Explainer | How to age well: Donnie Yen’s wushu master sister Chris Yen shares the secrets to her youthful looks and attitude
- The siblings learned the martial art of wushu from their mother, Mark Bow-sim, and Chris Yen credits this for her keeping her mind sharp
- Regular exercise, a healthy diet, playing musical instruments and spending time with her family and blind rescue dog keep her young, the 47-year-old says
She may not grace billboards like her older brother, Hong Kong superstar actor and martial artist Donnie Yen Ji-dan, but Chris Yen Zi-ching, a wushu master herself, is a poster girl for how to age well.
The siblings learned martial arts from their mother, Mark Bow-sim, who was born in Guangzhou, southern China, and founded the Chinese Wushu Research Institute in Boston in 1976 after emigrating to Massachusetts from Hong Kong in 1975. She taught wushu at Boston University and Harvard University.
Born in Guangzhou, Chris Yen, now a property investor living in Los Angeles, says she feels fortunate and proud to have had an upbringing that revolved around martial arts – though it came at a price.
“Westerners were always in awe of what they saw in our school,” she says.
“I had to train very hard every day. Training was like eating, drinking and sleeping for me. I didn’t have much of a childhood like other kids. I was the youngest of all the martial arts students then.
“I mostly trained alone under my mother’s guidance. During summers, she would send me to Shenzhen, Wuhan and Beijing [in China] for group training. We trained like Olympians, for six hours a day and six days a week.”
