Thursday, January 19, 2012 | By: Keoni Everington (华武杰)

Over the next week, The World of Chinese web guru and martial arts fanatic Keoni Everington will take readers backstage during the filming of Tai Chi 0, the first of a three-part martial arts trilogy produced by Huayi Brothers and backed by old-school kung fu hero Sammo Hung’s stunt team.

My Stunt Double


For the first and only time in the movie, they actually used my stunt double for the next scene. We actually had two kinds of doubles, one was to help with blocking for the crew to rehearse scenes that we would later do ourselves, or to take our place in scenes where our bodies are on camera but our faces are obscured. The other would take our place for the most dangerous stunts. I had met my stunt double a couple days earlier, but had kind of given up on the idea that he would do any of the hard stuff for me. He was the tallest guy they could find on the stunt team and had a similar build, skin tone and hair cut (when seen from the back). The biggest difference was that he didn’t have facial hair, and I kept reminding the makeup people of this. I could tell he was going to do a stunt for me because he was sporting a similar goatee.  I had to hand it to the guy; he really earned his pay that day. He was totally clobbered by the main actor from a ridiculous height take after take. Each time he had to absorb a massive head shot and then a bone crushing fall on a hard metal grate over and over again. The fascinating thing was that in the replay, he really looked just like me based on his posture, uniform, hairstyle, skin tone and body shape. Even I couldn’t tell the difference between the two of us on screen.

Close-up with the Hero

Just when I thought I had escaped serious injury, they informed me that they needed me to do a close-up scene with the main actor. He was to fly towards me from a high balcony, but they promised me that this time there would be no contact. I was a little gun shy this time around after the other recent incidents, but I took their word for it. This was a tricky scene because he needed to hold a certain pose as he flew in the air towards me. Some of this involved wires and as such was not as an exact science. Each time he was either landing too far or too close or not holding the right pose. The dangerous part for me is that he was flying at high velocity from the level above at the side of my body where I am most vulnerable in a static position. In a couple of cases he came close to hitting my left leg with enough power to break it. At one point something went wrong and he accidentally kicked me full blast in my left jaw. I was hit hard enough to make my head whip around and snap back in place like we had rehearsed before. However, after having gotten blasted six times earlier in the day by Lead Foot, I wasn’t fazed as much as mildly irritated. The actor immediately apologized profusely, and to his credit he never touched me again though we did numerous takes after that.

Last 3 Days


After my death scene; I shot mainly 文戏 (wénxì, non-action acting scenes) such as barking out orders in Chinese to the coolies. However, the interesting thing was that I served as a translator for one of the other foreign actors in his major fight scene with the hero. This actor was new to Kung Fu and acting in general, and since I’ve trained in Kung Fu for many years and made my own Kung Fu movie, “The Dragon Must Sleep”, I was able to give my suggestions to the actor. Dahai does not speak a word of English, so I needed to be close by at all times, and because of my experience I was often called upon to demonstrate the moves. From time to time I could give suggestions to the foreign actor, Yuan Xiaochao, or Dahai on movements during rehearsal and provide my feedback after a given take. It was strange because I’d been there so long and gone through so much at this point that I was now fully accepted into the Sammo Hung stunt team. I found myself in a familiar role helping with choreography like I was back making my own independent Kung Fu film with my students, friends, and family.

Keoni is available for hire via The World of Chinese website. Just don’t offer to pay him too much; we really don’t want to lose him!

In case you’ve missed it, make sure to check out Part 4 of Keoni’s kung fu adventures right here.

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