Posted on 02/25/2002 11:10:13 AM PST by LenS
Actress Amy Ting's first movie, "Miss Wonton," opens March 8. She won't be at the premiere.
Airman Amy Ting will be in Wichita Falls, Texas, serving as an Air Force physical- therapist trainee. She got her assignment Friday, after finishing basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.
She enlisted. In part, Amy Ting's story is a Sept. 11 story.
Early that morning, Ting was a fledgling actress supporting herself with a job at the World Trade Center Marriott Hotel's front desk while she waited to see how "Miss Wonton" and her movie career would fare.
"At 8:45," she said from Lackland, "we heard a thundering sound," and everything changed.
While most of the Marriott was evacuated, Ting stayed behind to help once firefighters and police started pouring in to set up a command center. "I knew the pass code for calling out," she explained. "Then I helped bring them water, and get some handicapped people who were still in the hotel down to the lobby. All we could see was fire outside."
Then "World Trade 2 came down on us." Blown from the middle of the lobby to a corner, Ting and a few others survived only, she said, because they had been standing near a wall reinforced following the 1993 Trade Center bombing.
"I didn't know if it was the end of my life," she said. "I was just praying it wasn't."
Guided by the flashing light from a fire truck outside, a barefoot Ting and her small group eventually found an exit and climbed over several stories worth of rubble to safety.
Ting wasn't able to make contact with her mother until the next day. She spent the next weeks holed up at home, "crying all the time," she said, "scared to go outside. I slept with my mom every night."
Walking through Times Square, she spotted the armed forces recruiting center and stepped inside. A few hours later, she had enlisted.
"Partly it was patriotism," she said. "But mainly it was that, after Sept. 11, I had to find a new job. And what better and more honorable company is there to work for than the U.S. government?"
Meng Ong, the director of "Miss Wonton," said, "at first I was surprised and shocked, because I thought she had such potential as an actress. But art imitates life. Amy lived through a traumatic experience and came face to face with death. [Like the movie's character,] she was struggling to find a meaning for her life and establish a new identity."
The Chinese-language "Miss Wonton" follows a young village woman who escapes a traumatic past in rural China to seek a better life in New York. Ting's character, Ah Na, has to cope with the precarious existence of an illegal immigrant, a menial Chinatown waitress and the victim of her own delusions about romance, wealth and trust in her new land.
"She is naive in the beginning," Ting said. "She goes through trial and error trying to fit in."
Ting does not think her new identity means wholly rejecting the old. She hopes her assignment to the medical unit will lead to medical school — she was a pre-med major at Rutgers — but she wants to continue performing.
Her mother, Sakura Teng, is a pop star in Malaysia, Ting's original home. In "Miss Wonton," Teng plays the imperious owner of the restaurant where Ah Na works. She was unable to attend graduation Friday, Ting said, "because she's on tour."
"I've been performing since I was little," Ting said, "even though it's a hobby rather than a full-time career. I started acting when I was 12, after modeling, dancing and singing."
Ong cast her in "Miss Wonton" after she answered an ad in "Backstage." "She is so perky and fresh," he said. "I wanted someone who could bring that freshness to the vulnerability of Ah Na."
During "warrior week" in basic training, she said, explosions still made her "flash back to the situation of Sept. 11, but that's the only thing.
"September made me stronger. I was chosen a group leader here, even though I was trying to hide and just pass through basic training in a breeze. It was more pressure, and more responsibility. They told me I could do it."
And she did.
Obviously, Ms. Ting hasn't been to Hollywood yet. So she hasn't had a chance to realize that other, non-famous people are supposed to sacrifice for her because she's too important to risk. Especially when you're the child of a performer.
I salute Ms. Ting! I'll be looking to watch her future acting work once she finishes her tour of duty. And I'll have to rent her current film when it hits video.
Many cultures do not recognize the left hand for the bridal ring.
In Germany, they wear it on the left hand during the engagement period, and move it to the right hand at the wedding.
Here's more on Amy Ting's background, which makes this story even more interesting, I believe:
It looks like the performing bug is in their blood. Some 30 years after Sakura Teng made her name as the Asian A-Go-Go Queen of the 70's, her daughter, Amy Ting, has taken the first step in her journey down a similar road headed for the glitter of the big screen.
Since she was a little girl, Amy had been exposed to a life of travelling shows and performances as she tagged along behind her famous mother, sometimes sharing the stage with Sakura on her song and dance numbers. Said Amy, now 23, "When I was younger, I would perform with my mother on stage, and I started doing folk dancing and musical theatre from the time I was 12. I have always liked performing. When I'm on stage, singing, acting and dancing, and you see the way the audience responds, it's like wow!"
If her debut performance in Miss Wonton is anything to go by, Amy has inherited more than just her mother's signature big round eyes and wide friendly smile. Both mother and daughter share a deep passion for their art.
.... Initially against Amy going into showbiz, Sakura could not say no when Amy decided to drop out of her medicine course at Rutgers University to pursue an acting career. She gave Amy her blessing with one condition - that if things don't work out in three years, Amy would go back to school.
" I thought I'd just go and audition, just for the hell of it and after doing this movie, I think it's kind of fun even though it's no bed of roses. I just want to see how far I can go. I want to grasp my youth right now, and if it doesn't work out I will just go back to school. Education is always there," said Amy. ... source.
Good luck to her in her new career and serving her country. Selfless.
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