Chiang Sheng and Philip Kwok both received their formal acrobatic training in opera troupes, but the two first met when they had decided to go out on their own to find their paths as performers. Kwok told an interviewer that when he left his first troupe he turned to street performing. It didn’t take long for him to run into other opera trainees who were trying to make it on their own, and one of those chance encounters introduced him to Sheng. Kwok and Shen got along well and decided to start working together. “So we created a Fu Xing circus act and performed virtually everywhere,” Kwok said. Their performances were primarily focused on showing off their acrobatic skills, and their physical feats were so impressive that audiences didn’t mind the lack of storytelling.
According to Kwok, even though he was able to make a decent living as a street performer, the work didn’t prepare him very well for his later acting career. He met Cheh Chang, who liked Kwok’s acrobatics enough that he decided to include him in his next film, but Kwok said, “When it came time to do scenes with no Kung Fu in them, I always felt my heart beating very fast, and I was extremely nervous saying the lines.” He managed to power through, learn new skills, and become a movie star in his own right.
