Mr Chan had met his wife-to-be Lily in China, years before, amid the turmoil of the Japanese invasion and the chaos of the civil war between Nationalists and Communists.

Chan Chi-Ping (at that time going by his real name Fang Daolong) first became an economic migrant in the 1930s, moving from his native province Shandong to the more prosperous areas along the Yangtze River.

Mr Fang had already worked in many jobs (apprentice draper, river trader, and strong-arm man for the Nationalists’ Intelligence Bureau); he made his way to Shanghai and headed the underworld ‘Shandong Gang’ until the city fell to the Communists in 1949.

Jackie was an exuberant and well-liked boy who didn't enjoy school but at the age of seven found his niche in a Peking Opera Academy run by Master Yu.

His classmates included his lifetime friends and future collaborators Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao; all three of them were members of the academy's performing troupe, the Seven Little Fortunes.

Jackie's career did not take off at first, and the endless succession of bit parts and stunt jobs led him to consider emigrating to Australia to rejoin his parents.

Meanwhile, his parents in Australia were taking advantage of China's stabilising political situation to set about tracing the long-lost children they had been forced to leave behind when they fled to Hong Kong.

Jackie was well aware of all the rumours surrounding his origins and background: that he was not in fact the biological child of his parents, that he had elder siblings in China, even that his real surname was not ‘Chan’.