Has there ever been a celebrated Hollywood actress whose stardom plummeted into forever darkness over an incredible incestuous extra-marital affair with an under-aged teenage employee? Probably not! But as the world’s first for the Chinese side, Moon Lee did exactly that --- and has made indelible history in the Chinese movie world. Actually, the real story should make history worldwide! The true events were actually that bizarre and unexplainable in the making.
Moon Lee got her break in the movie business as a teenage high school student. Pretty with the added look of innocence and predisposed towards dancing, she was quickly turned into an action heroine with the “angelic” face. Her dance-like martial arts ability soon made her legendary among Hong Kong kung fu films. During her entire movie-making career, she was surprisingly free from any media gossip about her love-interests and sex life --- de facto, she had nothing worth gossiping about. For many years, she was the live-in girlfriend of a Hong Kong director and she helped him “mother” two daughters from a previous marriage. Then she secretly married a Cathay Pacific pilot, and in 1997, gave birth to a son in Vancouver, unbeknownst to the Chinese media. While nursing the newborn, she was broken-hearted to find out that her then husband was having an affair with an airline flight attendant. With a few months old infant in tow, she separated in 1997 in great anguish. I believe Dr. Law’s relationship with Moon started in late 1999, and according to actual words written in Moon’s diary, this new relationship brought her new hope in life. A whirlwind romance of fairytale proportions led to their marriage in late 2001. Everything I reviewed indicated that their family relationship and marriage was the envy of all. Although only discovered by Dr. Law in July of 2006, the devastating blow to Moon Lee’s life and to her marriage occurred during the Spring of 2006 when, at the age of thirty-nine, she chose to enter an illicit sexual relationship with a seventeen year old employee/dancer that she and Dr. Law adopted as a “son” a year later. A divorce that started in 2007 took fours years to complete because of cumbersome laws and judicial actions in America. After the expenditure of over US$1.6 dollars by Dr. Law in legal, accountant and expert fees, the divorce decree was granted with Moon only getting a settlement of approximately $75,000 to facilitate her “getting out of town”. This whole human tragedy demonstrated an incredible waste of emotions, time and financial resources. While it illustrated actual life occurrences that would make soap operas tame in comparison, it can remind us of how life can be full of surprises, both good and bad.
Not only have I read as much as I could, as well as the book Two Faces of the Moon, but also I had the opportunity of interviewing Dr. Law and his family last December in Hong Kong to get a close and personal perspective on the entire subject. Dr. Law’s current attitude to this sordid story was surprisingly relaxed and candid. The above events were calmly recalled without emotion and drama. I can see that he now can look upon it with a sense of humor. Yet it was this philosophical candidness that makes this story of shame so much more irresistible.
Even though I am retained as a publicist for the Law family side of the matter, I must say that this true-life story fascinates me way beyond the professional level. What could have caused this angel of Chinese “movie-dom”, having experienced betrayal and emotional tragedies of her own, to fall into such an abyss of romantic involvement? Among all the men she could have contact with, what kind of a woman, at this stage of her life, would fall for a young, poor, crude and uneducated male dancer, one whose notable quality among his fellow dancers was his lack of good-looks? Since we will never get the correct answers from either Moon or her lover-boy, it makes asking the questions even more intriguing.
My mission for the Law family is to level the public relations playing field for English speaking readers. The family believes that the Chinese media is already too plagued with faulty perceptions and reporting anyway; therefore there is nothing to be salvaged in those territories. The opinions of Asian readers drawn to gossip are totally irrelevant to all the members of the Law family. But in the English language media, there have been only rare reports that mention Moon Lee’s scandalous divorce. With the never-ending torrent of writings in the Chinese language, it is only a matter of time when things will spill over. It is now my job to assert and protect the truth before lies and gossip show their ugly faces.
Natalie Khan Daniel
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