Donnie Yen on Discrimination Incident: “Someone Distorted the Facts”
Earlier, Donnie Yen (甄子丹) and his family stormed out of a charity event in Hong Kong after experiencing discrimination from the organizers. Following the incident, speculations ran rampant on what went down, with some people saying Donnie left because he was unsatisfied with his seating arrangement. Seeing that the situation was seriously getting distorted, the actor finally broke his silence to stop the rumours once and for all.
“Actually, the organization invited me for many years already, but I wasn’t able to participate in the past because of bad timing,” Donnie revealed. “This year, I thought I must do my best to help by attending the event as a way of supporting the charity and my friend. I was in London with my family when I received the invitation to the event. I did my best to contribute by forking out money to change my plane ticket to head back to Hong Kong, and went to find an item to put up for the auction.”
However, the event was already really chaotic once Donnie stepped out of the car. “I understand it’s inevitable when there’s a lot of people,” he said. “There were many people who wanted pictures with me once I entered. So I went into the ballroom to get away from the chaos, but there was a PR team in the room and one of the members – a foreign woman – rudely told me to get out. I don’t understand why she was so impolite. At the time, there were also many foreign artists in there.”
He added that there were no security guards on the scene that night and he didn’t receive instructions. Despite the lack of organization, he dealt with it, as the problem was not that serious, but couldn’t bear it once he was treated disrespectfully.
Donnie continued, “When my wife Cissy Wang (汪詩詩) saw how poor the foreign woman’s attitude was, she asked to talk to the person in charge of the team. A foreign man came over and glanced at us with an unfriendly gaze. My wife didn’t finish talking before he turned around and left. He didn’t even have the most basic respect for us, so we decided to dash.”
The actor also took the chance to dispel the rumor that he brought 20 assistants to the event and was unhappy with the seating arrangement. “That is ridiculous,” Donnie exclaimed. “Many people know I only have one assistant, and I didn’t care what seat I had that night. I only wanted to do charity and support my friend. My friend called to apologize afterwards, and said that person has always been really arrogant. I have also done events before so I understand things happen but when I am treated with such disrespect, I can’t stand it. It is impossible not to have racial discrimination in the world. Without a doubt, I’ve witnessed a lot of it while growing up overseas.”
Source: Oncc
This article is written by MelodyC for JayneStars.com.
i don’t think this necessarily have to do with discrimination but maybe the foreigners don’t know them and think they are regular folks trying to sneak into the room? but it is inexcusable to treat anybody like the way described so condescending, it speaks for how snobbish and disgusting that person’s character is.
“Someone Distorted the Facts”
So he is throwing Ray Lui under the bus because Ray was the one that said Donnie was given a “bad spot” to sit.
Donnie needs to take a chill pill. Not everyone knows who he is and he needs to understand that. There are numerous occasions that celebs are even stopped at the door by security because they don’t recognize the celeb and they are not on the list. What happened to Donnie didn’t sound like anything at all.
I see!! He is unhappy because no one knew he was THE donnie yen. How anyone can not recognise him? He’s the guy with that face! Anyway surely ray would be less recognised? Anyway rude staff.
Im not sure this changes anything. He’s still just miffed that he wasnt pandered to, except its not because of seating arrangements, its because because noone gave him the time of the day.
Although I do agree with him that the treatment was appalling – treating a guest who spent time, energy and money on attending your event and not given the appropriate hospitality.
I however do not agree that there was any apparent discrimination.
Off topic but is his face crooked? It may be due to Botox… why can’t people just age naturally?
While I understand that it’s the staff’s job to be polite with all these celebrity guests, but having to deal with so many arrogant people, that they possibly run out of patience lol. The staff must be like: another snobby who wants me me me demand >_< sometimes the staff is just bad customer service and has nothing to do with race.
@littlefish Actually, thats probably a good point. I can imagine, especially having worked customer facing before. Id say he was right to flip out this instance, but they are probably just returning the attitude. Ive done it before. We are all human.p
just have to say that the people leaving comments in this site are pretty bias. All had to point finger to Donnie when he and wife were treated with impoliteness from a non asian descent person.
I’m English and a huge fan of Donnie Yen. I would like to apologise for any ignorant, disrespectful fool who doesn’t have the manners to treat all people equally with kindness at all times.
@biao You assume the person to be guilty of that.