Role with the punches

It's been almost half a century since Yuen Wah used to rise at dawn for a full day of drills in acrobatics, acting and singing under the stern gaze of Peking opera maestro Yu Zhanyuan. The childhood image of his teacher clutching a cane in one hand is indelible, he says.

'My talent was unearthed by my master and it was because of the cane,' says Yuen Wah, a veteran kung fu comedian and martial arts choreographer. 'I knew if I couldn't do [the tumbling] I would get a severe beating.'

Yu's notoriously disciplinarian programme at his Hong Kong-China Drama Academy produced alumni who went on to influence action movies worldwide during the past three decades. Dubbed the Seven Little Fortunes, prominent former apprentices - including Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung Kam-bo, Corey Yuen Kwai, Yuen Biao, Yuen Bun and Yuen Mo - became sought-after action choreographers and actors. Yu gave his apprentices stage names with the surname Yuen, so they were also known as the Yuen troupe (Chan was called Yuen Lau and Hung, Yuen Lung).

To mark the 50th anniversary of the academy, former pupils have organised a showcase of their early films and an exhibition of childhood snaps, memorabilia and movie stills, which begin this weekend at the Hong Kong Film Archive.

'They are the first - and last - batch [of action stars] trained in martial arts since childhood,' says director Alex Law Kai-yui, whose 1988 film Painted Faces gives a dramatised account of life at Yu's opera school.

'At the time, people looked down on the apprentices, viewing them as children who took up tumbling because they couldn't make the grade in school,' Law says. 'But their experience is a proof of the Chinese adage that every field produces its masters.'

Yu's daughter, Yu So-chau, had found fame as a kung fu actress in Hong Kong when he relocated from the mainland in 1959 and didn't want him to start his opera academy.