Two Faces of the Moon: A Unique Insight Into Chinese Extra-Marital Affairs

MD

BEFORE THE STORM

My Life

At the outset, this book’s purpose was to use the notorious extra-marital misconduct of Moon Lee as the underlying basis to study the intricacies of the human mind as it pertains to aberrant sexual behavior. As such, I believe it is relevant to present to the readers certain biographical data about Moon Lee and me. This kind of biographical information provides the infrastructure to understand our actions and reactions. However, a serious emotional conflict arises here because the book by necessity reveals information that is highly embarrassing for both parties. There is also the matter of guilt or shame by association so that inclusion of certain persons into stories about our lives may be strongly objected to by those individuals. I can appreciate why being associated with this story or with the analysis of the most scandalous downfall of my celebrity ex-wife may be so abhorrent. Therefore, I will endeavor to leave out events and people that have no relationship to Moon and me in order to avoid embarrassing the innocent.

I was actually born in Guangzhou, China and not in Hong Kong as many had believed. My parents had just suffered through the atrocities of World War II and had experienced serious personal losses associated with the Japanese occupation. After the war, my father had initially gotten a job with the American army helping to clean up the mess left by the war. As the first born, I probably received more than my fair share of love and attention. Both my parents were educated in English-speaking Hong Kong schools and their fluency in English caused me to be brought up totally bilingually from an early age.

As far back as I can remember, I have known my mother only as a devoted wife and parent. She never had an out-of-the home job, yet I was certain that raising three younger brothers and me was all the hassle any decent woman deserved. My father was loving and caring too, but the hectic necessities of making a living in those days kept him away from home a great deal except for weekends. My parents had always told me that I was an unusually happy and gregarious child. I was energetic and enthusiastic as a youngster and took great pride to excel in anything I wanted to do. I remember too that I was often the teachers’ favorite and I took advantage of that to become a real achiever in the classroom. I was anything but shy and aggressively participated in any and all school activities.

My next younger brother was only one and a half years younger and we would be drilled together by our mother in both lessons about life as well as schoolwork. We both remember that the real lessons about patience were acquired by accompanying her in many endless shopping sprees all across Hong Kong. Even though it seemed tiresomely boring in those early days, we now know that was how my brothers and I had not only acquired the precious gift of patience but also a great knowledge about the art of buying merchandise of all kinds including collectibles.

By the time I became a teenager, two more brothers had been born into the family. My achievement-minded father had become a successful industrialist and my mother had continued to dedicate herself solely to the proper upbringing and education of her four sons. The Law family was all about integrity, achievement, and work ethic. All four of us knew clearly our responsibility as Law children and the thought of failure was abhorrent. As the oldest son, I believed throughout my early life that I must lead my brothers by example. Even now my mother would quickly admit that I was always driven to succeed.

By age fifteen, I had accumulated a superior academic record in school and I recall even then at that tender age I had declared that I wanted to become a surgeon. Part of the decision was almost certainly based on the fact that I thought becoming a surgeon would be prestigious for the family and me. But partly I must admit I was then influenced by American television shows about doctors and hospitals like Doctor Kildare and Ben Casey. Upon graduating from high school, the Diocesan Boys’ School, I was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania, a prestigious privately owned university that was a member of the renowned Ivy League.

I remember that I was quite proud to be the first one in the entire history of the Law family to matriculate into an American university, and one that was nonetheless the oldest university in America founded by Benjamin Franklin. The admitting class of sixteen hundred only had two Chinese students and I was determined not to let down my Chinese heritage. Being gregarious and outgoing, I made many American friends early on. My educational background under the Hong Kong British system prepared me well and I excelled academically with ease even though I was competing against some of the elite students from all over the Northeastern part of the United States. In extra-curricular activities, I concentrated on the sport of fencing under the university’s famous two-time Olympic coach. By graduation, as the captain of University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious fencing team, I had lead the team to win the 1969 National Collegiate Championship. Along the way, even though I was small in stature and seemingly weaker in strength compared to the average American athlete, I had been named twice to the All-Ivy League teams and All-American teams. These were indeed rare honors for a collegiate athlete of Chinese heritage. In April of 2008, I was inducted into the University of Pennsylvania's Fencing Hall of Fame.

In graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree with honors and both Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, I gained acceptance into the prestigious University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the oldest medical school in America. Not only did I excel in medical school, but also I chose to work overtime and simultaneously did extensive research work while pursuing the regular curriculum. As part of the medical school’s highly prestigious research team pioneering the new concept of total intravenous nutrition, I wrote and presented several important research papers dealing with the relationship between nutritional status and immunity to infection. I graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1973 with two graduation prizes in medical research. My life long dream of becoming a surgeon became a reality as I was accepted to the surgery training residency program in Denver at the University of Colorado and affiliated hospitals, at that time the most famous liver transplant center in the world.

I remember the five years I spent in surgery training as being the most hectic and tiring years of my life. If it were not for the intense interest and the gratifying rewards of saving lives on a daily basis, the workload would have been considered totally inhumane. Surgery training in those days involved a five-year period in which I went home for twelve hours every other night. In other words, I worked thirty-six hours on duty followed by twelve hours off for a total of five years. The whole work experience alternated between totally invigorating and totally exhausting. Those absurdly demanding training programs in those days were not only training surgeons. They were developing men of steel! I did not know then that I would desperately need those qualities later on in life to deal with the impossible.

In 1978, I completed my surgery training and instead of joining the teaching staff at a medical school, I chose to enter private practice and joined one of the most prestigious groups in Denver. I passed my Board exams quickly and soon was recognized by the American Board of Surgery and admitted to the Fellowship of the American College of Surgeons. As a young surgeon, I was fast becoming a rising star and got increasing referrals to do some of the most challenging cases. The University of Colorado School of Medicine soon appointed me as a part time faculty member as recognition for my skillful teaching of surgical residents. Even though I was initially appointed as an Assistant Professor, I was quickly promoted to Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery. Over a twenty-year period, I developed a highly successful surgery practice known for handling difficult cases in abdominal, thoracic, and vascular surgery.

During my entire career as a practicing surgeon, I remained highly committed to the support of the performing arts in Denver. I got involved with the opera company, local museums, the symphony orchestra, and finally the local ballet company. I went beyond just making financial contributions and instead got deeply involved in many aspects of production itself. In both involvements with the opera and ballet companies, the Law family and I undertook to support them heavily by endowing unique young artist training programs for the promotion and support of young talent. Meanwhile, with a lifelong interest in the performing arts, I took advantage of any and all opportunities to see opera, concerts, dance and Broadway shows everywhere I traveled.

I actually first met Moon Lee in the spring of 1996 in Beijing when I was the producer of a fantasy-action adventure film entitled Warriors of Virtue. She was visiting her martial arts teacher who was the action choreographer for this large budget motion picture. I remember that she was visiting the shooting set with two gentlemen, one of which I was told was her husband. Moon’s teacher introduced her to me and specifically asked me to use my connections to find her work in Hollywood. After I left Beijing and returned to the States, I reviewed briefly a few of Moon Lee’s films and remembered being struck with how badly those films were put together. I was told that Moon was one of the few actresses who performed her own stunts and on that account she was really sought after for Hong Kong action films. I also remembered that I thought her to be unusually attractive in a young little girl kind of way and that I thought she was often miscast as a action heroine or policewoman. It was noticeably awkward that none of the films used Moon’s own voice because all dialogue was dubbed in post-production. It was interesting that Moon played characters with essentially the same personality in each and every film she was in. Her demeanor in her movies tended to be very much her own as in real life.

I did check with some of my Hollywood contacts in Los Angeles and received the feedback that both her acting ability as depicted in her library of films and her lack of English skills made her unemployable in the North American film industry. Just a pretty face just does not cut it in the West! Later in 1996, I caught up with Moon Lee and her then husband for lunch in Vancouver and informed her that finding an acting job for her in the Hollywood environment would be very difficult indeed. I blamed it on her lack of English skills and downplayed the quality issue with her library of film and television works. At that lunch meeting, I remembered that Moon was visibly pregnant.

