His school education was grueling
An intriguing truth about Jackie Chan is that he began his martial arts and performing training at a very young age. At the tender age of seven, Chan's parents abandoned him at the Chinese Opera Company Research Institute Boarding School so that they could find employment in Australia.
Jackie Chan attended boarding school from the age of seven to seventeen, where he endured some of the most emotionally and physically taxing training possible. The Chinese Opera Research Institute in Hong Kong put its pupils through demanding training, including singing, dancing, and martial arts, to get them ready for a future in theater. Chan claimed that some days might see 19 hours of instruction. Chan realized that joining the Peking opera by the time he graduated was unlikely. Chan instead focused on making martial arts movies.
He made his film debut at the age of eight in the Cantonese drama Big and Little Wong Tin Bar (1962) and went on to participate in a number of musical movies. After graduation, Chan got work as an acrobat and a stuntman after receiving his degree in 1971, most famously in the 1972 film Fist of Fury, which starred Hong Kong's superstar, Bruce Lee. He is said to have performed the highest fall in the history of Chinese cinema for that movie, drawing praise from the fearsome Lee and others.
