words yvonne teh translation sidney chan

The star of a 1993 hit movie was always going to fulfill her ambitions – just not as a movie idol.

As a child, Angie Tsang Tze-Man idolized wushu champion turned action film star Jet Li. While barely in her teens, she followed in her hero’s footsteps by taking on the part of martial arts legend Wong Fei Hung in the Yuen Woo Ping-directed Iron Monkey (1993). And doing so, the vivacious female made cinematic history, since it’s not every day the Cantonese folk hero – portrayed by well-known men like Li, the late Kwan Tak Hing (in an astounding 99 films) and Jackie Chan (who made Wong Fei Hung a drunken boxing expert in Drunken Master (1978) and Drunken Master II (1994)) – gets played by a girl.

The now adult Tsang has fond and happy memories of her time on the Iron Monkey set with the likes of Donnie Yen (her father in the movie) and Yu Rongguang (the Robin Hood-like title character). She cheerfully remembers, “The cast and crew were very tolerant towards me because I was so cute and young!” It helped that, although she was already 14 at the time, her small physique led them to think she was only 10 years old. And that she was a girl and not the boy people thought she was when she auditioned for the part.

Tsang additionally remembers real-life martial artist and actor/director Donnie Yen teaching her certain action moves that would look particularly good on film and encouraging her to take up tae kwon do, the camera also liking its ‘hard’ style. But for all her gratitude for his advice, she decided to stick to the Chinese martial art she already knew so well and which had led to her selection as Wong Fei Hung in the first place.

Talking to Tsang, one gets the distinct impression that this is a woman who knows her own mind and isn’t easily swayed from pursuing her goals. For example, from the age of eight years, her “lifelong ambition” was to become a member of the Hong Kong police force and, since January 2003, she has been just that. Nor does she do anything by halves – in July of that year, she was also named the best all-round Recruit Police Constable in her squad and was a recipient of the Silver Whistle Award.

In a similar vein, Tsang’s wushu abilities may have won her the Wong Fei Hung role just a few years after she took up the martial art but that was pretty much only the beginning of what it has led her to achieve. In 1993 the then schoolgirl was selected for Hong Kong’s wushu team and, 14 years on, she is the current 35-member team’s most senior representative (even though some athletes are older, she has been in the team the longest).

Despite sources like Wikipedia alleging otherwise, the veteran athlete has not yet retired from competitive wushu. Although her police work has meant she has had to scale back her training, two of her greatest competitive triumphs – both in the taolu (‘forms’) discipline – have come in the years since she joined the police force.

Most recently, at the Asian Games in Doha last year, Tsang – who still trains for three hours daily – gained top marks in the southern broadsword section and was the silver medallist in the Women’s Nanquan – Three Events Combined category. Then there’s the achievement she considers to be the highlight of her wushu career: emerging as gold medallist in the Women’s Nangun (southern staff) event at the World Wushu Championships in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2005.

That victory was even more sweet because, as she says, “In the sport, it’s usual that one competes with people who are of the same age group as you. All of the athletes who are around my age became world champions earlier in their careers.” But injuries and other factors had kept such an achievement out of her reach and, as a result, “I’m the last and oldest to become a world champion!”

Perhaps after scaling that peak, Tsang is entitled to feel she has accomplished enough in her wushu career. But when divulging plans to retire soon, she points instead to the increasingly difficult-to-ignore reality that “the injuries I’ve sustained over the years are catching up with me. Also, I find myself more and more busy with my police work. So it’s getting harder and harder to organize my time and keep doing everything.”

On a more positive note: “Another factor is that the younger members of the team have improved greatly. So they can stand on their own now.” At the same time though, she – who is on record as stating “I see it as my personal mission to promote wushu” – doesn’t preclude assisting those same sportspeople in the capacity of coach rather than senior teammate in the future.

Yet even if that doesn’t turn out, Tsang can rest content. One message that comes across clearly from our conversation is that she has few regrets about the options she’s chosen and sacrifices she’s made. As an example, although many who saw her in Iron Monkey might deem it a real pity it was the only film in which she appeared, Tsang matter-of-factly explains, “The main reason why I didn’t continue acting is that I was then a teenager and that’s an age when one is easily embarrassed.”

She laughs as she shares that when she had to film the scene in which her back was exposed, “I was so nervous that they had to clear the set!” Looking back at that experience, she recalls, “The funny thing is that the very first scene I had to shoot was a bathing scene” – and that in a mainly period action movie!

Something else that caused her quite a bit of embarrassment in Iron Monkey was having to shave part of her head. And, as it so happened, the next part that she was offered – that of a young monk in Jeff Lau’s Treasure Hunt (1995) – required her to remove even more of her hair. “I was still at school and that made me even more reluctant to shave my head again... After all, I was a growing girl then.” But when all is said and done, what she really wanted to be – much more than an actress – was a policewoman and wushu champion. Fame and fortune in the performing arts just never really stood a chance.