Jackie Chan: I was forced to marry

Candid confession: Chan says he has had many girlfriends in his youth. — Reuters

INTERNATIONAL superstar Jackie Chan, 63, said he was “forced to marry” his wife of 35 years, Joan Lin, after she got pregnant in 1982, reports China Press.

Chan’s frank disclosure was made during an interview in 2015, which re-surfaced recently.

He made several bold statements, including the fact that he “had many girlfriends” in his youth, and that the romance between him and Lin died a long time ago.

“It was an accident which conceived Jaycee (his first son). I have never thought of getting married, but I felt it was akin to being forced to get married,” Chan admitted.

He confessed that he married Lin for the sake of his child’s future.

Chan recently courted controversy when his love child, Etta Ng, became the subject of tabloid fodder when her mother, Elaine Ng, was arrested on suspicion of criminal intimidation. Etta reported her mother to the police for a domestic incident.

> There are calls now to hold “supplementary” classes at Chinese vernacular schools to help non-Chinese pupils overcome the language barrier, reported Oriental Daily.

The proposal was made by the United Chinese Schools Committees Association in view of the steep rise in the enrolment of other races in Chinese schools.

Its president Datuk Vincent Lau revealed that the number of non-Chinese pupils increased from 72,443 in 2010 to 87,463 in 2014, making up 15% of the total pupil population in Chinese schools.

“We hope the Government can provide adequate resources to Chinese vernacular schools so that we can help non-Chinese students overcome the challenges in taking up a new language.

“This is to prevent the language barrier from being a hindrance to their learning progress,” Lau said during a function in Serdang.

> Found in translation is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.