PUBLISHED ONSeptember 08, 2023 7:44 AMByYeo Shu HuiHong Kong actor-singer Julian Cheung has a few vivid memories of the naughty acts that he had done as a child.
The 52-year-old spoke to local host Quan Yi Fong, 49, in the first episode of the latest season of the Mediacorp variety show Hear U Out, which aired yesterday (Sept 7).
"I was a very curious person," he said, agreeing to Yi Fong when she asked if he was a "frequent visitor" to the student affairs office.
Julian recounted an incident in lower secondary school where he was "fascinated" with a fire extinguisher.
He explained: "It was around lunchtime and I slammed my hands down on the red discharge lever of the fire extinguisher. With a whooshing sound, the contents were sprayed all over me."
"The discipline master furiously shouted, 'Who did this?'," said Julian.
However, in a surprising twist of event, the discipline master did not reprimand Julian once he knew that it was him.
When Yi Fong asked why, he said jokingly: "I'm likeable!"
He also explained that he wasn't a "truly mean or rebellious" student and the discipline master understood it.
Julian said that he got into sparring matches with other boys when he was young because they loved watching "hero flicks".
He recounted: "It was pretty stupid… After fighting for 30 seconds, we'd wonder what to do next because I'd already won the fight actually.
"I wondered what other moves I had seen in movies that I could use, so I'd attempt all sorts of moves, like flying kicks."
Yi Fong and Julian also spoke about his school grades, where Julian said that he did quite well when he was very young because he worked very hard.
But his grades declined later as he was distracted by football, so his family hired a home tutor for him — who happened to be singer-actress Winnie Lau's sister.
He shared: "She was very stern but vulnerable too."
Recounting another incident, Julian said that he grew bored during one lesson and picked up his cup to drink water.
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He said: "I was really quite naughty back then. While she was talking, I poured water on her head. She burst out crying and refused to give me lessons from then on. This is something that I really regret."
Julian then went on to share that he once had to get stitches on his lips after he fell onto a glass table while attempting to be his favourite superhero Ultraman.
"I jumped off the bed and hit my lips on the glass table top and it broke. A shard of glass was lodged in my mouth," he said.
He added he was afraid that his family would discover his act, so he pretended to be asleep by burying his face in a pillow.
However, he was soon found by his grandmother, who came into the room after hearing the loud crash and found him lying on a pillow full of his own blood. He was then rushed to the hospital to receive stitches.
Julian also spoke about the nicknames that he had in his childhood — "Bungler" and "Waiter".
He said that he earned the name "Bungler" because he was clumsy and botched things frequently. He even overwrote part of a song on his cousin's cassette tape once.
"I pressed the 'record' button and a segment was overwritten. I was terrified. So I secretly recorded the missing segment back in by singing line by line," he shared, as Yi Fong laughed.
Of course it didn't work.
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"The moment my cousin heard it, she asked why someone else was singing," he said with a laugh.
Despite that, he said that each of these experiences taught him to be more cautious.
Julian reflected: "There is some positive impact. I tried to see things from a different perspective. If I couldn't do it right, what could I do to prevent making the same mistake? Because I was always getting scolded. As I try to avoid scolding, I naturally grew more careful."
As for "Waiter", he said that he was frequently told to pour and serve drinks to his family members and run errands for them, sometimes even buying sanitary napkins for his cousins.
When asked if he was okay with that, Julian said positively: "I did it. It wasn't a problem at all. That's why I'm a very carefree person… I definitely had a happy childhood."
You can catch the full interview with Julian Cheung on meWATCH now.
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