Wong Fei Hong Meets Ip Man

I’d seen the third Ip Man film last Thursday, but Saturday I got a call from Sidney Chan, father of my goddaughter.

He invited me to watch the film again on Sunday night. He was disappointed to hear that I had already seen it, but I told him I’d gladly see it again. I don’t get to see Sidney and Angie very often, and so I always take the chances I get.

I also get a kick out of watching a movie next to someone who’s been in a movie. I remember watching Tom Yum Goongwith Sidney and Angie shortly after I moved to Hong Kong, and it was fun to listen to Angie, who was at the time a competitive Wushu practitioner, offer her opinions on the fights in the film.

In case you’ve never read this blog before, Angie Tsang played Wong Fei Hong in Iron Monkey/少年黃飛鴻之鐵馬騮. The Chinese title is “The Young Wong Fei Hong Meets the Iron Monkey.”

Sidney and I had a lot of fun with Angie during Ip Man 3 because young actors often called after their father exactly the way she did in Iron Monkey; “Dad!” seems to be the vast majority of Angie’s dialogue in that film.

So every time someone in Ip Man would say it, he and I would turn to Angie.

What Sidney didn’t tell me, or what he told me and I forgot (my back has been a mess lately and I have been, uh, self-medicating) was that this screening was for her former teammates from the Hong Kong Wushu Team, one of whom is To Yu Hang, who plays Ip Man in the film.

I got to see two of my best friends in Hong Kong, and I got to watch Ip Man with the person who plays him. All told, it was a pretty great way to spend an evening.

Being the shamelessly starstruck geek that I am, I made sure to get into a photo no matter how odd my posture:

*****Me, Angie, To Yu Hang, Sidney*