The next time I saw Moon was in the spring of 1997 when she was an invited guest at the Asian premiere of my film Warriors of Virtue in Hong Kong. As I greeted her at the theater at the top of the escalator, I politely asked about her husband. I remembered that her answer was tangential and tears began to well up in her eyes. I felt it was improper for me to inquire further, so I left it at that. I remembered that my next contact with Moon was by telephone during the time that she was shooting a television series in Shanghai probably in 1998. At that time, I was working on a sequel to Warriors of Virtue already green-lit for shooting in Beijing by a Los Angeles production company. I recalled we were considering her participation in some capacity, but that never worked out because of her lack of English skills. There was probably another unmemorable contact with Moon over tea in Hong Kong some time thereafter. My next contact with Moon was when she suddenly called me to say hello in the summer of 1999 when I was actually in Beijing on a business trip. We agreed to meet for coffee the next time I would be in Hong Kong. Later that fall, I did go to Hong Kong to visit my parents and I called Moon as promised to meet for coffee at the Peninsula Hotel lobby. I found out then that she and her husband had split up and I was in the middle of getting divorced myself. I remembered that we hit it off remarkably well probably because I was yearning to befriend some lady who was prototypically Chinese and traditional. At the same time, she admired me for my professional successes, my educational background, and my international qualities. Even though she had been a well-known action movie star, Moon exuded qualities that made her seem very traditional, conservative and non-pretentious. Despite her travels as part of the entertainment business, Moon also appeared very sheltered and did not appear to be very familiar with western or international lifestyles and manners. I had also heard many gossip stories about other Hong Kong film personalities but my thorough check revealed that Moon’s career seemed to be relatively sedate in that respect. Devoid of bad publicity that would doom her with the Law family, I became rapidly attracted to her because I thought she possessed most of attractive qualities of a modern Chinese woman. In fact, I was briefly working on launching a new brand in China about Chinese Womanhood of the New Millennia and I invited Moon to be the key art model.

During the few days that I spent with Moon in December of 1999, I met her son for the first time. I recalled that I was struck by her insistence of keeping her son a secret. On one occasion, after I had dinner with Moon and her sisters, we spotted reporters waiting for her outside the restaurant. As we left, Moon asked me to carry her son so that the reporters would not think that the child belonged to her. The newspapers reported the next day that Moon was secretly dating a man with a young child. I recalled that I was baffled by why a mother would deny the existence of her son.

In January of 2000, Moon traveled to Denver with her son to visit the rest of the Law family and me. Our courtship became more serious and intense that year. Prior to dating Moon, I had already submitted an application as a single father to adopt a baby girl from China, having been persuaded by friends who owned a large and successful Chinese adoption agency. In the spring of 2001, Moon and I traveled together to Xian in Shaanxi province to pick up my newly adopted daughter. After that, we behaved much like a family of four and traveled frequently between Denver, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Even though Moon had been separated from her husband for nearly three years, I found out by mid-2001 that her divorce proceedings had hardly begun. She actually asked me to help her through the maze of a Canadian divorce process executed in English and administered through the jurisdiction of Vancouver, British Columbia. By December of 2001, our new family relationship was legitimized by our marriage that was held in an old Victorian mansion. The reports that Moon’s wedding gown was antique Victorian lace was true, but the wedding itself was a small gathering of less than fifty consisting of only relatives and intimate friends.

The marriage seemed made in heaven. Moon and I shared many interests and my gradual slowdown from a hectic surgery practice left me more time to devote to wife, family and children. Life was enjoyable with few worries and even in our frequent business travels we brought the children along as much as possible. I introduced Moon to the western cultural art and performing arts scene. Even though she would claim to have acquired a quick understanding and appreciation of these western art forms, I was quite certain that she remained prejudicial towards things that are inherently Chinese. I had also been on the governing board of opera and ballet companies. The Law family foundation had funded many training programs designed to bring Chinese artists into Denver opera and ballet companies and afforded them with unprecedented training opportunities.

A giant change in my life’s interest came in Beijing in 2001 when Moon took me to visit a professor at the Beijing Dance Academy during their examinations. During this end of semester examination for first year students of the classical dance section, I witnessed leaps, jumps and flexibility of the human body that I thought was up till then impossible. I had been an avid supporter of ballet for years and yet I marveled at why I had never seen such virtuosity in physical movement. I felt I had been too blinded by sole dominance of western ballet in my life up till then. Not that this dance form was not pleasing but I had found something else that could be so much more. All that would be required was a catalyst to propel the virtuosity and excitement of Chinese dance and movement art onto international stages.

At the end of the exam session, Moon and I invited our professor host to lunch. He teased me with the idea of using my western taste to produce a new Chinese dance drama based on the Valentine legend of the cowherd and the weaving goddess. From that moment, the idea behind the show Of Heaven & Earth was born. On the plane trip back to the United States, the skeletal outline of the script was already completed. I had already decided that I would develop a new kind of Chinese Broadway musical, a kind that focused more on movement and visuals as the foundation rather than on traditional song and dance. The common shyness of Chinese performers did not allow them to match the expressiveness and audience interaction required by conventional Broadway-style musicals. Therefore, for Chinese shows to be competitive, they had to develop a new focus on the strength of Chinese performing artists --- their movement virtuosity. The idea behind Action-Musicals was born!

