Escape, New Allegiances, and Life as a Spy
A family relative used connections to advocate for Charles’s release, sparing him from the grim fate that claimed two of his colleagues. Fleeing death and haunted by loss, Charles reached out to General Gu again, who by then had strong links to Dai Li—China’s infamous spymaster. Charles was thus recruited as a secret agent for the Intelligence Bureau of the First War Zone, operating in a landscape of suspicion, corruption, and near-constant threat, as the Nationalist Government battled internal enemies and external pressures.
Standing Up, Walking Out, and the Price of Defiance
Corruption and betrayal flourished within the intelligence establishment, leading Charles—by now leading a team of nearly 40 men—to orchestrate a collective mass resignation at the Shanghai headquarters. This open defiance marked him for retaliation, and he survived two separate assassination attempts: one a gunshot to the leg as he descended stairs, and another nearly fatal shot to his head. Charles attributed these attacks to Communist operatives intent on eliminating a dangerous Nationalist agent, an ever-present reminder of the life-and-death stakes he faced daily.
Losses Amid War and Struggle for Survival
While evading danger, Charles was swept up in China’s mass retreat as Japanese forces pushed inland, eventually reaching Anhui to find the area devastated by relentless bombing. In a single moment, Charles lost his parents and sister to air raids, left alone amid the destruction. Despite this, he met a woman—his first wife—and started a family, welcoming two sons, Fang Shide and Fang Shisheng. Their brief hope was soon darkened, as ongoing violence and upheaval uprooted their lives repeatedly.
Tragedy, Abandonment, and Separation Across Decades
More heartbreak surfaced with the illness and eventual death of Charles’s first wife, who suffered through cervical cancer while Charles struggled to provide opium-based pain relief. As the Chinese Civil War intensified and the Nationalist position collapsed, Charles faced an impossible choice: attempt to survive as a marked man or leave his sons behind to give them a chance at life. At the age of 29, he vanished overnight, forced to abandon young Shide and Shisheng. His friends, at great personal risk, cared for the children—a separation and silence that lasted 38 years, with Charles tormented by not knowing his sons’ fates.
Lee-Lee Chan: From Survival to the Streets of Shanghai
Jackie Chan’s mother, Lee-lee Chan (born Chen Yuerong), lived a life marked by chaos, too. She lost her first husband in the bombings of Wuhan, left behind with two daughters, Yulan and Guilan, and no resources. Facing few options, she made the agonizing decision to leave her young daughters with their grandmother and seek opportunity in Shanghai, promising to return—a comfort she would not fulfill. The older daughter, Yulan, was forced into child labor to help the family survive. Lee-lee, driven by desperation, turned to the risky trade of opium smuggling, but fate intervened: the officer assigned to inspect the port the day she tried to smuggle drugs was Charles himself, Jackie’s future father.
Charles’s discovery of a blue flower in Lee-lee’s hair—a wartime symbol of loss—moved him to compassion. He returned her confiscated opium instead of arresting her, ensuring her escape from punishment. Lee-lee soon gained notoriety in Shanghai as a formidable gambler called “Big Sister,” eventually falling on hard times. Charles, with connections to the “Shandong Gang,” recovered her lost possessions and fundamentally altered her trajectory. Their friendship deepened, ultimately leading to marriage and, later, Jackie’s birth.
Jackie Chan Learns the Truth: A Secret Name and a Hidden Spy Network
For years, Jackie Chan—already world-famous for his martial arts and film stunts—knew nothing of his true family history. Only in his forties did the truth emerge, in an understated but life-altering moment. In a car, his aging father turned to him with a declaration that shook Jackie’s identity:
“I’m old, I might sleep and never wake up, so I have a secret to tell you.”
—Charles Chan, Father
“You are not Chan. Your original name is Fang.”
—Charles Chan, Father
The realization for Jackie was overwhelming; his heritage, name, and understanding of self unraveled in an instant. The full extent of the espionage work, name changes, and dramatic history hidden by his parents felt almost too much to process. Ultimately, Jackie’s quest to understand his true heritage led him in 2003 to commission the documentary
“Traces of the Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family,”
peeling back decades of omissions and secrets from both his father’s daring spy career and his mother’s gritty struggles.
The Quiet Unveiling of a Family’s Secret Past
Charles Chan lived to witness the arrival of a new century, passing away at age 93 in Hong Kong on February 26, 2008, with his family—grandson Jaycee Chan among them—close at hand. Though Jackie wasn’t present at the moment of his father’s death due to work, he had spent the last Chinese New Year together, suspecting their time might be drawing short. Charles was buried alongside his wife in Canberra’s Gungahlin Cemetery, with notable figures such as Jackie Chan, American Ambassador Robert McCallum, and former Australian Capital Territory chief ministers Kate Carnell and Gary Humphries in attendance.
The arc of Charles’s life threads through the heart of twentieth-century China: from war and occupation to espionage and survival, shadowed by loss and separation. Only much later did Jackie Chan come to fully appreciate the scale and impact of his father’s clandestine deeds, as well as his mother’s own battles for survival. The legacy left behind is not just a history of covert missions and near escapes; it is a story of enduring wounds, bravery in the face of unthinkable choices, and the attempt to forge new beginnings from the devastation of war. Jackie Chan’s discovery of his father’s secret double life reframes the family’s entire narrative, leaving him and those who learn it both saddened and awed by the endurance demanded by history’s most harrowing chapters.
