Profile | This Hong Kong martial arts movie expert’s journey from DVD commentaries to Hollywood
Frank Djeng on how he got his start doing commentaries on DVD re-releases – now, a Bruce Lee documentary he co-produced, Enter the Clones of Bruce, is airing on Apple TV in Hong Kong
I was born in Hong Kong but came to the USA in the 1980s. I was 14. We arrived in Oakland, California, because my uncle lived here. Our name should be Cheng but my uncle got annoyed by people constantly mistaking our last name as Chan, so he changed it to Djeng. For whatever reason, he didn’t use Jeng. He used Djeng with the D being silent. Of course, people didn’t pronounce it correctly until Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained came out, with Jamie Foxx’s line, “The D is silent.” You cannot believe how helpful that movie was in people getting our last name right.
Forget Hong Kong
I was always nostalgic for Hong Kong. I still remember the day we landed (in the US). My uncle kind of said, “Forget about Hong Kong. Forget about your friends. This is where you are now. Everything starts new.” I thought, “No way!” It actually strengthened my roots even more. I remember once we got our US citizenship and passport after five years, the first thing I did was buy a ticket back to visit Hong Kong.
Librarian at heart
I always loved libraries. As a kid, I went to the library on Waterloo Road every day after school. For my high-school summer job, they asked where I wanted to work. I said a library. I was the only person who wanted to do that. They assigned me to one and I continued there part time after (graduation). After university, I was offered a full-time gig as library assistant. Ironically, I didn’t go back to Hong Kong because I had this job. A lot of my Chinese friends couldn’t find work so they went back. Now, I have a job with US Customs, doing tech support. But I still work as a librarian on weekends.
Chinatown tradition
