That year, he was 11 years old and a grade-four primary school student in Handan in North China's Hebei Province. After watching the 1982 Jet Li movie Shaolin Temple, he talked his parents into signing him up for an amateur martial-arts school.

Later, he was recruited by the provincial martial-arts team.

After practicing kicking, chopping and tumbling all day long for nearly seven years, Yan -- who had by then learned the cruelty of life -- knew that the chances of his dream coming true were slim.

His luck came in January this year when a group of people from Beijing came to find actors and actresses for Kung fu Show -- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a live theatre performance combining martial arts and dancing.

With his adept skills, Yan was selected and arrived in Beijing in February, where he began a life he had never experienced before.

Together with Yan were about 50 other boys and girls, aged between 11 and 18.

All of them had been practising martial arts for years.

Like Yan, many began to learn kung fu because they had been attracted by martial-arts movies. While some came from the provincial martial-arts team of Hebei, the others were from Liangshan Martial Arts School in East China's Shandong Province.

The youngsters first needed to learn how to demonstrate their dazzling kung fu on stage.

However, it was a strenuous process for the kids to go from being kung fu practitioners to becoming actors and actresses.

Liu Jing, who is in charge of looking after them, was deeply impressed after the first day of rehearsals.

The kids acted in a quite strange way because they had never learned how to perform before. "Every movement of their arms and legs was very rigid," Liu recalled.

But the young martial artists were so clever that they soon learned everything.

After more than half a year of rehearsals, the drama will have its official premiere tonight at the Xinrong Theatre in central Beijing.

(China Daily October 16, 2002)