Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images, Everett Collection (Marvel/Walt Disney Studios, Magnolia Pictures)
Jet Li readily admits he hasn’t always been the most present dad.
“When I was 24, I had my first marriage,” he says. “We had two daughters, Si and Taimi, and I played with them, but most of the time I went to go make movies. I thought I could protect them by trying to make money so they could go to a good school, and that would be good enough.”
While Li says his daughters were proud of him, watching his movies and talking about them with their schoolmates, his home life suffered because he was so often away. The drive to succeed, he says, had been engrained in him since his dad died when he was 2 and his family fell into dire financial straits.
“At 8 years old, I started to learn martial arts,” Li says. “When I was 11, I became a champion and started traveling around the world promoting kung fu. Because I was a champion, I could make money, and that meant I could take care of my mom. I was trying to be the father in my house, even though I was a little guy.”
Martial arts took a young Li to Europe and to America, where he performed for President Nixon as part of the Chinese national wushu team.
“More trips meant more money and that meant I could buy watches and bicycles and TVs for my mother, sisters, and brothers,” Li says. “I never had a chance — like normal people — to go to normal school.”
Decades later, when Li’s first marriage fell apart and he wed again to actress Nina Li Chi, he vowed to become a more involved parent. “My third daughter, Jane, was born in America in 2000, and I tried to spend more time with her,” Li says. “Even if I was traveling around the world to promote a movie, my daughter was with me.”
More recently, Li’s youngest daughter, Jada, has become one of Li’s most frequent collaborators, helping him write his new book, Beyond Life and Death: The Way of True Freedom, and co-hosting a podcast, So Be It, where the pair talk about strengthening their father-daughter relationship. Jada was even present for this interview, sitting alongside her father and helping him translate and clarify from time to time.
“She’ll tell me when I hurry too much or go too deep and talk about something normal people won’t understand,” Jet Li says. “She tells me about American culture, too, and say, ‘You cannot say that.’”
I started the One Foundation because in 2004, my whole family was almost hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Now, after 18 years of donations, we’ve helped more than 60 million people, have more than 3 million volunteers, and raised more than 5 billion RMB to help people.
But my fourth daughter, Jada, didn’t get a lot of attention from me when she was young because I was working on the foundation. A few years ago, she started to get a little sick with depression and I couldn’t help, even though people always say, “You’re a mentor.” She had a problem, and I didn’t know how to help.
So I tried to restudy how to be a father and how to listen to her, because I could do nothing to help. But we’d be together, and later on, she became a Buddhist, and so we became schoolmates.
When my daughters were little, I tried to share Buddhism with them, bringing them with me to study, but they didn’t want to know anything about it. They’d sit there and watch chanting, but they thought it was boring and they didn’t want to learn. They had busy schedules.
Jada Li, from off-camera: Do you mind if I interject?
Like my dad said, he tried to share Buddhism with us when we were young, but we thought it was weird. But when I was 16 or so, I started thinking more about it after I went to therapy, because I could see some similarities between meditation and Buddhist practices. I was working on it on my own then because my dad and I weren’t so close at the time. But when I turned 19, I took the summer to learn more about Buddhism, which I discovered was a little difficult to do over the internet or through books, so I called up my dad and said, “What’s all this about? What’s going on here?” He just dropped everything and we took a three-month father-daughter trip, going to meet with a bunch of Buddhist leaders and going on retreats where we’d study. He shared a lot about his practices and his life, and then we lived in the States together for a bit in an apartment.
Buddhism really brought us together. It also helped me mentally a lot, finding a way to regulate my emotions and thoughts, so now it’s something we share a lot with each other, talking about our different perspectives.
Jet Li: Yes, so we have the same teacher, the same coach, and we studied the same book together, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Jada and I read a lot of Buddhist books together now, because we’re schoolmates. I just recommended that she read Lama Surya Das’s book Awakening the Buddha Within, and we’ve read The Joy of Living, by Eric Swanson and Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
Jada and I watch a lot of history shows, like about ancient Chinese history from 5,000 years ago. I try to teach her Chinese culture and Chinese history, and she teaches me about American and western culture and people.
Jada also shows me popular movies, like from Marvel. She told me to watch those, and so I watched all the Marvels. When my daughters wanted to go to a premiere of a Marvel movie, I called someone to help, too.
Jane and Jada don’t want to watch my movies. I tried to show them some of my old movies and I’d say, “I worked so hard on this movie and a lot of people like it,” but when they watched, they’d feel tired and run away. They don’t like to watch my movies so much.
When my girls were little in the car, they were always singing American songs, and I always listened. I didn’t know the songs, but they told me they’re from a famous singer called Lady Gaga.
Photo: Getty Images
My daughters and I play cards — mainly Chinese-style games — but sometimes we also play mahjong. They learned it at their American high school, and I don’t know how, but now they play.
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