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Following news in mid-August that he was hospitalised, actor and martial arts star Jet Li has opened up about his condition for the first time, in a series of four videos recently uploaded on Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu.
The China-born Singaporean actor candidly shared that he'd noticed a lump on the right side of his neck while looking in the mirror on his birthday. He turned 62 on Apr 26.
He went to see an ear, nose and throat specialist who suggested the lump could be a tooth swelling, with gum inflammation affecting his lymph nodes. But the lump persisted even after he took anti-inflammation medication for a week.
Li then did an ultrasound scan among other procedures under his doctor's recommendation. While he discovered he had a benign tumour, there were some areas in the tumour which were "unclear".
In August, he consulted the doctor again, who advised him to undergo a biopsy to remove the tumour to be safe. The doctor confirmed with him after the surgery that the tumour was "100 per cent" benign, he said.
Likening his condition to a "hardware issue", Li said that "if there is a problem, you fix it".
Even if the tumour hadn't been benign, or if there were a one-in-10,000 or one-in-100,000 chance of him dying in the operating theatre, he said he would have faced the possible outcomes too.
In the Xiaohongshu videos, Li also opened up about his family's reaction to the surgery.
His wife Nina Li Chi, a former actress, said she would support him whatever his decision. He also told their two daughters, Jane and Jada, aged 25 and 22 respectively – even though he initially didn't want to worry them until after the surgery.
Jada told him that they had a right to know and be concerned for him. "They said I could not deprive them of this right," he recalled.
But his two older daughters – Li Si, 37, and Li Taimi, 36 – from an earlier marriage to former actress Huang Qiuyan were only informed about their father's surgery after it was over. When they found out, they similarly told him they had a right to be informed and worry for him, and that he shouldn't have made the choice for them.
Admitting he found his daughters to be "very brave" when faced with the news, he acknowledged he would be more open in the future with them.
On his reasons for speaking about his experience publicly rather than keeping it private, Li noted that he is a "regular human" who also has to face life's impermanence and unpredictability.
Being candid about his experience will inevitably lead to various public attitudes and opinions, which is to be expected, he added.
But what matters to him is that his sharing gets people to discuss important issues of life and death, while showing them that it's possible to confront unexpected challenges calmly.
"Impermanence is a normal part of life. There is nothing in this life that is forever," he said, but pointed out that he had previously only understood this concept theoretically despite being someone who engages in regular introspection.
It is only after personally going through such a challenging experience that "the noun becomes a verb", and a person truly gains insight into how they feel about their mortality, he added.