I must thank Moon for my newly found love affair with Chinese dance. Even as I look back now, I believe I had a god-given talent to learn and develop in this area. Maybe it was to be my destiny. I even remembered that I picked out two first year students during the fateful examination that I attended with Moon described earlier. At that instant, without any prior experience in Chinese dance, I had deemed these two students to be the best of the entire class and invited them to dinner the same night to get acquainted. Three years later before their graduation, both these students became gold medal winners in the most prestigious national Tao Li Cup competition. Therefore, even as novice in observing Chinese dance in 2001, my intuition did not let me down at all.

In my over twenty years of professional life as a surgeon, I had given it my all and I believed that I left my career feeling satisfied I had become the best I could be. As a physician, I had been gratified by serving countless patients and given them the best relief from pain, suffering and surgical disease that I could humanly provide. I left the profession at the height of my career to pursue a second interest with no regrets and no apologies. Now, as director and producer of a new genre of Action-Musicals, I believe I am in a unique position to fill a gap in the international entertainment arena. At this time, Law Brothers Chinese Performing Arts International has performed nearly five hundred performances of seven Action-Musicals in major downtown theaters of North America, Hong Kong and Beijing. This record is unprecedented in the history of Chinese performing arts. Along the way, our shows have received critical acclaim and received recognition and awards like no Chinese show has ever had before. In the percussion-based Action-Musical Heartbeat, I was nominated in 2005 for a Toronto Dora Award for Best Direction of a musical, an honor heretofore unknown among directors of Chinese heritage. The show also received nominations for Best Choreography and Best Costume Design. In 2006, my show Tang Concubines actually won Dora Awards for both Best Choreography and Best Costume Design, another first in the history of Chinese shows in the Western world. The Dora Awards are the Canadian equivalent of the New York Tony Awards in the field of musical theater. Never before has Chinese performance arts reached this level of international accomplishment. Therefore I am proud to give up one great career to follow my new destiny. To date, I have written, produced and directed seven shows. This new genre that I have created consolidated its new prowess in the world of musical theater when three shows were presented in thirty performances as an Action-Musical Festival to celebrate the occasion of the Beijing Olympic Games in July and August of 2008. This festival also included the world-premiere of Monkey King, the first Chinese rock-musical. In accomplishing all this, our company has been truly making Chinese performing arts history and has filled a void for which there is no equal. The legacy that my company and I will leave behind will be memorable and lasting indeed.

Despite my family tragedy, I thank Moon Lee for the role she played in introducing me to my new destiny. I am not the kind of person that regrets events of the past and fret about it indefinitely for the future. She opened my eyes in 2001 and then I took off ran with the opportunity. The real facts revealed in this book should demonstrate without any doubt that my legacy of success and that of my company’s in the field of Chinese performing arts was achieved in spite of Moon Lee and her actions, not because of them.

Moon’s Life

Unlike writing about the pertinent aspects of my own life and experiences, writing about Moon Lee’s is limited by what she had been willing to expose and by what I had learned during my five-year meaningful relationship with her. Many aspects of her career as an actress are matters of such public record that I will refrain from reiterating them because these details contribute little to either the understanding of Moon’s personality or the appreciation of the issues surrounding her extra-marital relationship.

In discussing the life of Moon Lee, my purpose is to provide the basic framework for the appreciation of personality issues and motives behind her shocking extra-marital misconduct. In the course of this, any mention of people around her or close to her is purely based on facts and not based intentions to involve the innocent or the need to gossip. For certain, some of these people would be infuriated by their inclusion in this expose. Let these people blame Moon for her actions and her choice to slander innocent people in the course of hiding shame. It is only within this context that a book about the real facts becomes necessary. The truth is always a double-edged sword. It will help some people and it will hurt others. Let it fall where it may so that this truth, help or hurt, will for certain set everyone free.

Moon Lee was born on February 14th, 1965 as Lee Choi Fung and ironically a Valentine’s Day baby. I know almost nothing about her early years. She had never seemed eager to reveal too many aspects of her early life. I believe her natural mother was at least her father’s second wife because Moon has some older stepbrothers.