Hong Kong action film star Jackie Chan returned to his Australian roots
Saturday to bury his father alongside his mother almost six years after she died
in Australia's capital.
Chan's father Charlie died in a Hong Kong hospital Feb. 26, aged 93, after
battling prostate cancer. Chan brought his body back to Canberra to be laid to
rest beside Lee Lee Chan, who died in 2002.
"It's a hard day. I loved my father so much because he did so much for me
when I was young. We had a very poor family and he left Hong Kong to support
himself. He was just the greatest father for me," a distraught Chan said.
Hundreds of mourners including the U.S. ambassador and Chinese deputy envoy
attended the funeral at a leafy winery on the outskirts of Canberra, before
burial at a nearby cemetery.
Jackie Chan, star of Hollywood films such as "Rush Hour" and "Rumble in the
Bronx," arrived in Australia aged 6 after his father moved there for work in the
1960s, but was soon sent back to Hong Kong to attend the China Drama Academy.
He continued to spend lengthy periods in Canberra with his parents, briefly
attending a local high school.
Living in Australia for 40 years, Charlie Chan went from head cook at the
U.S. Embassy to a successful local restaurant owner, though most of his final
years were spent in Hong Kong with his actor son after his wife died.
Chan will shortly team with fellow action star Jet Li for the new adventure
epic "The Forbidden Kingdom," to be filmed in China, and is also a goodwill
envoy for this year's Beijing Olympics.
He said he planned one day to move his parents' bodies back to their homeland
of China. Charlie Chan came from Shandong Province.
Friends and mourners inside the funeral said Chan was "very distressed" as he
and others passed a wall of family photographs, many showing father and son
hugging or fishing together.