Donnie Yen Chi Tan was born in Canton in Mainland China. When he was about one and a half years old, he immigrated to Hong Kong with his father. His mother Bow Sim-Mark couldn't get permission to leave China at that time, and it was to be another eight years before they would be reunited as a family. During that time he met his mother once when he went back to China, so he could see what she looked like! When she finally came to Hong Kong, they lived there for about another two years before their whole family relocated to America and settled in Boston when he was about 11 years old. Donnie Yen's mother began training her son in the martial arts almost as soon as he could walk (4 years old). When Don went to visit his mother in China, she would teach him a few basics, as would her teacher, but it wasn’t until they'd moved to America and she started the Chinese Wushu Research Institute, that he really started studying the martial arts.
