The China Drama Academy
The China Drama Academy (simplified Chinese: 中国戏剧学校; traditional Chinese: 中國戲劇學校; Mandarin Pinyin: zhōng guó xì jù xué xiào; Jyutping: zung1 gwok3 hei3 kek6 hok6 gaau3), sometimes noted as the China Drama and Opera Academy, is famous for being the childhood home of such famous actors as Jackie Chan (Yuen Lo), Sammo Hung (Yuen Lung), Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu and Corey Yuen (Yuen Kwai). The Peking Opera school was run from a small theatre in the Lai Chi Kok amusement park, Kowloon by Master Yu Jim Yuen (于占元), a northern (北拳) kung fu practitioner and a very stern teacher. Children were usually enrolled for a period of 10 years, whilst Yu taught them the acrobatic and acting skills that would later introduce many of them into the world of Chinese Theatre and movies.
Whilst attending the opera school under the tutelage of Yu Jim Yuen, the students all adopted their sifu's given name "Yuen" as their family name.
Read more about this topic: Peking Opera School
Famous quotes containing the words china, drama and/or academy:
“Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.... It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading.”
—Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
“...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)