MY THIRD GOOD-BYE [120 a 121]

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MY THIRD GOOD-BYE

My feeling proved to be correct. The era of opera was over. Yuen Lung had pointed out the trend, but with the collapse of Master’s authority, I had felt the passing. Opera had transformed from the core of Chinese popular culture into a quaint traditional art, enjoyed only by connoisseurs and old men and women. There was not room for schools like Master Yu’s in modern Hong Kong. The training methods the China Drama Academy used were increasingly seen as archaic, even barbaric. And in the fast-paced, future-forward lifestyle that the new Hong Kong was inventing for itself, real numbers-and-words education was becoming a necessary trait for survival.

Our generation of students was the last to be raised within the opera, the last to have nothing but our martial arts and our performance skills between us and the streets. I can’t say that I regret the end of that era. I look at young people today and I see what they are able to do today, and I think to myself, if I’d been born twenty years later, that might be me. As it is, I know how to use a camera, how to direct and edit a scene. But as for 3-D animation, digital effects—all the things that make up a Hollywood blockbuster—well, a boy who barely learned his math will grow up into a man who doesn’t know how to use computers.

The only way I know how to do it is the way I learned it: for real, with my life and my reputation on the line. I console myself by thinking, one of these days I might learn how to use computer graphics.

But Hollywood directors will never learn how to drop one hundred feet to a concrete floor—and survive.

As students left one by one and the academy faded away, there was no putting off the inevitable. The old performing gigs that Master had been able to rely on—the weddings, the festivals, even the Lai Yuen Amusement Park—were disappearing one by one. Other schools were closing, and professional opera troupes were disbanding; the trained and talented men and women who found themselves cut loose from their art had nowhere else to go but the movies. Me and the remaining older brothers had been working for several years at Shaw Brothers and other studios as junior stuntmen. But the dumping of so many experienced

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opera performers into the film industry meant that there was suddenly much more competition for every job. The work had once been steady. Now Master found himself scrambling to keep us employed. And despite all our promise and ability, none of us had yet managed to rise to prominence. It seemed as if the Fortunes, stars in our small and shrinking world, were doomed to face away completely in the much larger and faster world of the cinema.

As much as I owed Master, I decided that I had to leave the school. I knew I could do better than the miserable jobs that he was getting us. I knew my destiny was to be more than just a crowd extra or an anonymous stunt performer. And if I didn’t leave right away, I realized I’d lose any chance of  breaking out of the pack—there were so many of us now, all fighting for the same increasingly elusive opportunities.

I didn’t waste any words in telling Master. I knew he wouldn’t respect anything but the straight and honest truth. Most of my fellow Fortunes, the ones I’d grown up with, had already gone. I’d stuck around out of loyalty to Master, and because I didn’t want to abandon Yuen Biao. But he was big now, too. And Master had to face the facts as much as any of the rest of us.

Master took the news of my decision with weary acceptance. He pulled a cigarette from a worn and rumpled pack, lit it, and drew a long drag. “Would you like a cigarette, Yuen Lo?”

I shifted uncomfortably on my feet, shaking my head.

“I remember when you enjoyed my cigarettes very much, very much…” he said, his voice drifting off. “Well, once the mind is set, the body must follow. I wish you well.”

I’d spent a decade with this man, this distant and domineering figure, and never received more kindness than a dry smile or a pat on the head. I was telling him I was leaving, perhaps never to see him again, and he was acting like I was only going out for a walk in the courtyard.

I felt no pain, and had no tears at our parting. But still, this stiff ending, this hollow good-bye—it somehow left me feeling a deep and unquenchable sense of loss. I didn’t want to stay around any longer. I hoisted my bag onto my shoulder.

“Good-bye, Master,” I said, turning to go.

Master stood in the doorway, watching me depart.

“Good-bye, son,” he said.

And then the door closed, with only a faint blue curl of cigarette smoke to indicate that Master had ever been there.