“My brother was my hero. When I saw Jet Li's films, I wanted to be like him,” he says.
The family had two sons who participated in very physically demanding sports and had to compromise when it came to material possessions.
“We were always training and we were teenagers, so we were always hungry and wanted meat, which was expensive at the time,” he recalls.
“My father earned enough money to feed us, but we had to survive on one bicycle and one watch.”
I had been training all my life, so I really wanted to study. I wanted to meet girls and live the student life.
By the time he reached high school, the dedicated youngster followed in his brother's footsteps and became the martial arts state champion in his age group.
As a result, he won scholarships to attend some of the country's top universities, including Beijing Sport University.
“My whole life has been training, so I really wanted to study, meet girls and live the student life,” said the three-time national martial arts champion.
Fate had other plans for him, when he heard rumors that Jet Li's martial arts master, Wu Bin, was set to coach the Beijing Martial Arts Team.
This seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: In He's eyes, being coached by Li would bring him closer to his lifelong goal of becoming a top Chinese martial artist.
“I wanted to be like Jet Li, and being coached by Wu Bin brought me closer to this dream,” He explains. “I thought I'd failed the audition.
“I've been doing this my whole life, I'm a dedicated person, I can do all the moves, but I didn't realise until I met my master that I was missing a lot of the little details.”
Despite his lack of confidence, he was accepted onto the team. “It was a dream come true,” he says.
In 1995, two months after starting his training, Woo Bin took 14 members of his team to Los Angeles, USA, to give a martial arts demonstration.
“Going to America opened up the world to me,” he recalls. “There were luxury cars, people living by the sea, and people just going there to play volleyball. It was a lifestyle I'd never seen before.”
Meeting his hero made him even more determined to follow in his hero's footsteps, and upon returning to China, he continued training 14 hours a day, seven days a week.
In 2003, he traveled to the United States to perform with Cirque du Soleil. mosquito After working as an actor, coach and choreographer, he moved to Hong Kong in 2006 and joined the city's martial arts team.
After retiring from competition, he went on to work in the film industry as a martial arts consultant and was recently appointed action director for an upcoming show at Macau's Wynn Resort.
“In the U.S., you have a proactive attitude, but in Asia it's different. You have to stay calm, have everything prepared, do your job well,” Ho says, “and when an opportunity comes, be ready to grab it.”
