Jackie Chan (2nd L) carries a portrait of his father Charlie as his son Jaycee (R) follows carrying a fishing rod, hat and pipe after a funeral service in Canberra March 8, 2008. Chan returned to his Australian roots on Saturday to bury his father alongside his mother almost six years after she died in Australia's capital. Chan's father Charlie died in a Hong Kong hospital on Feb. 26, aged 93, after battling prostate cancer. Chan brought his body back to Canberra to be laid to rest beside Lee Lee Chan, who died in 2002.
Hong Kong action film star Jackie Chan returned to his Australian roots Saturday to bury his father alongside his mother almost six years after she died in Australia's capital.
Chan's father Charlie died in a Hong Kong hospital Feb. 26, aged 93, after battling prostate cancer. Chan brought his body back to Canberra to be laid to rest beside Lee Lee Chan, who died in 2002.
"It's a hard day. I loved my father so much because he did so much for me when I was young. We had a very poor family and he left Hong Kong to support himself. He was just the greatest father for me," a distraught Chan said.
Hundreds of mourners including the U.S. ambassador and Chinese deputy envoy attended the funeral at a leafy winery on the outskirts of Canberra, before burial at a nearby cemetery.
Jackie Chan, star of Hollywood films such as "Rush Hour" and "Rumble in the Bronx," arrived in Australia aged 6 after his father moved there for work in the 1960s, but was soon sent back to Hong Kong to attend the China Drama Academy.
He continued to spend lengthy periods in Canberra with his parents, briefly attending a local high school.
Living in Australia for 40 years, Charlie Chan went from head cook at the U.S. Embassy to a successful local restaurant owner, though most of his final years were spent in Hong Kong with his actor son after his wife died.
Chan will shortly team with fellow action star Jet Li for the new adventure epic "The Forbidden Kingdom," to be filmed in China, and is also a goodwill envoy for this year's Beijing Olympics.
He said he planned one day to move his parents' bodies back to their homeland of China. Charlie Chan came from Shandong Province.
Friends and mourners inside the funeral said Chan was "very distressed" as he and others passed a wall of family photographs, many showing father and son hugging or fishing together.
(Shenzhen Daily/Agencies March 10, 2008)
