Jackie Chan Museum

On September 8th I had to go to Shanghai to pick up my eye contacts and decided that I would also visit the Jackie Chan Museum. It is listed on tripadvisor.com as a cool museum to visit. I am not a huge fan of Jackie Chan but I have seen a few of his movies and enjoyed them. 

The front gate of the museum.

The museum is a few blocks down from a metro station and it costs about 150 RMB to get inside. You get a ticket and a little pouch. Inside the pouch is a one yuan coin and a wood Jackie Chan pin. I thought it was weird to get a coin but onwards I went. 

This poster states that Jackie Chan collected mementos from every film and wanted to display them. Fans used to be able to sign the poster but I think due to so many visitors they don't allow that anymore. It looks neat! 

 The first place in the museum is a dark hallway where a video of Jackie Chan is talking about the museum. He speaks in Chinese but the captions are in English. While I was watching the video I was curious if the Chinese people watching with me understood everything he said. Jackie Chan is from southern China and Hong Kong and they have a different dialect and some areas even speak Cantonese instead of Mandarin. The guests seemed to understand and we moved on to the next room. It turns out Jackie Chan can speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. 

I wasn't allowed to take pictures of everything but the next room were a few of his costumes and a replica of a car he used in a film. Arrows on the floor directed me to the next hallway and another Jackie Chan video where he talked about his childhood. I was shocked to learn that his parents were so poor when they gave birth to him that they couldn't even pay for the hospital bill. A doctor offered to adopt Jackie Chan but they refused in the end. When he was growing up, Chan was an unruly kid and got into fights often and was even expelled from school. His father placed him in a Peking Opera company where he could play extras in the background. Peking Opera at this point had a lot of theatrical martial arts. One day a film director asked for martial arts extras and that is how Jackie Chan got his start. 

After that Jackie Chan got roles as extras in movies and began developing his own style of martial arts which blended slapstick comedy. According to the museum it was named Drunken Fist. 

Molds of Jackie Chan's arms in various poses from martial arts to how he gives a handshake. 

It was impressive that Chan even got to keep discarded clips from movies. Chan was known for being tidy, often seen sweeping his movie sets. At one point a movie studio sent him a broom as a commemorative souvenir for his work. 

Chan was gaining a ton of popularity in China but when he went to America to do a TV interview, he was surprised that no one knew who he was. The TV station even cancelled their interview with him and on top of that, no one spoke Chinese. Chan was so embarrassed by this that he vowed to learn English and make it into Hollywood. 

And he did just that.

Robin Williams

Will Smith

After making several big hits in the USA he was an international hit. Even winning an Honorary Oscar. 

A documentary about his life as a martial artist and even starting his own stuntmen company titled Jackie Chan: Down To Earth was made in 2017 and a clip was shown in the museum. 

Chan also has several music albums. 

After that section of the museum, I entered the Philanthropy part of the museum. Chan has visited many places that have been affected by disasters and donated to many charities. At one point the visitors reached a place that they could donate the coin given to them at the start of the museum. Once the coin rolls down the tube, a huge light up sign above it tells you how much money has been donated to foundations that Chan supports. How cool!

The museum also showed fan made art sent to him.

One of the last displays were clay model characters of Mulan. Chan voiced the role of Shang in the Chinese version and even sang I'll Make a Man Out of You in Cantonese. 

On the way out there is a sign about Jackie Chan's logo and a gift shop. 

I would definitely recommend this museum and I really felt like I got to know Jackie Chan a lot better. The museum wasn't just "Look at me! I'm so cool!" I felt like he was being very open and honest about his life. In a video segment in the museum he said that as a child he was so rotten and he said something along the lines of, "I rejected the world and the world turned around and loved me." How touching is that?!